Hem Hair transplant What is a graft?

What is a graft?

Graft is a key concept in the world of hair transplantation. The word is English and in this context means a group of individual hair follicles.

A graft is a hair follicle containing one to several hairs. Each hair has its own hair follicle with its own sebaceous gland and blood supply.

When performing a hair transplant, each hair follicle is detached with a microdrill and moved by a hair technician to the transplant area.

We measure how much a hair transplant costs depending on how many grafts can be taken from your donor area. During a consultation, we will go over what your personal circumstances are.

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Donation area

Hair transplant - grafts taken from the back of your head

At most, they can be four hairs growing tightly together in a graft. Each hair has its own hair follicle and has no contact with the others other than growing in a small cluster.

We usually say that there are on average 2.5 hairs in each graft – sometimes three hairs, sometimes two hairs and sometimes just one hair.

When we perform a hair transplant, we extract these hair follicles from your donor area located in the neck. How many we can take is a very individual question that we can best answer in a consultation. The reason hair is taken from the neck is because the hair there is genetically coded not to fall off, unlike the hair in the folds and on top of the head.

How we work

A hair transplant

A hair transplant is a permanent solution to hair loss. The hair follicles extracted from the neck do not grow back.

When we move a hair follicle, that hair follicle grows into the newly transplanted area. Therefore, we usually take hair from a larger part of the neck to make the donor area less noticeable.

However, if you are very thin-skinned to begin with, the hair at the nape of your neck may feel thinner, especially when you have a short-cut hairstyle.

During hair transplantation

During hair transplantation, the hair follicles are picked out one by one, containing one to several hairs.

Grafts with one hair are placed at the front of the hairline, while those with two or more hairs fill out the hair further towards the top of the head. That’s how hair grows naturally and it’s always natural results that we strive for.

How do we plan a hair transplant?

We plan a hair transplant based on how many grafts we can take from your donor area and how many different types of grafts the patient has – i.e. whether the patient has many single hairs or hair follicles with multiple hairs.

Single-strand hair bags are placed along the hairline in a slightly irregular pattern, as the hair grows naturally. If the patient has many hair follicles with multiple hairs in them, we can sometimes split them to get more individual hairs.

Problem

Grafts naturally shrink with age

A young person often has three or four hair follicles in the same graft. As you get older, more and more hair follicles die. The hair follicles shrink and eventually no hair comes up. It is only natural that the number of hair follicles decreases with age.

However, with the help of PRP, the hair follicles can be restarted and the hairs can begin to grow again. However, in order for the hair shaft to take off again, the hair follicle must not be dead.

Solution

PRP prevents hair follicles from shrinking

If you draw a timeline of a person’s life, you can see that the hairs are big, fine and strong at the beginning. But as the years go by, they become fewer and thinner.

If you start doing PRP treatments, it has the same effect on hair follicles as fertiliser has on a flower. The hairs come back and become bigger and stronger.

However, the result varies greatly from person to person, and is related to personal characteristics. Some have good healing abilities, others worse.

Some have good hair growth, others have worse. Depression, burnout and medication are external factors that affect outcomes.