Repairing Old Plugs Placed Too Low at the Hairline (with Photos)

To many people that aren’t familiar with the advances made in hair restoration, “hair plugs” are still the norm. There’s nothing pluggy looking about today’s hair transplant procedures, but those bulky hair plugs of yesteryear were easy to point out and looked incredibly unnatural. I saw a patient that had an unusual placement of these old plugs and was looking to correct it.

This patient first came in about a year and a half ago with a large bald area and old-style transplant plugs that were placed far too low on the right side of his hairline. I suggested that he fill in the frontal area, and he also wanted additional grafts placed into his balding crown. A total of 1919 grafts were transplanted.

You’ll notice that the achieved result shown below is an uneven, but fuller looking hairline (we were limited to what could be done because of the placement of his old plugs). He recently came in to see me again lower the frontal hairline and I agreed to lower the left side a little to balance it out. I remembered how much he hated the plugs on his right side when we first met, and now we succeeded in managing the plugs with styling and camouflage. While that 2nd procedure hasn’t happened yet to even out the hairline, I’m glad he was so happy with the results thus far from the repair and he’s allowed me to share the photos here.

Before photo on left / After photo on right. Click to enlarge.