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How soon can I return to work after a hair transplant? 

This hair loss question was answered by Dr. William Lindsey of Reston, VA who is one of our recommended hair restoration physicians.

It depends on many things including whether you are doing a small or large hair transplant megasession, how long is surrounding hair (can you comb it over balding recipient area), does your doctor shave recipient area (like we do), and what do you have to look like when you go back to work.

We do a fair amount of “frontal triangle” work and although I shave the recipient area, if we can get the hair restoration patient to grow the forelock a bit, then they can kind of “bushy it up” and have it cover the transplanted area after just a few days. Thus, we do a lot of Friday or Saturday surgeries and people like this tell me they go back on Wednesday, but that is a guideline–not a guarantee. It is however a good argument for doing a smaller case (1500-1800 grafts) in the triangles if there is a pretty good forelock, rather than doing a 2500+ follicular unit graft session and getting a change that would be hard to conceal upon returning to work in a few days.

So we do a lot of frontal triangles, let it grow for a year or more, and then if there is thinning hair in the forelock, that can be done and will be hidden behind the previous work so guys can often pull off the entire hair transplant procedure without too many people knowing.

William Lindsey, MD

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Bill – aka Falceros
Associate Publisher of the Hair Transplant Network and the Hair Loss Learning Center
View my Hair Loss Weblog

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