Evaluating Hair Both Wet and Dry When Planning a Hair Transplant

This audio podcast has been transcribed using an automated service. Please forgive any typographic errors or other transcription flaws.

Whenever I plan to do a hair transplant and it really does require a quite a bit of planning. I have an initial plan and an adjusted plan and that, so I first plan obviously begins in the consultation after discussing with you what you want. What I think is important, the shape of hairline that I think would look good for you that it will age well for you, the areas of concern that you have, the areas that I look at that are balanced, and then that plan is then recorded through lines, photographs and documentations. Which you sign off on. And on the day of the procedure, of course, I then redraw the hairline for you redraw the areas that we’re concerned about revisit the notes that we discussed look at the photographs that I have documented. And then I always tell my patients that there’s an adjustment as well because I evaluate everything dry, wet. I’d look at your hair both dry and wet and then I also look at what you have for donor capacity. Sometimes you have more one hair grafts, which may not give density. You may have more three hair grafts, which may have more density. May have two more twos and ones in which case I may have the grafts, but I may not have the hair density that I want. I’m a wet your hair down and see that you actually have a significant thinning in certain areas. And so that plan may adjust, and I always tell my patients that plan could adjust and shift things either toward larger expanse or toward a smaller expanse. Now, why would that be? The biggest thing is when your hair is wet. If I look at the area that I transplanted looking good dry, but not looking good wet. I don’t want that pattern to look unnatural when your hair looks wet, but it looks natural when it’s dry. So, I’m constantly thinking how it’s going to look dry or wet. This is another reason why I don’t shave the scalp because if you shave everything off during the transplant in you’re looking at just a bald scalp the transplant you cannot use those that the hairs that are there as knowledge for what you need to do. So, find my podcast for many months ago about why don’t shave ahead before surgery. Now, I’m not talking about the back of the head the donor area which is done for FUE. I’m talking about the recipient bed why I don’t like to shave that down. So, a guy from North Carolina I remember many years ago. I was really planning to do his crown and you know, I learned my lesson. Communicating better in the front end of this but he agreed with it in the middle of the procedure but I wetted his hair down really looked at the mid scalp and I saw that you know what this is not going to tolerate just being left open and going to the crown because he would look good when his hair is dry, but when his hair is wet it would have looked weird. So, I told him I needed to move toward the crown to stop to stop at the top part of the crown but not go all the way down the crown. Otherwise, I think his result would be a natural. That doesn’t mean that couldn’t come back and do the transplant to fill that but in that situation, I was thinking of this guy never comes back for a transplant if his hair is wet this would not look good. So, the one thing that I always think about is I’m planning or strategizing a scalp is how does that hair look both dry as well as wet?