Big Problem – Dealing with Unmanageable Scars

The pluggy hair transplants of the 1980s and 90s, and even the strip surgeries in the years following that, caused considerable scarring in some percentage of patients. Few of them complained unless their donor area was depleted from multiple surgeries so that long hair would not cover it. Even today, scars from follicular unit extraction (FUE) are causing problems for some patients who have had donor area depletion. I’ve seen a few men for consultations recently that have shown a see-through appearance at the back of their heads, asking us what they could do to help make this less noticeable, and prompting me to write this post.

The best solution for unmanageable scars was introduced by us in 2010 — Scalp MicroPigmentation (SMP) — and it can be effectively used to camouflage scars so that they can be made undetectable. Scars are more of a problem when patients have multiple surgeries, each surgery adding to the amount of scarring.

In the past, we have recommended scar revisions with variable success. Usually the scar would be reduced following the revision, but the biggest problem we found with this solution is in the patients who get poor scarring after strip surgery, get it because that is the way they heal. So when trying to repair it, we found limited value with occasional good results, but always leaving some level of detectable scar. There are people like me (three strip surgeries and no detectable scar) who heal very well, but there are some that aren’t as lucky. Treating these scars with SMP seems to always work regardless of the patients tendency to scar.

We’ve posted some outstanding results in the treatment of scars of all types and this is usually what happens to all patients, not the select few shown on this website.