A hair transplant is the best way to get one’s hair back. However, many patients wonder about the adverse effects and the risk of a hair transplant. Among them, there is the risk of an infection after a hair transplant. What is it? How to prevent it, and how to cure it.
Here is everything to know!
Table of Contents
Infection after a hair transplant: what is it?
A hair transplant is a surgical procedure aiming to graft hair from a donor to a recipient area. In rare cases, the transplant gets infected. Bacterias develop in the wounds either on the donor or recipient area, causing fever, pain, discharge, and swelling.
Infection after a hair transplant is rare but severe. An untreated infection may be lethal if generalized. The patients must be aware of the symptoms to seek medical assistance as soon as possible if they experience them. Most of the time, doctors prescribe antibiotics after a hair transplant surgery to prevent an infection.
An infection after a hair transplant may have two leading causes:
- The patient got it from poorly sanitized tools or surgery equipment during the surgery. An infection caught at the clinic is known as a hospital-acquired infection.
- The patient got it after the surgery.
Infection after a hair transplant: how to prevent it?
The patient must be very cautious when picking his clinic to avoid a hospital-acquired infection. Better stay away from clinics taking as many patients as possible where the assistants perform the surgeries. Those clinics are more interested in making money than anything else, including the hygiene standard.
However, if picking a reputable clinic does prevent hospital-acquired infection, it does not guarantee the patient won’t catch an infection during the healing period. During this time, the determining factor is the post-surgery care and the patient’s compliance with the doctor’s guidelines. Touching or picking brings foreign bacteria to the area and significantly increases the risk of infection. Doctors often prescribe antibiotics after a hair transplant to prevent any risk of infection. The patient better take them as prescribed to ensure he won’t get an infected hair transplant.
Infection after a hair transplant: how to cure it?
The only way to cure an infection after a hair transplant is to seek medical attention as soon as possible and take antibiotics. The sooner the infection is treated, the less severe it will be.
About necrosis
There is another hair transplant side effect many patients worry about, necrosis. Necrosis is not an infection, but many patients confuse both conditions. In the case of necrosis, the skin dies because it did not receive enough oxygen through the bloodstream. This condition has various causes, such as injury, radiation, or chemicals. Necrosis is not reversible, as the skin is dead. Gangrene is extensive necrosis.
In the case of hair transplant, gangrene is rare, although necrosis is much more common. Some hair transplant techniques cause necrosis, such as FUE, while others like DHI do not. The less invasive a method is, the less likely it is to cause necrosis.
The issue with the FUE technique is the canal opening in the recipient area. The doctor first opened tiny incisions in the skin to implant the grafts. Those incisions cause necrosis.
The best way to avoid skin necrosis after a hair transplant is to pick a non-invasive procedure, such as DHI. The DHI implantation process does not involve canal opening. The doctor implants the grafts directly into the scalp using a unique tool known as the “CHOI pen.” Due to this difference between the procedures, the post-surgery period after a DHI hair transplant is much more comfortable and easy for the patient, as the procedure’s impact on the body is minimal.
