Dear db70,Thank you for posting the question. It is true: sometimes follicles can be dormant for up to 18 months prior to growing and forming a nice terminal hair in the recipient site. However, these follicles typically shed out in the weeks following a hair restoration procedure and when the new hair sprouts, it typically does not remain at the same length for months on end. What I have discovered in performing exclusively hair restoration surgery for well over a decade is that occasionally hairs can die if outside of the body too long. This is more a reflection of the talent, experience, and dedication of the technical staff that assists with procedures, especially in ARTAS cases, due to the inherent limitations of speed with the ARTAS robot. The simple fact is that if the techs are not careful with the follicles, or the surgical team is not proficient and the follicles stay outside the body for more than about 5 hours, or if the technicians allow the grafts to warm up, or if the grafts are allowed to dry out, they can literally die prior to implantation. In those cases where the grafts are outside the body too long, the grafts warm up, are not handled properly with the proper instruments, or allowed to dry out, the grafts simply die. Then, when implanted, it's literally a dead piece of tissue being implanted into your skin. Since it came from your body, it can tend not to be rejected as much as, say, a wood sliver, and the body can tolerate it and just sort of wall it off from the rest of the skin. In this way, the graft will just sit there indefinitely and appear as stubble and never actually grow because it did not make it through the transplantation process; it's simply a piece of dead hair lodged in your scalp. I am not saying that this is the case with you specifically, but I have seen this issue with patients of other physicians I have seen in consultation as a second opinion months after a transplant where the hairs are there but simply do not grow at all.This is a very good example of why it's important to ask your hair restoration surgeon about the experience, dedication and talent of the technicians who will be handling your grafts. A red-flag is if they are not (a) full-time staff, and (b) full-time technicians. Being a hair restoration technician is very difficult, and someone who does it part-time, or just learned and doesn't have a lot of experience, is simply not going to provide optimal results. Merely putting on medical scrubs does not make one a medical talent. It takes years of dedicated experience at a busy practice to become proficient.I hope this information is helpful to you.
