H
HT2021
member
So, a bit of background: I had a hair transplant procedure at the Hair Dr Clinic in Leeds in January 2021, followed by a top-up procedure in January 2022 - I documented this in this thread. While I was there for the top-up, I decided to have a small beard transplant procedure, to address the patchiness on my cheeks that has often annoyed me.
I thought I'd start a new thread specifically about the beard transplant to make it easier for others to find, as I found it hard to find much information about beard transplants online (I assume because they are fairly rare, and those who do have them may avoid posting anything publicly about it because it is that much harder to hide your identity in photos).
The grafts in beard transplant procedures can be taken either from the scalp or the neck – mine was taken from the neck (more precisely, the area just under the chin that is generally not visible to other people). The clinic said that Dr Arshad prefers to take the grafts from there because a) those hair characteristics have more in common with the native beard hairs on the face, and b) it doesn’t deplete the donor resources at the back of the head for potential future hair transplants. For beard-to-beard transplants, the clinic charge £5 per graft. I believe I had around 500 grafts in total across both cheeks, and I believe the vast majority were 1s, though I haven't had the graft breakdown confirmed by the clinic just yet.
We did the hair and beard transplants consecutively across the day – starting with the injections and extractions from the head, then from the beard; then all of the channels created on the scalp, then on the cheeks; then the implants into the head and the cheeks were done at pretty much the same time. The day began at 7.45am, and I think we finished at around 5pm. The process is pretty much the same across both hair and beard transplants; and although I had wondered how it would feel having people work on my face and my neck, it actually felt no more strange than the hair transplant process.
The one thing that I hadn’t been prepared for was that the saline injection (which makes the skin on the cheeks taut enough to work on) resulted in my cheeks swelling up massively for the rest of the day. It would have been good to have been warned about this beforehand, because it meant that I had a lot of difficulty talking (my speech was muffled and certain letter sounds just became impossible to say), eating was impossible, and I could only drink through a straw - my partner and I had to head to the nearby Lidl on the way back to get some protein shakes and some straws so that I could have something resembling a meal that evening. Needless to say, this added a lot to the discomfort on the first night, but by the next morning I was basically able to speak, eat and drink as normal, so it was only short-lived. So if anyone is considering a beard transplant – I would definitely suggest you discuss this beforehand, and come prepared!
The recovery from the beard transplant has been similar to the usual process, but with a few differences. It takes a lot of extra care to not allow anything to touch your cheeks as well as your scalp; and as I had some grafts all the up to the side of my mouth, I also had to be extremely careful when brushing my teeth. In terms of washing, it just wasn’t really possible to wash the rest of my face for the first week – I didn’t want to risk getting water onto the grafts, and I wasn’t sure if even using face wipes would be wise, in case the saline sprays caused something from the wipe solution to run into the grafts. So I did feel increasingly grotty as the week went on, and when I was finally able to wash after a week it felt like I was reborn!
In terms of the washing process, the clinic recommended to apply shampoo to the both the scalp grafts and the beard grafts, and leave them for 10-15 minutes before rinsing off with water from a jug. However, the beard area also seems to recover a lot more quickly than the scalp does – the majority of the scabs from my donor area on the chin had gone within 4 or 5 days of the procedure, and the scabs had all come off my cheeks by day 10.
Here are some of the 'before' photos, showing the patchiness and also a slightly blurry photo of my chin area:
After discussing with the clinic, these are the approximate areas that we decided to focus on:
I hope this was helpful - I'll post some progress photos in my next post.
I thought I'd start a new thread specifically about the beard transplant to make it easier for others to find, as I found it hard to find much information about beard transplants online (I assume because they are fairly rare, and those who do have them may avoid posting anything publicly about it because it is that much harder to hide your identity in photos).
The grafts in beard transplant procedures can be taken either from the scalp or the neck – mine was taken from the neck (more precisely, the area just under the chin that is generally not visible to other people). The clinic said that Dr Arshad prefers to take the grafts from there because a) those hair characteristics have more in common with the native beard hairs on the face, and b) it doesn’t deplete the donor resources at the back of the head for potential future hair transplants. For beard-to-beard transplants, the clinic charge £5 per graft. I believe I had around 500 grafts in total across both cheeks, and I believe the vast majority were 1s, though I haven't had the graft breakdown confirmed by the clinic just yet.
We did the hair and beard transplants consecutively across the day – starting with the injections and extractions from the head, then from the beard; then all of the channels created on the scalp, then on the cheeks; then the implants into the head and the cheeks were done at pretty much the same time. The day began at 7.45am, and I think we finished at around 5pm. The process is pretty much the same across both hair and beard transplants; and although I had wondered how it would feel having people work on my face and my neck, it actually felt no more strange than the hair transplant process.
The one thing that I hadn’t been prepared for was that the saline injection (which makes the skin on the cheeks taut enough to work on) resulted in my cheeks swelling up massively for the rest of the day. It would have been good to have been warned about this beforehand, because it meant that I had a lot of difficulty talking (my speech was muffled and certain letter sounds just became impossible to say), eating was impossible, and I could only drink through a straw - my partner and I had to head to the nearby Lidl on the way back to get some protein shakes and some straws so that I could have something resembling a meal that evening. Needless to say, this added a lot to the discomfort on the first night, but by the next morning I was basically able to speak, eat and drink as normal, so it was only short-lived. So if anyone is considering a beard transplant – I would definitely suggest you discuss this beforehand, and come prepared!
The recovery from the beard transplant has been similar to the usual process, but with a few differences. It takes a lot of extra care to not allow anything to touch your cheeks as well as your scalp; and as I had some grafts all the up to the side of my mouth, I also had to be extremely careful when brushing my teeth. In terms of washing, it just wasn’t really possible to wash the rest of my face for the first week – I didn’t want to risk getting water onto the grafts, and I wasn’t sure if even using face wipes would be wise, in case the saline sprays caused something from the wipe solution to run into the grafts. So I did feel increasingly grotty as the week went on, and when I was finally able to wash after a week it felt like I was reborn!
In terms of the washing process, the clinic recommended to apply shampoo to the both the scalp grafts and the beard grafts, and leave them for 10-15 minutes before rinsing off with water from a jug. However, the beard area also seems to recover a lot more quickly than the scalp does – the majority of the scabs from my donor area on the chin had gone within 4 or 5 days of the procedure, and the scabs had all come off my cheeks by day 10.
Here are some of the 'before' photos, showing the patchiness and also a slightly blurry photo of my chin area:
After discussing with the clinic, these are the approximate areas that we decided to focus on:
I hope this was helpful - I'll post some progress photos in my next post.
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