Shock Loss

Shock loss is the shedding of hair after a transplant, affecting both the transplanted hairs and sometimes the native hair around them. It happens at around three to six weeks.

Where you'll meet it

Around week three to six after surgery, when most of what was planted falls out.

Why it happens

Moving a follicle is a trauma, and traumatised follicles drop into a resting phase. The hair shaft falls out; the follicle stays and grows a new hair on its own timetable, generally starting at month three.

So the hair you see on the pillow is not the graft. The graft is still in your head.

The part nobody expects

You will look worse at month two than you did the day before surgery, and that lasts weeks. Knowing it is coming helps less than people assume, but it helps.

When it affects native hair

Existing thinning hair around the grafts can also shed, and it usually recovers over a few months. In someone whose loss was already active and unmedicated, some of it does not, which is another argument for being on medication before surgery rather than after.

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