Hair transplants have been among the hottest plastic surgery procedures in recent years. And it’s no wonder: Restoring hair growth when you’re balding or suffering from thinning hair is as close to a miracle as you can get. What else could be such a sure ticket to looking years younger and feeling great about yourself? But to boost your confidence, you also need to make sure you boost your hair growth after the transplant, or you won’t get the most out of it.
This is where HypoThermosol® comes in. It is a graft storage solution used during transplants to promote follicle growth and reduce swelling. Its use in hair restoration is still evolving, but at Nashville Hair Doctor we have already seen its potential when using it on a select number of patients. The results have been very positive, which is why we are adding it to our hair restoration offering.
Why HypoThermosol?
To understand the power of HypoThermosol, let’s review briefly how hair transplants work. During a hair transplant procedure such as NeoGraft, the doctor or technician removes a “follicular unit” made up of 1-4 hair follicles from an area of the scalp that has plenty of healthy hair. After the hair grafts are harvested from this donor area, they are inserted into the scalp in areas affected by hair loss, i.e. the recipient areas. The hair continues to grow in these new areas to restore thickness.
As you can imagine, the success of a hair transplant vastly depends on how well the implanted grafts “take” to their new location. And there are several steps a surgeon can take to ensure these grafts get the best possible start in their new life. Hydration, temperature, time away from the scalp, and expert handling of the grafts during transfer all play a role. Any clinic doing professional hair restoration on a routine basis will have a process that takes great care that all these variables are just right.
But now there is a new factor hair surgeons are realizing can drastically affect the outcome of a transplant. Storing the hair grafts in a HypoThermosol solution during transition has been found to vastly improve the preservation of hair grafts and to mitigate damage and stress.
How HypoThermosol works
First introduced by a hair restoration surgeon in Charlotte, North Carolina, HypoThermosol is quickly becoming a new industry standard for hair transplants. It is in compliance with FDA cGMP guidelines.
Up until now, hair clinics have relied on a sterile saline solution for the preservation of hair follicles. While saline prevents dehydration and protects the follicles from contamination, it does not provide any nutrients to the hair while it is outside of the body. Imagine you are planting your garden in the spring. Most likely you would try to move as quickly as possible from taking a plant out of its pot to placing it into the soil so it can take root. If you were forced to store it for a number of hours or even days before setting it into the ground, you would want to keep it hydrated. And if adding fertilizer to the water you kept it in would increase its chances of taking root and future health, you’d want to use that fertilizer.
Think of HypoThermosol as a kind of fertilizer for hair. Not only does it provide moisture to the follicular units while they await transplantation, it also adds vital nutrients that promote growth. The follicles are without blood supply and oxygen while they await transplantation, and HypoThermosol has been found to be able to tide them over until they are able to generate their own again. In a recent study, hair grafts were stored for 5 days (the amount of time it typically takes for transplanted hair follicles to absorb nutrients from the body again) in two different chilled solutions – one group in saline, and the other in HypoThermosol. Then they were implanted in the patient. After 18 months, the hair grafts stored in HypoThermosol showed a much higher survival rate. Not only that, the use of HypoThermosol has also been found to reduce post-surgery swelling.
Giving Your Hair Transplant the Best Chances
The thing is, a hair transplant is not an inexpensive procedure. And you essentially have a fixed amount of good genetic hair that can be used as a harvest site. Doing all that you can to give this valuable and limited resource the best conditions to thrive is common sense. It’s near-impossible for every single graft to take to its new location. Some will not make it, and that’s completely normal. But the higher the percentage of surviving grafts, the more effective your hair transplant will be (and the more donor hair you’ll have left, should you consider a future procedure down the road).
In the words of recent Nashville Hair Doctor patient David Bernard, the key to a successful hair transplant is to “baby your hair,” especially the first week after your surgery. Your provider will give you instructions on how to wash your hair, when it’s safe to wear a hat again, and how to sleep. See David’s results to learn why he is so happy about his transplant just 6 months afterwards.
Make sure you ask your provider if they are using HypoThermosol to help “baby your hair!” If you want to find out if you are a good candidate for a hair transplant, upload your picture to receive a FREE quote for a NeoGraft hair transplant from Nashville Hair Doctor.
References:
U.S. National Library of Medicine, Hair restoration surgery: challenges and solutions
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