Your eyebrows are essential to your appearance although sometimes they get the least attention. Your eyebrows provide symmetry to the face and give a better profile for the eyes. Thus, your face will probably appear strange without eyebrows. People will watch you not with attraction, but with puzzled stares. So, a partial or complete injury of your eyebrows can produce a devastating effect on your self-confidence.
You need to weigh the chances of getting the best out of your cosmetic reconstructive treatment. If you want to consider surgery, this is the best path to take. By far, a micro-grafting transplant is the most advanced form of hair transplantation procedure with a low-risk and a very good resulting factor.
Recap of history of hair reconstructive surgery
Follicular unit transplantation is actually a technology that has evolved for the past 180 years or so. However, some Japanese doctors have really made a sincere effort to continue refining this technology in the middle of the 20th century. Before the close of the 20th century, the transplantation technique was given the name, the micro-grafting hair transplantation technology.
The difference between scalp hair and an eyebrow transplant
Eyebrow and scalp hair transplants will fall into the same category of micro-grafting. However, there are different approaches to performing transplantation between scalp hair and eyebrow hair. This is due to the differences between the two kinds of hair, evidently in their length, strand and angle.
In scalp hair transplants, the procedure will consist of using naturally growing follicular units containing 1-4 hairs. This number of hairs is good enough for scalp hair transplantation to achieve the natural look.
For eyebrow transplants, the procedure will consist of using individual hair follicles to be inserted; one hair for each minute puncture. A more meticulous process will be employed for one thing: the direction of eyebrow hair. This direction will depend on the part of the brow where it is growing from. The hair usually forms a pattern that subtly comes together to form an ascent following the normal curve of the brow.
Another thing is that eyebrow hair also grows from the follicle at a sharp angle. This sharp angle will allow the brow hairs to lay flat as compared to scalp hair that grows at a 45-degree angle from the scalp. There should be proper angling of the follicle because it is the most important aspect of any eyebrow transplant.
A third difference is that eyebrow hairs consistently contain single-strand follicles while scalp hair can have as many as four hairs in one follicle.
Finally, consider the lifespan of the hair. Eyebrow hair has a “lifespan” of at least four months before it falls off. Hence, the length is always short. Your scalp hair has a lifespan of about seven years long.
The eyebrow transplant procedure
Eyebrow transplantation procedures are reasonably safe, but should be undertaken by an expert physician only. This is due to the different characteristics described above. The procedure will require delicate and precise micro grafting. The use of very fine needles is needed along with placing the hairs as parallel to the skin as achievable.
Even the choice of the hair will require a substantial amount of knowledge and skill. If the wrong type of hair is placed at the wrong angle, it can really spoil an otherwise good transplant result.
Typically, the micro grafts for the eyebrows are taken from the scalp. So, the donor hair is scalp hair.
Then, careful dissection is needed to produce a single-hair micro-graft, which is trimmed of excess tissues. This, being a single-hair graft will give the flexibility for insertion into the tiny puncture. Then the single-hair graft is placed at an angle almost level with the skin. Angling is really the essential element to get the most natural eyebrow restoration.
In due time, the transplanted hair will adopt some of the characteristics of the recipient site where it was transplanted into. Gradually, the length of the transplanted hair will begin to decrease. However, it is not recognized if the transplanted follicles will ultimately adopt the full characteristics of the surrounding site. There are research studies that specify that the recipient can have a significant influence over the donor.
Not all can be a candidate for eyebrow transplant. Kinky-haired individuals may not be able to supply the acceptable donor hair for eyebrows. This kind can have difficulty in getting the directional control needed in an eyebrow transplant.
In conclusion, you should understand that two sessions may not be enough to undergo in order to achieve the look you want. Sometimes it will require more.