There are various factors that can affect the success of a hair transplant operation. These factors include but are not limited to the quality of the hair transplant clinic, the experience of the doctor, the types of equipment they use for the hair transplant operation; how they take care of the hair after the operation.
One of the most important factors that are directly related to the skills and the experience of the doctor. It is the opening of the channels in the hair transplant operation. For having a proper hair transplant, you need to choose the proper clinic with the proper doctor; who has the required fine-motor skills for performing this surgical process.
How are the channels opened?
The process of opening channels for placing the extracted grafts is a step in the FUE (Follicular Unit Extraction) hair transplant method. This process starts after making the hair transplant plan and determining the front hairline.
There are 3 different methods for opening the channels; Sagittal Slit, Lateral Slit and Percutan. The sagittal slit is performed by making slits in the area where the hair will be implanted. However, due to the risk of leaving scars and looking unnatural, this method is not preferred in today’s hair transplant operations.
On the other hand, the lateral slit allows the channels to be opened with very small angles and it does not leave any marks and it gives a natural look; therefore it is more preferred today while opening the channels in the hair transplant operations.
Percutan is the most elaborate method among all the others. Because they do not make the channels in this method by vertical or horizontal slits. Instead, they open channels in around shape like a hole. This makes the process more time consuming and elaborate. But since the diameter of the opened channels is very small in this method; the healing process takes less time too.
What are the important points to consider while opening the channels?
First of all, the length and the diameter of the extracted hair follicles should be matching with the opened channels. If the clinic doctor fails to achieve this, the probability of having a natural look after the operation will greatly reduce. Besides that, if the hair follicles are not able to hold on the channels properly, they will not be able to get the required nutrition and fail to grow in a healthy way after the operation.
Another thing to consider is the angle of the channels. If they do not open the channels with the proper angles, then the hair follicles which will grow from those channels will not grow with the right angles; it will look not only unnatural but also unaesthetic for most people. And one should also keep in mind that the angles of the hair follicles should be different in each part of the scalp. Because the angle that the hair strands grow towards differs according to the area too. If the clinic doctor fails to open the canals in the described way, then your hair will grow in a way that looks like the sparkles from a tesla ball.