After 20 days post FUE, while rubbing, hairs came out along with the bottom bulb, is the graft lost?

It is normal and expected for the transplanted hairs to fall out this many days after a hair transplant.  The cells which will form your new, transplanted hairs in the future have already been embedded in the skin.  What you are seeing is the lose of the transplanted hair and not the actual transplanted follicles.  

It is normal to lose transplanted hairs weeks after surgery.  It may take 6 to 12 months to see new hairs grow out.

At this point the grafts are completely incorporated into the scalp.What you are seeing is just a shaft of hair-no worry.

Transplanted graft’s hair starts to shedding in the first week of surgery and may go on untill 4-6 th weeks after surgery. İt is not surprising to lost approx.  %70-80 of all transplanted hair shafts in first month when you are washing, gently rubbing  or touching the head. İt is shock loss and not permanent. Even your native hair may affected with that post traumatic transient hair loss…New hair at transplant and donor area starts to grow at 3-4 th month after surgery .

Rubbing the recipient area provided that there are no crusts present, will not cause the grafts to be removed. What you are seeing is remnant hair

Thank you for asking the question. After 20 days you are absolutely assured that the roots are well taken. Only the grafts where the root is dead or the root has not taken for some reason will come out by rubbing. Other that you can be rest assured that there is no problem at all. Good luck!Regards, Dr. Amit Gupta