Hair Transplant Scarring

For an individual with sufficient donor hair, surgical hair restoration is the most effective and efficient answer to hair loss. Most importantly, hair trasnplantation surgery has undergone a recent revolution. Older, first generation hair transplant procedures such as strip surgery resulted in scarring, inconsistent results, and an unnatural appearance. Now, hair transplant procedures that use follicular units exclusively leave no visible scarring in the recipient area. For example, Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) leaves barely visible scars that are multiple tiny round, white scars in the donor area, one for each extracted follicular unit. Generally, these scars are undetectable and are of no cosmetic consequence to the patient. Keep in mind that every time the skin is cut, no matter how small the cut it, it will produce a scar. Therefore, FUE scars can still be seen when the scalp is shaved.

In general, scarring is possible in cases when older methods of hair restoration surgery are used, when current techniques are performed improperly, and when a patient is a slow healer.  These events may lead to excessive scarring and thus present a cosmetic problem. Scarring happens as a result of all surgeries, and there is no such thing as a 100% elimination of a scar. The key to dealing with scars is to make them very small and diminished in size.