Transplanted hairs fall after transplant- will they grow back?

The transplanted hairs are attached to the hair root which we call follicle or graft commonly. The graft is of the size of the rice grain and when we transplant them in your skin a major part remains under the skin and a very small part remains projected outside the skin surface as shown in the figure. Immediately after and for first 24 to 48 hours there may be some oozing of blood from around the graft and if that blood is not washed away by spraying in the early period that may form a dry black brown scab which becomes hard ( as shown in the photo) and is difficult to remove for 10 to 20 days at times. 

Usually the skin heals in one week’s time. The overlying scab which is attached to the graft if tried to remove forcibly before 1o days the graft may be pulled out and that hair may not grow and more over there may be some bleeding from that site. It takes 10 days for the graft to be secure in the skin and even by removing scab it now does not come out and all that come out is the hair attached to the dry scab and some sticky white material under the scab. It does not bleed. The hair will grow from this graft. The majority of  transplanted hairs will first fall between 10 to 30 days time after transplant and they start growing form the already incorporated roots in 3-5 months time. This happens to every patient of hair transplant and this is not abonormal.

 

Following is from the :

“ Graft Anchoring in Hair Transplantation” A study published by
Robert M. Bernstein, MD,^* and William R. Rassman, MD
^*College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, New York
Dermatol Surg 2006; 32: 198-204  
© 2006 The American Society for Dermatologic Surgery

For the first two days, pulling on a hair always resulted in a lost graft, but the chance of the graft being removed started to decrease by the third day. By the sixth day pulling on a hair would no longer dislodge the graft. Pulling on an adherent scab always resulted in a lost graft through day five. At nine days post-op, grafts were no longer at risk of being dislodged.

The presence of crusting extends the interval that grafts are at risk of being dislodged in the post-op period. If one can prevent crust formation by early and regular washing following a hair transplant, this would both shorten the time patients are at risk of losing their grafts and enable them to return to their normal hair care routines more quickly.