Medical Emergencies in Hair Restoration Surgery

Introduction

Although complications in Hair Transplant are uncommon, it has been documented that 2% to 3% life threatening emergencies do occur during hair transplant procedure. The fact remains that, if such event occurs the incident suddenly becomes 100%.So that it is absolutely necessary we owe it to our patients and ourselves to be prepared for this unlikely situations.

Materials and Methods

Here we intent to describe and get prepared for medical emergencies under following categories

• Describe how a physician can prepare a faculty and its staff to respond for emergency situations.
• Approach of whole team to specific emergency situations.

Discussion

Physician prepares its entire team to the BLS /ACLS trained. Each individual in the team should know their specific role by proper repeated rehearsals and training. Physician also looks into working condition of all equipment's and availability of life saving emergency drugs before starting of the procedure and transfer of patient to higher Centre if needed.

Most common emergency condition in hair transplant will be Vaso vagal reactions followed by anaphylactic reactions, hypo/hyperglycemia, and hypo/hypertension, cardiac arrest/arrythemias.Its absolutely necessary for a hair transplant surgeon to anticipate above mentioned emergency condition in each and every case and treat it accordingly.

Conclusion

Proper documentation and recognition of high risk patients during initial consultation, with proper trained staffs and qualified surgeon with well equipped OT and monitored anaesthesia with full fledged emergency backup helps not only saving lives but also reduces medico legal problems. It’s also important to keep a team up to date by conducting mock trials of catastrophic collapse of patients at regular intervals.