Your procedure plan

Your day begins by meeting with your physician who will confirm with you the specific goals and plan for your procedure.

Anesthesia and donor hair removal

Once your plan is confirmed, you will receive local anesthetic at the back and side of your head, and your physician will remove the donor strip. The donor area is then sutured, and will usually leave a very thin, fine scar which is easily concealed by the remaining hair.

Separating the follicular units

Immediately after this process, our skilled surgical staff will begin dividing the donor strip into its follicular groupings, or units, each containing one, two, three or four hair grafts.

What is a Follicular Unit?

Take a close look at the hair on your hand or arm, and you'll notice that there are groupings of different numbers of hairs. Hair grows from follicular units. Different units have different numbers of follicles, and hence, different numbers of hairs. At Bosley, we recognize that a restored hairline requires the use of singular follicular units. Then, as you go back from the hairline, where density is most important, 2, 3 and then 4 follicular groupings are used. We can even break follicular units down to single-hair grafts if you need extensive hairline reconstruction.

Preparing the recipient sites

As the surgical team continues to separate the follicular units, local anesthesia is given in the recipient area where the grafts will eventually be placed. Once ready, your Bosley physician will prepare each individual graft site by making tiny incisions where the grafts will go. Each incision is made by hand, with the location, depth and angle required to make a completely natural, random looking hairline and graft area.

Perfectly Random

Nature's hairlines are perfect because they are random. Hairs don't line up in a row like the bristles of a toothbrush — they grow here and there, sprouting up like so many blades of grass. At Bosley, we design a hairline to mimic that of nature's own — with an eye for randomness, the "rogue" hairs artfully placed, out of sequence, so it would appear completely natural.

Placement of grafts

Once the recipient sites are complete, it's time to place the grafts. The surgical staff, under the direction of the Bosley physician, begins placing the grafts, one at a time, into the donor sites. One and two-hair follicular units in front, 3's and 4's on the top and back, just like nature had intended. And because of the nature of the doctor's incisions, the depth, angle and spacing is already predetermined, leaving nothing left to chance in the placement process. Moreover, the surgical team undergoes extensive training and retraining so that the grafts are handled with the utmost care to ensure their healthy growth.