Hair Restoration Blog

Hello,

I underwent surgery in mid-October and remember well the directive to keep the sun off my head. My question is whether I can use a tanning bed without damage or threat of damage to the transplant area if a use a bandana.

You have had your hair transplant for about two weeks now and you were wondering whether or not a tanning bed can damage your newly transplanted hair implants. What we generally recommend to our patients after hair transplant surgery at US Hair Restoration is to avoid sun exposure to the transplanted areas of the head for at least 6 months after their hair transplants. Sun exposure can slow down or stop the growth of normal, existing hair or even damage the hair follicles. The same issue may be seen with newly transplanted hair after a hair restoration surgery. Sunlight has many different components besides the visible light including ultra violet and infra red lights. We do not know for sure which components are more responsible for hair follicle damage but for this reason I prefer to treat tanning beds the same way. If you can cover your head completely to block the exposure to the light, I do not think that you have to avoid tanning beds.

Q:

It’s been just over 4 weeks since I had my hair transplantation. I still have a few scabs. It just happened that while shampooing my hair, I ended up accidentally removing a scab and the area underneath the scab appeared red. The area that has gone red, I could not say for sure if there was any bleeding as I would have been washing it at the time with shampoo. Did I lose any graft? Its 4 weeks post op and I am not sure when I can get to my normal hair wash and I really don’t want to compromise with the results.

A:

Transplanted hair is vulnerable in the first 4 days. The most important day is the first day after surgery in which I would like to bring patients back to wash their hair professionally. You can read more on Dos and Don’ts after hair transplant in our web blog. Washing after hair transplant surgery is very meticulous, but after day 4 following a hair restoration surgery, transplanted hair follicles become part of your skin and you cannot dislodge them even if you remove hair. I usually recommend that my patients follow our washing and after hair transplant care directions on the first four days to minimize scabbing after hair transplant surgery and don’t use any other products.

In your case at 4 weeks after hair transplant, you should have been able to wash your hair in your routine long ago. At this time, you can use your regular shampoo and conditioner without being worried about losing your precious implanted hair grafts.