To obtain the maximum benefit from the surgery and to provide appropriate coverage, four separate surgical procedures are usually required, spaced three months apart. After the transplantation, the hairs within the transplanted plugs fall out to make room for the new hairs that are coming in. This is an expected process and should cause the patient no alarm. By three to four months, the patient should notice some early, fine growth of hair from the transplanted areas. With time, this fine hair will thicken and become coarse. Once the newly growing hairs reach the surface of the skin, they grow at a rate of approximately one-half inch per month. Because the new hair follicles are growing from the skin surface, three to four months will be required before the effects of transplantation can be seen. The stages of the surgical procedure are spaced three months apart, and during this time the hair becomes progressively thicker and the transplanted plugs become less obvious. The coverage provided by hair transplantation is never as thick as the hair was on the frontal scalp before any hair was lost; however, with proper styling the hair is usually thick enough and dense enough to provide a result satisfactory to the patient and the surgeon.

Minigraft and micrograft plugs were traditionally fashioned from a 4.5mm oversized transplantation plug graft (left). This plug is slightly larger than the standard 4.0mm grafts that were placed in the past. By dividing the oversized plug into quarters, minigraft transplantation plugs can be fashioned (middle).
Finally, by further dividing these minigraft plugs into individual hair follicle-containing plugs, micrograft transplantation plug grafts can be designed (right).