10 Days After Surgery, My Doctor Pulled Off My Dry Scabs

Hi! Thank you for taking the time for answering my question. I had a Hair transplant 10 days ago. My doctor did not really brief me about the swelling and shampooing my hair post op. I was scared to shampoo my hair. I shampooed it on the 3rd day, on sixth day the scabs became really hard i couldnt resist to to rub hard but i didnt pull, some came out though no blood just scab attached with hair. I went to see him on my 8th day he said everything looks fine and that the grafts are secure. He started breaking up the scabs on my head i was not comfortable at all i told him that i read on the internet that pulling dry scabs moves the graft. He’s like this is not the first time i do it i’ve been through thousands of heads. I’m on my 10th day now the scabs are all gone. My new hair is there i still have the strong urge to rub my skull.

Did he ruin my grafts by pulling the crushing and pulling dry scabs? does rubbing the new hair effect the growth?

Let me get this straight — you trusted your doctor for his expertise and judgments to have him perform a hair transplant surgery, but now you don’t trust these very same things because you read things on the Internet about post-operative care and scabs?

I highly doubt your doctor ruined your grafts. We did do a hair pull study and published the results of it with The American Society for Dermatologic Surgery in 2006 (see Graft Anchoring in Hair Transplantation PDF) and we found that the grafts were not totally secure if there was scabbing present. Each graft was pulled out day by day to get the results that we published. With that said, I would assume that your doctor knew this and was very careful in cleaning you up. What we generally recommend is washing your hair daily to keep the scabs down. Most of our patients are scab free within a day or two.