Thank you for your question.
You stated in your question, which you didn’t submit with a photo, but you describe that
you are now 2 months and 4 days after undergoing hair transplant and that you are noticing
approximately 10-20 hair shafts per day when you are combing your hair. And your question
is should you be concerned.
Well, I can certainly share with you my perspective as someone who performs hair transplant. A
little bit of background, I’m a Board-certified cosmetic surgeon and Fellowship-trained oculofacial
plastic and reconstructive surgeon. I have been in practice in Manhattan and Long Island
for over 20 years. I am the founder of TrichoStem™ Hair Regeneration Centers, a system that we
developed that non-surgically treats men and women with hair loss. And we treat people
from around the world using technology that we developed while trying to help our hair
transplants heal better.
I think that if you were to contact your doctor and ask the same question, they would basically
give you the general term of shock loss. And shock loss basically means hairs, whether
they are transplanted hairs or even native hairs in the vicinity of the transplanted
area, will essentially go early into a phase called telogen, the resting phase and that
is basically called the shock loss where the hair sheds and now you have at least 3-4 months
before there’s regrowth. Essentially, with any hair transplant, the timeframe of looking
for the result to be fully expressed is about a year and sometimes even longer depending
on the growth cycle of the person’s hair and the rate of growth.
When we were doing a lot of hair transplants, we tried to maximize the outcome in terms
of better graft healing as well as donor area healing and to actually try to minimize shock
loss. Because frankly, it is something, even when patients are advised, it can be disconcerting
and people would call all the time. So we tried to see, can we use a technology to help
wound healing. So we use something called platelet-rich plasma (PRP) which is derived
from your own blood, a concentration of growth factors for wound healing as well as a material
called Acellular matrix or extracellular matrix that is used for wound healing that facilitates
the process. And we noticed several things. Amongst which was that thinning hair became
thicker and from that, we developed this Hair Regeneration treatment which basically, non-surgically,
we’re able to do injections to help stimulate hair growth of hairs that are not currently
growing, thickening of thinning hairs, inducing the shed of thinning hairs and growing in
thicker hairs and essentially, helping people prolong the growth cycles of their hair and
get better coverage of their scalp for longer periods of time. In fact, with our treatment,
we’ve been able to establish that 99% of our patients have improvement that is sustainable
for about 5 years.
Now that being said, one of the things that we were also been able to do and accomplish
when we were doing this with transplantation is that we were able to get some improvement
in the shock loss issue as well as, we noticed earlier growth of the grafts. And so from
that, we’ve actually had a lot of patients come to us from around the world who have
had hair transplant and who, within the first month to 3 months, will come in for Hair Regeneration
treatment to help improve their healing process as well as enhance the regrowth of their existing
hair. And what we’ve observed is that their transplanted hair tends to grow earlier.
Now there is certainly a lot to be understood in terms of the consistency of these outcomes.
But the point is that there are methods that can help people along as we have been able
to do for patients who come to us who learned about our treatment. Because reality is that
not only is hair transplant a challenge in terms of healing of the grafts but one of
the things that is understated particularly when we are dealing with people who still
have a reasonable amount of existing hair is that there is permanent loss in a lot of
those hairs depending on individual cases when you don’t necessarily just get shock
loss but you get permanent loss because of the collateral damage from the trauma of surgery,
the compromise in vascularity and other issues. Now this is not meant to worry you but it’s
basically an issue that is usually not stated very clearly because it’s difficult to predict
how much collateral loss there will be in an individual patient.
So what we have basically developed as a conclusion over the past close to 7 years of doing this
Hair Regeneration treatment is that if someone comes to us, let’s say about a month after
their transplant surgery, I’ve been actually able to see from experience from doing transplants
without Hair Regeneration, that the quality of the skin improves as well as the growth
of the grafts. And the patients have told me, especially those who have had more than
one transplant, that they didn’t have the same experience with shock loss and the hair
grafts grew in sooner. Now that’s again anecdotal and definitely open to potential
criticism.
As far as your question is concerned, again, speak to your doctor. You will probably get
the general understanding of this being called shock loss. But at the same time, I think
you can follow your doctor’s instructions as to how to best care for your scalp and
realize that the hair that is shed now doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily permanently lost.
I think that’s the take home message speaking purely from the perspective of a transplant
putting aside the knowledge that we’ve derived from doing Hair Regeneration.
So again, I think it’s very important to maintain communication with your doctor. If
you are not sure about something, I would encourage you to see your doctor. You know,
with our patients, we also encourage them, regardless of the type of procedure I do,
that when in doubt, just come right in so that we can actually see you. It’s much
easier to help people understand what’s going on by physical examination. And so I
think that may be what will ultimately help give you some reassurance but understand that
you still have another 10 months or so before you see the full expression of your results.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question.