When it comes to helping men look younger and boost their confidence, one of the most effective treatments is hair restoration. I’ve seen firsthand how transformative this procedure can be for my patients, though I wasn’t always a believer.
My Journey with Hair Transplantation
If you had asked me during my residency years ago, I would have told you, “Over my dead body will I ever do hair transplants.” Ironically, hair transplantation has become one of the most popular procedures I perform today.
I’m essentially eating my words from back then.
My initial reluctance stemmed from the state of hair transplantation technology at that time. The results often looked unnatural—hairlines were funky, the directionality of the hair wasn’t right, and the technology simply wasn’t comparable to what we have today. Many results just plain looked odd, and I told myself I would never subject a patient to that kind of outcome.
The Evolution of Hair Restoration
Over time, however, hair restoration technology has advanced tremendously.
Today, we can perform hair transplantations that are virtually invisible. The procedure has become so refined that even other doctors can’t tell my patients have had a transplant.
The “plugs” of the past—those grafts with bunches of hairs that looked like pencil erasers—are long gone. Modern techniques use grafts containing just one to three hairs at a time, placed through tiny needle sticks rather than larger punches.
This creates a completely natural appearance that blends seamlessly with your existing hair.
The Procedure: What to Expect
Hair transplantation is surprisingly straightforward for patients.
You’ll be here for a long day, but everything is done under local anesthesia. The procedure is very casual—you’ll just lie there while we work, and we even take a lunch break during which you can get up and move around as needed.
The process involves:
- Numbing the back of your head
- Harvesting the grafts from this donor area
- Making tiny needle sticks in the recipient area
- Carefully placing each graft
About four months after the procedure, the transplanted hair begins to grow.
For example, in a typical case of what we might call a “5A pattern”—essentially an incomplete horseshoe pattern with significant loss in the frontal and mid-scalp areas—we might place around 3,100 grafts.
At six months post-procedure, you’ll see impressive results, but the best is yet to come. If you give it another year, the results become even more impressive.
The Growth Process
Interestingly, hair transplants follow a natural growth cycle. They start off almost like seedlings—the new hair is initially a bit wiggly and thin.
As it continues to grow over the course of a year, it becomes thicker and straighter, much like a seedling growing into a tree. You’ll notice continued thickening and more resilient, straighter hair throughout this time.
Recovery: Easier Than You Might Think
Recovery from hair transplantation is remarkably simple. Most of my patients return to office work the very next day. The main restrictions are to avoid lifting heavy things for one to two weeks and to protect the grafts. As long as you follow these simple guidelines, your recovery should be straightforward.
Even Past “Pluggy” Results Can Be Fixed
For patients who had older-style transplants with visible plugs, there’s good news.
I recently worked with a gentleman who owned a local business and wore a hairpiece constantly because he was mortified by his old plug-style transplants. When he finally removed his hairpiece to show me, I could see why he was concerned.
We performed a modern hair transplant, filling the areas around his old plugs with natural-looking grafts.
As the new hair grew in, the old plugs were completely camouflaged by the newer style of transplantation. So even if you’ve had less-than-ideal results in the past, we can likely provide excellent camouflage for those previous “misdeeds” from the hair transplant industry.
The Bottom Line
Today’s hair transplants are truly fantastic, producing results that are natural and virtually undetectable. It’s a far cry from the procedures of decades past, and I’m proud to offer this service to my patients.
What was once a procedure I vowed never to perform has become one of the most satisfying and popular treatments in my practice.
