This is important because smoking makes you heal slower by inhibiting blood from flowing to your skin. It may be hard to do, but if you quit smoking just for the surgery, it might not be so hard. Then, once you have done that, you may find that you want to stay off the cigarettes or cigars even after the hair transplant have healed. Now hair transplants are more natural looking because of a procedure called micro grafting. Most hair transplant surgeries today involve micro grafting to some degree. Micro grafts hold about three or four hair follicles. Older style hair grafts often held more like a dozen hair roots. These new micro grafts are only possible because skilled surgeons have refined the methods of extracting them. In that case, it might be necessary for the surgeon to do some extra stitching to close the wounds. 3. Pain. There is actually very little pain with hair transplant surgery. About half of the people who have the procedure done will not need any pain relievers at all. Most others take a mild pain reliever such as Tylenol for a few days, and that seems to be enough for them. You will be told to use your normal shampoo before the hair transplant surgery. No special scalp treatment will be needed. Do not worry about any scraggly hair on top of your head. The doctor will blend it in with the grafts as he goes. It may seem odd, but once the grafted hairs are set, they are just as strong as the rest of your hair. They began with a method that was somewhat flawed. While they did use their idea about moving hair from the sides and back of the head to the balding areas, they did not have pleasing results. These hair transplant procedures in the 1960s and 1970s used a method where 15-25 hairs were grafted in a round plug pattern. When a young man gets a hair transplant procedure, it can avert many problems with low self esteem and lack of self confidence. With older men, these attitudes are already ingrained so that it takes some doing to change them. If the hair restoration is started early enough, the young patient need never feel the stigma of being bald for very long at all.