Men and women alike can be treated with this procedure. However, the option of hair replacement surgery is usually selected when the hair loss condition of a patient is on the extreme. Thus, men who experience extreme baldness are often encouraged to go for this procedure in other to tackle their hair loss. The following facts about hair replacement surgery will help you know about the procedure.

Time
If a hair replacement procedure is recommended for you then, you will need between one hour and four hours for a session to be completed. One session may not be enough and several sessions can be performed for a period between one and two years. Thus, each session may be between 1 and 4 hours that will run at different times up to 2 years.

Where the surgery is performed
This procedure is usually carried out in out patient centers of the hair replacement clinic. Since the session is not expected to last for a day, the patient may not be admitted except when there are complications. The procedure is usually carried out with the administering of anesthesia and sedations before each session is started.

Risks and side effects
As with many other surgical procedures, hair replacement procedure also has side effects attached to them. Most of the time the patients often complain of aches on their scalp. Moreover, tight scalp, infection, loss of scalp tissues, excessive scarring etc are equally reported in some quarters.

What to avoid
After a few days of undergoing a session of hair replacement surgery, it is vital that you avoid engaging in any kind of physical activities until a certain percentage of your scalp is healed. Hence, you may have to suspend work and sporting activities between 3days to 3 weeks after the operation. This is very important to follow as it will assist you in getting the desired result in about 18 months time.

Cost and insurance
You may want to know if this procedure is by health insurance. Well, you need to know that health insurance do not cover this procedure because it is considered a cosmetic surgery. However, if there is other medical conditions like severe burns or other conditions attached to this surgery, and then insurance may cover it. The cost of going for a hair replacement surgery in the US is averagely $3000 on the National level.

Formally a very expensive procedure, hair transplantation has become affordable enough for most middle class folks to easily afford, so that even you can go for it. Furthermore, there are so many surgeons in and around the United States that actually specialize in this type of surgery, so that you may actually have trouble deciding on which one of them to book an appointment with.

You are often given a sedative to put you to sleep, and you are given a local topical anesthetic also, to help deal with the pain of the incisions that have to be made to your skull. The recipient patch of skull is more fortunate than the donor site because it is covered up immediately. The donor site has to be cauterized to avoid infections, even after the operation is completed. Often you may have to return for more surgeries two or three times a week, until the hair replacement procedure is completed and the grafted skins start growing hairs that look more or less like the one you lost.

Semi-permeable dressings have to be put over the wounds and incisions made by the process to allow the seepage of blood and tissue fluid to the surgical area. These dressings have to be applied and changed daily; the recipient area also remains vulnerable and must be shielded from the sun; and for best results, and shampooing of the head is started two days after the surgery. The shampooing prevents scabs from occurring around the hair shaft which can adhere to the shaft and increase the risk of losing even the newly transplanted hair follicles. As a result, the entire process has to be carried on for the first 7 to 10 post-operational days.

The first ten days are critical after a hair transplantation surgery. You may during this time have some dose on immunosupressants to prevent infection and lessen the chances that your body rejects the follicle grafts. During those ten days, you are likely to lose even all of the transplanted hairs to ’shock loss’ because they were traumatized by the procedure. And then, it may take a couple of months, but new hair will begin to grow as the moved follicles adapt to their new home.

All things being equal, your hair should grow normally and get thicker for up to the next nine months, and you are not likely to lose hairs from those sites again. Other untreated areas of your scalp may still lose hairs, suggesting perhaps that you need the use of medications to retard such losses, or other transplant procedures to deal with them. That will be up to the doctor, and to how well you respond to this one.

Are you concerned about the side effects of undergoing this procedure? Well, there is no doubt that every kind of surgery usually has its side effects; hair replacement procedure is not an exception. The common side effects encountered by patients who under went this hair replacement surgery are sensitivities on the scalp of the patients and this varies on the patients. In some patients, it could be minor discomforts while in others the discomforts are extreme. However, these side effects do not last forever. Local anesthesia is used along with sedation to carry out the treatment on patients. The following paragraphs will discuss types of surgical procedures that are carried out in hair replacement surgery.

Scalp Reduction: This is a hair replacement procedure in which the patient’s head is expected to be filled with hair on the top and at the back. This procedure is not applicable when the patient’s hair loss is concentrated at the front hairline. Thus, scalp reduction is applied to cover hair loss at the top or back of the head.

Tissue expansion: In this procedure, surgeons for hair replacement often use devices known as ’tissue-expander’ to encourage hair growth in the head. These devices are structured ‘balloon-like’. In the process, the scalp is incised and this device is inserted into the skin. The device is going to expand and lead to skin cells growth in the head. The expanders are left for several weeks so as to enable this action to take place. However, after the skin cells have grown in the bald area, the tissue expand can be removed and relocated to other places.

Hair transplant: This is the procedure involving the removing of hair follicles from the donor area of the head or body to the area where hair loss has occurred. Many sessions are usually performed to carry out this procedure. The sessions are done in between months and may last for two years. Hair transplant simply means transferring hair from the donor area to the bald area. This procedure is performed in both men and women.

The above are common procedures used in hair replacement surgery. However, after the completion of each of the procedure, a touch up process may be applied after the incisions have healed.

Some of the best hair replacement treatments you can undergo today are surgical procedures that have been tested over the years and that are found to work. A few of them are actually breakthrough procedures that transcend the many doubts and questions that hair loss patients have to deal with all the time. Below are a few of them that you may want to consider when you decide that you are not going to live with hair loss anymore.

Scalp Reduction is a surgical procedure that has been specifically designed to help people who require hair replacement at the top and at the back of their heads. In scalp reduction, you surgically have a small part of your skin that still has hair growing in it removed and stretched over the area where you have lost hairs. Before this is done, the dead-hair skin is first removed and discarded, hopefully to prevent the infection that caused the baldness in the first place from extending to the new skin. The results are often quick and gratifying.

Balloon Inflation is also a surgical procedure, but one in which an incision is made in the ‘good’ area of your scalp and a saline balloon is inserted into it. Over time, the healthy scalp is stretched over an area where hair has been removed to help with hair replacement in the infected area. Often, balloon reduction is used in conjunction with scalp reduction for best results.

Tissue Expansion looks a lot like balloon reduction, except that it works in a different way entirely. In this procedure, the surgeon also makes an incision, but this time in the infected or bald patch of your head. Into the incision, a balloon like device called the tissue expander will be placed and closed in. It will take a number of weeks for the results to be seen, but as the expander inflates, the skin of the scalp also will expand, promoting the growth of new skin cells. Naturally, the growth of fresh hairs almost always follows. At this point, another surgery may be required to remove and relocate the expanded skin over another area that is infected.

Hair Transplantation is about the simplest and most favored hair replacement technique known to most surgeons. Hair transplantation requires the simple surgical removal of skin from the back of your head to be stretched over the affected area of baldhead. The challenge with this procedure is that is it is conscientious and lengthy. The procedure may have to be done time and again over the next few months for the best results. You may have to sit in for a few sessions a week if the hair replacement is to be successful. The hair that grows back may be a little different from the one you lost, but who’s looking?

These are just a few hair replacement surgical processes that work; you may want to see where you fit in among them.

- You must get the very best surgeon for your hair replacement if you are considering surgery. This is very important because hair replacement surgery can bring about a negative effect on your head if an inexperienced doctor performs the operation. Remember that the procedure involves the transplant of hair from donor areas to the hair loss center or bald area. If this is not properly done, damages to your skin will result because of the inexperience of the doctors.

- The option for surgical hair replacement will make you spend lots of money. The procedure is very costly and you need to prepare yourself financially for this. However, since this procedure is costly, you should look out for the best hair replacement surgeon so that you will get the best and avoid waste of money.

- If you are opting for surgical hair replacement, then consider going for the procedure at the early stage of your hair loss. The reason for this is that at this stage some hair will still be left on the donor areas. If your head is completely bald then it will be difficult to carryout a surgical hair replacement.

- You must know that there are side effects that will be encountered when you undergo surgical hair replacement. The side effects may take some few months for you to get over them. However, there are remedies for these side effects and the common side effects are itching and scarring.

Now that you know of these things, you can make up your mind on whether to go for surgical method of hair replacement or not. It is important that you go ahead and consider these things before finalizing your plans for surgical hair replacement.

It is important to adhere strictly to the advice of a qualified medical practitioner if it is discovered that your hair cannot undergo hair replacement surgery. One of the factors that may disqualify you from being a candidate for hair replacement surgery is the severeness of your hair loss yes, a person with a complete hair loss or total baldness is automatically disqualified from getting hair replacement surgery.

The reason for this being that hairs from other parts of your head will be needed to transplant to the bald area. If you are completely bald then your head will not have hairs on the donor areas for transplanting. Original hairs are used for the ideal hair replacement surgery.

When is the right time to actually go for hair replacement surgery? The ideal time will be when you are just experiencing hair loss at the early stage. Since at this time you still have some hair (at the back) to be used as donor hair for the hair transplant. So, if you are waiting until when your hair completely goes bald that is wrong timing because by the time you decide to go for hair replacement surgery, there will not be enough hair to carryout the procedure.

Your doctor will have to make analysis on you to determine if your hair condition qualifies you for hair transplant. The major analysis that is done here will include testing the density of your hair, color of your hair, texture of your hair and the future hair loss projections.

If you know that your family members are predisposed to hair loss, you can prevent yours by going for hair treatment in your twenties and thirties. Going for hair surgery at old age is not really advisable.

It is not all the skin cells that are touched by the laser. Those not touched helps to provide blood flow that nourishes the dead skin cells so as to allow the growth of cells once again. Hence, those area affected by laser develops hair growth from nutrients through blood flow.

If you are worried about hair restoration then you need to try laser hair replacement surgery. Although the procedure is quite expensive (between $1400 – $3500) yet it is the most effective type of hair replacement surgery. After you might have successfully undergone this treatment, you are allowed to revisit the clinic for follow up treatment.

Hair replacement with laser is very effective and the process enables the rate of your hair loss to reduce drastically. Since the procedure involves the replacement of dead skin cell, which could no longer allow hair growth. There is a guarantee that there will be the growth of new hair from the replace skin cells.

By the time you are about to undergo the laser hair treatment, the laser operator will guide the laser beam directly on the skin which needs to be removed. To ensure accuracy and prevent other skin cells to be affected, a special gel can be used to mark the target of the laser beam. There will be a relative heat focused on the part of the skin and this removes the dead skin cells. Later on transplanted hair from donor areas are inserted into the incised skin by the laser. The process of laser hair replacement is less bloody and helps to restore your hair speedily.

There are many things that could cause alopecia in sufferers. About the most common is genetics or inheritance, which many people are not so quick to realize. The fallback of this is that their hairs start to fall out before they can do anything about it, and then it is too late. Some other common causes of hair loss include treatments that you may be receiving for some other ailment, such as chemotherapy or radiation treatment for cancer; or actual diseases or infections that could cause your hair to fall out. In several cases, the use of steroids also causes hair loss, especially for athletes.

The first hair replacement technique you want to consider therefore is determining the cause of your hair loss. When you know what is causing your hairs to fall out, you can then plug it to keep more hair loss. If for instance you are taking certain medications that could be causing you to lose hairs, you may want to consider stopping the treatment as against the alternative of keeping them going. If your hair loss is hereditary, a drug called finasteride will help you keep your hair from falling out, and it will help you to grow back the hairs that you have lost already. This is especially applicable to people suffering from male pattern baldness.

When you know the cause of the hair loss, you should then begin to consider treatments that can guarantee you hair replacement during the course of your use. Some surgical hair replacement procedures that are well in mainstream use are hair transplantation, scalp reduction, tissue expansion and balloon inflation. Based on the type of baldness that you suffer from, and the nature and size of your bank account, these procedures may or may not be available to you. But do not let that bother you; there are other non surgical hair replacement techniques that can help greatly.

If you were to take a lot of vitamin supplements, for instance, you may find that you are not losing your hairs quite as rapidly anymore. You may even find that the hairs you lost are growing back. Testosterone suppressant drugs work wonders for all men but only women in the postmenopausal stage of their lives. Testosterone overproduction has been found to be one of the leading causes of hair loss in many people. Cutting out the supply of this hormone will cause the loss to stop and allow your tissues to begin work on generating new hairs.

Laser hair replacement is some kind of surgery by its own right, albeit one that you may consider being a lot safer than most other hair replacement surgeries. Laser therapy uses a fractionating laser to kill off old and infected skin cells so that the untouched skin cells can continue to grow hairs. And the list goes on. You will do well to consider all your options, consider the size of your pocket, and consider how long you can wait before you lose more hair. Get your hair replacement already, surgically or non surgically.

However, not everyone is keen on hair transplantation, and people do have their reservations about surgical processes. Hair transplantation may be a procedure for hair replacement that has been improved and perfected over the last fifty years, but it remains a surgical process. And the catch about all surgical processes is the inevitable risk factor that they all carry. There are people who do not want to have to deal with that risk, and there are people who actually cannot afford the usually immense cost of the procedure.

The following are a few low cost, non-surgical hair replacement techniques that you may want to try out.

If you know your dermatology, you know that hair loss is oftentimes due to over secretion of the testosterone hormone. You should talk to your nutritionist about what foods you can eat that will help to even out and control the rate of secretion of your testosterone so that you will cease to overproduce it. You should see to it that you never hesitate about getting on that diet as soon as you can make it happen. You will find that your hairs cease to fall off, and they will start in most cases to grow back.

You should also consider vitamin hair replacement therapies as an option for your hair re-growth. These have been used with varying degrees of success for the most part of the last two decades. Their function is a bit limited if your hair loss is due to genetic factors, but even then, vitamin hair replacement therapies have been known to work. It stimulates the parts of your scalp that will allow the hairs to grow back, especially if your hair loss was or is due to radiation treatment or poisoning.

There are a lot of ingredients that you can get through vitamin hair replacement that can restore your hair growth, such as saw palmetto, which targets the dihydrotestosterone- DHT. It is a hormone in your system that grows in your follicles and ends up killing the hairs off. With vitamin hair replacement, you can control this tendency and have your hairs grow back.

Various medications that work incredibly well in low cost non-surgical hair replacement should also be considered. Topical medications like monoxidil have been known to yield incredible hair re-growth results within just a matter of months of constant daily usage. Oral medications are a bit more sensitive and are best applied when the topical options are not yielding results as fast or as well as should be expected. In such an instance, a drug like finasteride should do the trick.

When all else fails, you do have your wigs to fall back on anyway, so do not forget that option. Why, of all non-surgical hair replacement means that there are under the sun, the hair extensions are really the most affordable. You don’t want to forget that, ever.

- Any surgeon you want to select to perform hair replacement on your must be a professionally trained one. He or she must have had years of experience in carrying out hair replacements in different facets. Also, ensure that the surgeon has experience in specific aspects such as scalp-lifts and micro grafting. Thus, a surgeon for hair replacement must be well trained with many years of experience.

- The hair replacement surgeon must have valid academic and professional certificates. Ensure that you value these documents and make sure that the surgeon belongs to the appropriate medical association. Verifying a hair replacement surgeon’s certificate will show you what specific areas of the medical field the surgeon is qualified.

- You need to know the hair replacement history of the surgeon to see how many successful surgeries on hair loss and hair replacements have been successfully carried out. It is good to know this history so as to know of any complaints or complications (if any) from past patients against the doctor.

- Ensure that you select the surgeon that will give you the best service while maximizing the cost. Get prices from different surgeons in different hair replacement clinics. Do not think that offers to perform surgery on you with high charges will always give you the best service. To actually get the best, make adequate verifications and search on costs and treatment procedures of different surgeons.

- If you diligently put the above considerations in mind, your hair replacement intentions will be a success because you are going to get the right surgeon for the work.