Hair Transplant: Surgery or Procedure?

Hello, this is Dana Plastic Surgery 😊

Today, we prepared this content for those who are wondering whether a hair transplant is a surgery or a procedure.

This is one of the questions we get asked a lot.

Hair transplant: is it a procedure or a surgery?

Simply put, it can be distinguished by whether the skin is cut or not.

In other words, whether or not an incision is made.

If we look at the dictionary meanings, surgery refers to opening a part of the body and treating it by cutting, removing, or suturing an injured area,

while a procedure refers to treatment through minimal medical intervention without opening, cutting, or incising.

Typical examples of procedures include suction, puncture, injection procedures performed on the spine in pain medicine, and cerebrospinal fluid puncture.

Although not 100%, these kinds of treatments can be considered procedures.

According to general insurance policy terms,

surgery is described as a manipulation performed on a living body for direct treatment purposes using medical instruments in a medical institution by a person qualified as a doctor, dentist, or Korean medicine doctor, under the supervision of a doctor, involving cutting, excision, and similar actions.

What are generally referred to as procedures include mesotherapy, Botox, fillers, and lasers.

If it is more invasive than a procedure, it becomes surgery.

So, hair transplantation is clearly classified as surgery.

From a plastic surgery perspective, hair transplantation falls under “compound tissue grafting surgery.”

*Compound tissue grafting surgery: grafting two or more tissue types together

Skin grafting means grafting only one layer of skin,

while compound tissue grafting surgery refers to transplanting 1 to 4 hairs along with the tissue around the hair follicle as one unit.

So, hair transplantation, which falls under compound tissue grafting surgery, is of course surgery 😊

For more information, please check Dana Plastic Surgery’s YouTube channel!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nebBYLVvn1Q