This short video documents patient Jonathan’s surgical day at Toronto Hair Transplant Surgeons in February of 2023. Jonathan’s 1425 graft FUE hair transplant surgery is performed by Dr. Ashlin Alexander. In this video, taken the day of his surgery, viewers can follow along as Dr. Alexander walks through the schedule of the day with Jonathan, explaining everything from stem cell banking, drawing or designing the transplant, ProNox, harvesting the grafts, counting the grafts, creating the planting sites, PRP soaks and treatment and finally, post-op care.
TRANSCRIPT OF VIDEO
Hi there, my name is Jonathan and today I’m getting my first hair transplant at the Toronto Hair Transplant Surgeons with Dr. Alexander. I’m sure if you’re watching this you’re ready to embark on the same journey, so let’s go! I first started noticing my hair loss at around age 26-27 and initially, I was using things like Minoxidil and hair fibers to mask the hair loss but I’ve decided I’m ready for a more permanent solution. So I reached out to a whole bunch of hair transplant clinics, Toronto Hair Transplant Surgeons being one of them, did a lot of research and stumbled across Dr. Alexander. The whole team at the Hair Transplant Centre has been absolutely phenomenal, so knowledgeable, friendly and kind so I thought it was definitely the right clinic and after speaking with Dr. Alexander himself, I knew he was the doctor for me.
Dr. Alexander, it’s nice to see you again.
Nice to see you again, yeah, welcome.
How are you feeling?
Good.
Excited? Nervous?
A little bit.
Did you get some sleep last night?
A little bit.
Good.
Just to review kind of the course for the day. So in a little bit we’ll get you changed, go into the room where we’re doing the procedure and we’ll begin by marking out where we want the hairline to be and you’ll see what you know it’s a joint process so I’ll draw where I think it looks natural and appropriate and masculine and all that sort of stuff. I want to make sure whatever we design looks good today but it looks good 10 years from now and 20 years from now and 50 years from now. So another thing that we’re doing now that we weren’t doing before is for all of our surgical patients we’re offering them stem cell banking. So we harvest your hair follicles, we pluck them so they grow back, and then we send them off to a lab called Acorn Biolabs here in Toronto. So it’s kind of a homegrown company, which is pretty cool. And they process those hair follicles, they bank the stem cells, and then at some point down the road, whether it’s a year from now or ten years from now, they come up with cloning technology or, you know, a topical product or an injectable product like PRP that can stimulate new growth and you’ve got your cells banked and ready to go. So that’s another additional feature.
Once we’ve marked out all the areas that we’re going to harvest from, we’ll shave the head, we’ll lay down on the bed, and we’ll use something called ProNox, which is laughing gas, same stuff that they have in labor and delivery suites for pregnant ladies, and then we’ll start harvesting. And that part of the day, in your case, will probably take an hour to an hour and a half. I harvest all of your grafts, so I’ll be the one that’s taking out every single graft. We’ve got a team of technicians that look at each graft under the microscope to make sure that every graft is perfect. So if we said 1,500 grafts, you’re going to get 1,500 perfect grafts planted into your scalp. And then once the harvest is done, we’ll flip the over and make all the sites that the grafts go into. So that means I make all of the holes that we’re going to plant these grafts into. And once that’s done, then the rest of the afternoon is pretty relaxed. We’ll have a big screen TV, you can watch Netflix, and the team will be planting each of those grafts. We’ll probably be here for, you know, something like four or five hours, I would say. So it’s kind of a longish day, but pretty chill day overall.
So one of the other things that we do with all of our procedures now, which we didn’t do before, but now we include that with all of our transplant procedures, is something called a PRP soak. So that’s platelet-rich plasma. Once we’re done the harvest, we’re going to draw some blood and we’re going to spin that down in a centrifuge and then it separates into different layers. We’ll separate out your platelets and growth factors and then we soak all of your grafts in PRP and we apply the PRP to your scalp. And we found that that speeds up graft growth and improves healing. And again, we just decided we’re going to include that with every surgery because we think it’s so worth it.
So we’re all done now. All the grafts have been placed and we’re just applying a bandage and going through the post-op care instructions with Jonathan. We’ve given him a post-op care package that he’ll use to look after the surgical area in the next couple of weeks. We’ll be checking in with him regularly over the next two weeks just to make sure that everything’s going okay. Otherwise, we’re really looking forward to seeing the results down the road. Otherwise, we’re really looking forward to seeing the results down the road.
Bye!
