Hair Transplant Repair: Removing Unwanted Grafts from the Hairline

This question, from a member of our hair loss social community and discussion forums, was answered by Coalition hair transplant surgeon Dr. Alan Feller:

I had an unpleasant experience with hair transplant. I’m looking to get the grafts removed from frontal hairline with least amount of scarring as possible. Most of the doctors I inquired from want to go with FUE. After doing yelp reviews, I became a little nervous and wanted to try to get as much feedback as possible. If you guys know any referrals who are good with graft removal please forward. Thanks in advance.

You are correct to be nervous about using follicular unit extraction (FUE) for removing old grafts. It is not the right procedure for your repair. It is unreliable as the grafts tend to be brittle and break during the extraction processes. But you may not have to go that route yet.

If your hairline is not inappropriate in terms of shape or being too low you may just want to thicken around the old grafts. This may give you a more natural look and a thicker result, which is no doubt why you went in the first place. Plenty of hair transplant surgeons on this site do this kind of work. Of course Dr. Bloxham and I do it. Here’s a recent video example:

But as I wrote, there are many hair restoration physicians on this site who do this routinely. Check a few out. If you are dead set against another procedure, then have the old grafts removed properly using a slightly bigger punch than would be used for FUE. This will minimize breakage and the resulting ingrown hair cysts by insuring the grafts are removed intact. Dr. Robert Bernstein does this fairly regularly in NYC; and so does Dr. William Lindsey in Virginia (Lindsey is my partner so perhaps a bit of bias there but I think he’s great with these very detailed facial plastic reconstructions, but so is Bernstein). You may want to check them out.

Dr. Alan Feller
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David
Editorial Assistant and Forum Co-Moderator for the Hair Transplant Network, the Coalition Hair Loss Learning Center, and the Hair Loss Q & A Blog.

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