A com­mon hair trans­plant mis­con­cep­tion is that the per­son will have a full head of hair right after the pro­ce­dure is done. For a many rea­sons, this is not the case and it can take up to a full year, or even longer, for the hair trans­plant results to be finalized.

While hair trans­plants are safe and effi­cient pro­ce­dures, they also hold a long term process. For the aver­age hair trans­plant per­son, the ini­tial growth is slow and the hairs that do grow in are short and thin. After some time, addi­tional hair growth will be noticed and this growth will con­tinue to improve up to one year plus.  Being edu­cated as to how the trans­planted hair grows will help to main­tain expec­ta­tions realistic.

Depend­ing on a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent fac­tors the hair growth is unique to every case, includ­ing but not lim­ited to the health of the per­son and the over­all suc­cess of the hair trans­plant surgery. Hairs are expected to fall out a cou­ple of weeks after the hair trans­plant surgery has taken place. This is absolutely nor­mal and it occurs to all hair grafts after any hair trans­plant surgery. The fol­low­ing weeks, months, nor­mally within the first 3 months, few new hairs grow­ing in are expected. The hair may not grow in evenly at first but will even­tu­ally. The new hair will gain thick­ness and full­ness as the days go by.

Approx­i­mately about 6 months fol­low­ing the hair trans­plant surgery, the per­son will notice a greater amount of growth, and the hair that is grow­ing will have lus­ter and full­ness. Between 6 months and 1 year the per­son will expe­ri­ence the most sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence from before the hair trans­plant took place. The hair will have more lus­ter and full­ness than ever before and the over­all look will have much more den­sity. The appear­ance of the per­son at this point is often dra­mat­i­cally dif­fer­ent than before the pro­ce­dure took place. After a full year has passed since the hair trans­plant pro­ce­dure, the per­son will see the final result. How­ever, it is pos­si­ble to see addi­tional improve­ments even after one year after the hair restora­tion procedure.

While it may take a while for all the trans­planted hairs to grow in evenly, even as long as up to 1 year, the hair that is grow­ing is per­ma­nent and will con­tinue to grow for a life time to come. This new hair will look and feel like any other hair on the scalp and can be han­dled just like nor­mal hair would. It requires no spe­cial treat­ment and can be styled in any way. While a hair trans­plant can dra­mat­i­cally improve the over­all look of some­one with a bald­ing head, it is def­i­nitely also a long term pro­ce­dure where the client needs to be patient and have faith in the whole process.