Preparing for your upcoming Hair Follicle Test
Any type of testing can be unnerving if you don’t know what to expect. We have put together a short information sheet to cover what to expect when going for a hair follicle test.
When choosing a hair follicle test make sure you know what panel or drugs of concern you need to be tested for. When booking your appointment, the collector will discuss your options with you to ensure you are getting the best test.
A head hair follicle test will go back up to 90 days give or take a week on either side. You need to have 1.5 inches of length of hair for the test to go back approximately 90 days, each .5 inches equals approximately one month. We can’t complete the test if your hair is to short. We will need to cut 250-300 strands of hair close to the scalp to have enough of a sample to test. Most people don’t realize the amount of hair that needs to be collected for testing. A good visual is the pink eraser end of a pencil, more may need to be collected for higher panel tests. A body hair test will go back up to 12 months for drugs. We need to be able to collect a substantial amount of body hair from arms, armpits, chest, beard, or legs. We are not able to mix samples, so it all needs to be collected from one area. We will not collect any other hair samples from the body.
ETG-ethyl glucuronide/Alcohol hair samples will only go back approximately 90 days. This is for both the head hair and body hair tests.
You will need to have government issued photo id eg. A Driver’s license/ government issued Identification card or Passport. Your hair will need to be clean and dry. We will not collect a sample if the hair is wet or has any chemical smell.
At the start of your appointment paperwork will need to be filled in. If you want our office to send the results to another party directly, please have the name, email, and phone number of all the parties you will be consenting to release the result to.
While preforming the hair follicle test the collector will cut the sample as close to the scalp as possible to get the most accurate timeframe. Our collectors strive to hide where the sample has been taken but will advise the client if they aren’t able to do so.
The sample once collected is sealed and shipped to the lab for testing. It is then reviewed by an independent Medical Review Officer. It is a good idea to have a printout of any medications you have been prescribed in the last 6 month. You can obtain this at your pharmacy or through your doctor’s office. The Medical Review Officer may call you to go over your results, make sure you have your prescriptions handy to speed up the release of the results.
Once the sample has completed the process the results will be released.