How common is shock loss?

[Albion71]

Hi,

 

I wondered how common shock loss was among HT patients whose recipient areas contained existing hairs?

 

I'm a couple of weeks out from a HT, healing nicely as you'll see on my blog, and I can see the hairs that were shaved before surgery are starting to grow back.

 

I'm hoping that I won't suffer much from shock loss, and that in a month or so's time, that hair will have grown back to a respectable length. In which case, I will look pretty much the same as I did pre op.

 

But quite a few of those hairs had begun to suffer from miniaturisation, so if they hair fall out due to shock loss, I guess I'm looking at 3-4 months before normality returns.

 

Hence my question - what do people think, how common is shock loss for patients such as myself? Does it happen in 75% of cases? Or only 25%?

 

Many thanks to anyone who responds.

[Bill - Seemiller]

Albion,

 

Shock loss is pretty common anytime hair is transplanted in between or around existing natural hair. Typically, this is temporary unless the natural hair was too weak from miniaturization to survive the trauma to the scalp. Patient physiology plays a role as does the amount of natural hair and density of the transplanted hair.

 

Unfortunately, I don't have a statistic on this, but perhaps a physician can give you more specific information if they've done studies.

 

Best wishes,

 

Bill Seemiller

[Megatron]

from personal experience and from most of the blogs I've seen I think shockloss happens in all cases, just in different degrees. I didn't notice mine until the around the 7 week mark and it was noticeably worse by 2months, but things started to improve day by day after 2.5 months. everyone's timeline is different. best of luck!