Recovery month by month › Poor growth

Hair transplant not growing? What patients report

Transplanted hairs normally fall out from about the second to the fourth week and start growing again after a lag of about three months (Marwah and Mysore, J Cutan Aesthet Surg 2018), so "not much yet" early on is not the same as a poor result. Patients write about poor growth in both senses: worry that growth is slow, and, later, a result that stayed thin or patchy. This page doesn't judge which is which; your surgeon should. It shows what patients wrote and when.

Of 5,433 progress reports that patients posted about their own transplant on reddit (r/HairTransplants and r/tressless), 241 mention poor, thin, patchy or slow growth, written by 192 people; 209 of these threads have photos.

When patients raise it

Share of the progress reports at each point after surgery that mention poor growth. Few people raise it in the first months, before new growth is expected to show; the share is higher after month 6.

Days 1–14 <1% (2 of 1,248)
Weeks 2–4 0% (0 of 427)
Month 1 <1% (1 of 329)
Month 2 3% (7 of 251)
Month 3 4% (13 of 366)
Month 4 3% (13 of 396)
Month 5 4% (15 of 361)
Month 6 5% (23 of 484)
Months 7–9 8% (49 of 615)
Months 10–12 12% (66 of 558)
Year 2 14% (33 of 240)
Two years and later 12% (19 of 158)

This is not a failure rate. These are people who chose to post, often to ask for advice, and nobody knows how many patients of the same clinics never posted at all.

What the people who posted again said later

17 of these people posted another progress report of their own at least three months later and at nine months or more. In their latest report, 9 described their experience as positive, 3 as mixed and 4 as negative; 1 didn't say. 7 still mentioned poor growth.

A small group, and not a random one: read their stories as examples, not odds.

In their own words

How to read these numbers

These are people who chose to post, not a clinical study. A thread "mentioning" poor growth can be early worry as much as a final verdict. A thread counts once, at the point after surgery the patient stated, even if it names several doctors. We don't pick out doctors on this page (thread titles are the patients' own): which doctor's patients happen to post here says more about how many patients post than about the doctor. Each doctor's own page shows everything their patients reported, good and bad, side by side. Removed threads are left out of the quotes. Your own surgeon's advice comes first.

See the whole recovery month by month, shock loss, or compare doctors' credentials, published prices and patient reports in the directory.

SaveMyHairline is an independent hair transplant doctor directory: published prices, checked credentials and real patient reports, with sources — and no clinic can pay to appear.