Hair Transplant Recovery, Week by Week

Clinics describe recovery in their own aftercare instructions, and those instructions differ more than you would expect — on washing, on sleeping position, on when you can exercise, on how long to stay. This guide sets out the shape of the timeline that most of them describe, so that you can compare what two clinics are telling you and notice what one of them has left out. It is not a set of instructions: follow the ones from the clinic that operated on you, and ask them anything this raises.

The first days

Expect the recipient area to be swollen and crusted, and the donor area to be sore. Most clinics schedule the first wash themselves, either at the clinic or with written instructions, and most describe a period of several days during which the grafts are considered fragile and are not to be rubbed, scratched or slept on directly.

The questions that matter here are logistical, and they are the ones travelling patients most often discover too late. Who does the first wash, and when? How many nights does the clinic expect you to stay? Is the first dressing change included, or is it a separate appointment?

Weeks two to four: the shed

Transplanted hairs commonly fall out within the first weeks. This is the single most alarming part of the process for people who were not warned about it, and it is also the part most likely to be skipped in a sales conversation. The follicle is what was moved; the hair shaft attached to it at the time of surgery is not what grows back.

Some people also report thinning of existing hair around the transplanted area in this period. Clinics vary in how they describe it and whether they warn about it at all. If your clinic did not mention shedding before you booked, that tells you something about how the consultation was run.

Months three to six: the wait

Regrowth typically begins after a few months and arrives unevenly. Hairs come through fine and may be a different texture at first. This is the stretch in which people start second-guessing the decision, and it is also the stretch in which a clinic’s aftercare either exists or does not. Ask, before you book, what contact is scheduled in this period and with whom.

Nine to twelve months: when there is something to judge

A hair transplant result is conventionally assessed at around nine to twelve months, and sometimes later for the crown. Everything before that is partial.

Two practical consequences follow, and both are about evidence rather than biology.

The first is that a review written days after surgery cannot describe a result. It can describe the airport transfer, the hotel and whether the staff were kind, and those reviews are the majority. When you read a clinic’s reviews, the ones worth your attention are the ones written a year later. Of the clinics listed here, the median one carries 48 Google reviews and 861 carry fewer than ten — so for most clinics in this market there are not many reviews of any age to sort through, and the rating alone will not help you: the average across the 4,247 rated clinics is 4.72 out of five.

The second is that a guarantee that expires before twelve months expires before the evidence arrives. If a clinic offers a touch-up or a corrective procedure, ask when the window opens and when it closes, and get it in writing.

What to settle before you fly

If you are travelling, the timeline above happens somewhere the clinic is not. That changes the questions:

• How soon after surgery does the clinic consider it reasonable to fly?
• What written aftercare will you leave with, and in what language?
• Who do you contact if something looks wrong in week two, at what hours, and in what language?
• Will you be given an operative note — what was done, how many grafts, which donor area, what medication — that a doctor at home can read?
• What, specifically, happens if there is an infection after you have gone home?

The operative note is the one people forget to ask for and the one a local doctor needs most. Our guide to travelling for a transplant covers the rest of the handover.

When to stop reading and call someone

This guide cannot tell you what is normal for you, and it will not try. Pain, fever, spreading redness, discharge, or anything that worries you is a question for a doctor — your clinic first, and a local doctor if you cannot reach them or cannot wait. A directory is the wrong thing to consult about a symptom, and a forum is worse.

What a directory can do is make sure you have the clinic’s number before you need it. Of the 4,657 clinics listed here, 4,523 publish a phone number and 1,735 publish an email address — we show both in full, on every listing, because the week you need them is not the week to be filling in an enquiry form.

Folliculis is a directory and information resource. This guide explains process and terminology so you can ask better questions. It is not medical advice, it is not a substitute for a consultation with a qualified doctor, and nothing here should be used to decide on treatment.