Dr. Mike

I sprayed my hair line post op repeatedly (about 10-20 mins sometimes) as well and I barely had any crust/scabs. The constant spraying keeps debris and blood from building up.

Hi, I don't think that heat from wearing a beanie or a cap is enough to cause the hair follicle to kill the graft but on the other hand, I don't think many patients would want to participate in a study to find out if this is the case or not What I would worry about however is the constant bandana/beanie wearing that traps moisture and heat, thereby the perfect ingredients for bacteria growth. The scalp is highly vascularized and infection should not be common, but why take the risk after such an expensive procedure? I would take it easy the first few days especially when the healing process is at full force and allow your skin incision to fully close before bathing it in bacteria growth environments. The first 7 days is probably the most important days of the healing process so anything that you think may hurt your follicles, be careful.

Or if you're one of those people who gets cold on a plane like me, a hooded sweatshirt works well too because the hood actually "hangs" over your recipient site and covers the sides of your head nicely.

I would imagine the biggest risk wearing it day 1-2 is bleeding. Continued bleeding/scab can cause the hair to stick to the hat and hence come off with the hat I myself avoided wearing a hat for 3 days, then after, I wore a loosely fitted one that did not rest on my recipient site.

My initial thought on this was to not wash my hair at all for at least 2 or 3 days to allow my grafts to stabilize. However, after reading a study (I believe from Dr. Bernstein et al) that suggested scab formation could lead to graft lost, I was at a stand still - wash early and aggressive or wait ? Well, what ive learned is that the grafts are pretty tight in there initially but still potentially dislodgable with enough force. And after seeing how aggressive the hair transplant assistants/techs were with their drying, I realized that these initial hair should not just fall off with light water pressure. So here is what I did: I bought a sprayer with normal saline to keep my recipient area nice and moist. The key thing is to set it mist mode, spray from afar to keep the area moist without generating so much pressure to dislodge the graft. By doing this, i theorize that it would keep a constant flow of moistness that would prevent any ingredients for scab formation to build up. I did this every 30 mins or so. I started to do the cup shampoo thing on day 2 post op with continued mist spraying with normal saline in between my shampoos. I had excellent results, I barely had any scab formations. Likely from the frequent flow of normal saline through my scalp preventing a scab from forming one. Or maybe it was the shampooing? another added benefit is that the mist spray was excellent for treating recipient area itching What do you guys think?