Thin Hair in Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) Hair Transplant Donor Site: Shock Loss or Over Harvested?
This question, from a member of our hair loss social community and discussion forums, was answered by a staff physician from Coalition hair transplant clinic Shapiro Medical:
I am very concerned about my donor area. Recently I got a 860 graft follicular unit extraction (FUE) hair transplant. Unfortunately,my donor is not what I expected, it looks very thin in my opinion (with just 860 grafts taken out!)
I think there a three options:
- They over harvested the donor area (to much grafts on too small area)
- Shock loss
- It is normal and will get better soon
Photos are pre-op and one month post-op. What do you think?
From your post-op pics, it does not appear that the donor was over harvested. The FUE sites actually look appropriately spaced. Even though there was not a large area of your donor used for the procedure, you had a relatively low number of grafts removed in one session. If you had a greater need for grafting, in my experience, we could have yielded 2500+ grafts over your entire donor area in the span of two days.
I believe the choices you gave of #2 and #3 may be more in line with what is actually occurring. Some people’s follicles are more susceptible to shock loss than others. I believe this is what we are seeing. It may take a few months before the donor area returns to normal.
Some hair restoration physicians advocate the use of low level laser treatment (LLLT) and/or Rogaine (minoxidil) at this time to try to speed up the hair growth in the donor.
How is the recipient area in front responding?
-Shapiro Medical
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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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Technorati Tags: hair loss, follicular unit extraction, FUE, hair transplant, hair restoration, low level laser treatment, LLLT, Rogaine, minoxidil, hair growth
June 8, 2015 @ 6:27 pm
If, after you have given the donor area enough time to heal and fill in, you may want to seek out a Scalp Micropigmentation Specialist. This procedure uses small dots of tattoo to fill in the area under the hair. It hides the scalp and gives the illusion of thicker hair.