Many men who go in for one hair replacement surgery usually come back for another. There are many reasons, both physiologically and psychologically, as to why this is, which we’ll examine in a second. A major question about multiple hair replacement surgeries is if they’re worth it. This too yields a complicated answer.
Hair replacement surgery unfortunately has to work against our body’s genetics. Since genetics are a pretty tough opponent, hair transplants often fail, or last only temporarily. For this reason, many men return for another hair transplant. There is usually some psychological motivation at play as well. No one wants to feel the defeat of spending money on this expensive surgery, only to have it totally backfire.
Other times, hair replacement specialists can identify that multiple hair transplants will be needed before the first operation is underway. When this happens, the patient can decide in advance if he wants to commit to multiple procedures. Some men will decide it’s not worth the cost or effort, and will pursue other replacement options.
However, multiple hair replacement surgeries usually never get people past square one. The scalp becomes less likely to retain hair follicles following each successive replacement operation. Likewise, the number of donor areas shrinks with each successive operation, which makes the hair thinner overall.
This is exacerbated further by a phenomenon known as shock loss. The scalp will often shed other hair follicles in order to remove of the foreign hair. Other hair around the scalp will be prone to falling out at random. Although shock loss can sometimes be reverted, it too will usually lead to the problem of having thinning and patching hair.
As you might imagine, you don’t get your successive surgeries for free. Given that hair replacement surgery is not covered by most health insurance providers, this means quite a bit of money will fly out of your pocket. So, in the end, you’ll continue paying large sums of money for a surgery that becomes less effective the more times you opt for it.
So why do so many people do it still? Many men continue to get surgery after surgery either way because of esteem issues they’ve developed about their hair. These men would do better in the hands of a counselor than they would be on the operating table. Entering an endless loop of hair replacement surgeries is a mark of a deeper psychological issue that will never be appeased with continued surgeries.
