You need to shave your head if you are going for an FUE hair transplant. However, you can do without complete shaving if you go for FUT or DHI. Well, the answer is complicated.

For a FUT (strip) procedure, the surgeon will require only a strip of hair, which can be used to extract healthy hair follicles. In this case, the doctors will take the necessary amount of hair as a strip from the back and side of your head. Hence, complete shaving is not required.

For an FUE procedure, the transplant practitioner advises a complete head shave. There are two primary reasons behind this.

Better Extraction of Follicles

A clean-shaven head allows the surgeon to see the hair follicles and the angle at which they are coming out of the scalp. This helps remove the strands appropriately. The extraction process is done with the help of a very tiny tube, which is only a little wider than the follicle itself. Hence, if the angle of the follicles coming out of the scalp is not visible, it can damage them. This can pose a severe problem for those patients who do not have enough donor hair.

Better Grafting

Like extraction, shaving also makes the grafting process easier for the surgeons. When the recipient area is clean, hair transplant practitioners can integrate the natural and donated hair.

Besides helping with extraction and grafting, a shaved and cleaned head can speed up hair transplant. It also yields better results due to the ease and perfection of extraction and grafting.

When is Complete Shaving Not Required?

If you are using the DHI technique, shaving is not mandatory. It uses a more extended punch to remove follicles and graft them without making cuts on the scalp. Hence, in this case, shaving is not essential. However, the DDHI process is suitable for small procedures with minimal grafts, at most 5,000 grafts per sitting. Hence, taking this approach can cost you more and require multiple sittings for completing the hair transplant.