Video Transcript
So you’re getting a hair transplantation and you went through a couple of consultations, and maybe at one or more of those consultations they told you that you need a two phase procedure. That meant that it can be back to back days, or it can be one procedure and a couple of months later you get the second. Now this is a practice and it is an acceptable practice. People have argued that this technique is appropriate.
Now there’s a couple of reasons why in our office we don’t do it, but also one of the reasons we actually don’t need to, because the way our setup is. So the reason we don’t do two phase procedures is in the very early phase, that means the very next day, you’re going to exhibit quite a bit of swelling and inserting grafts into this area of swelling is actually a little bit more difficult and increases the likelihood that they may be ejected. That means that graft viability may be a little bit lower or take one other, but you may not get the full amount of hairs we transferred. That’s primarily our reason for the early phase, we don’t do it. However, we also condone one practice and that is on one day, extracting all the grafts, storing them in a cooling chamber and then inserting them the following day.
That’s one thing that we really believe that we wouldn’t do because the longer a graft is outside the body, the less likely it is to survive after implantation, even if it’s kept cold. However, like I said, this is a practice that’s done. And maybe in the right hands, it’s a good option, but we decided that it’s not the right thing for our practice. So why don’t we do two phase transplantations in the later phases? This is maybe between three months and 12 months out.
Remember your hair’s going to go into a resting phase after your procedure. And if you decide to do a transplantation during that time, you actually don’t know where the original hairs are that you transplanted. You could be clustering hairs too much, you could be damaging hairs, or you could be getting bare areas that maybe need more coverage than you can actually decide. And you may miss the boat on getting the best result possible.
Now in our clinic, it’s a little bit different. We only do one procedure a day and we’re relatively efficient. And we can do between 3,000 and 5,000 graphs without a problem, if that’s appropriate for your immediate needs and for your future. We don’t have a second case pushing us through the day. So if we need to do as many grafts as we need to, we’re just going to get it done. Our team also doesn’t care about staying late in those special instances when it’s the right thing to do. So two phase procedures do exist, they are practiced. In our personal opinion, it’s something we decide not to do and something we actually don’t have to do just because of the operations we have in place.
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