Hair Continued Thinning After Hair Transplant, Now I Want to Undo It All

Dr. Rassman,

I had a transplant procedure 7 or so years ago. Since then, my hair has continued to thin and even though the hairline was done well, one can discern that they are transplants. If I was to have the donor scar repaired and buzz my head to a # 1 clipper, would the transplant sites be very discernable (on top of my head?) If I was to pluck them out, would the recipient sites have scars? I am not really sure what to do. If I hadn’t gotten the procedure done I would probably shave my head close. I would also like to know if I had additional procedures done, would I be able to go with a buzz (#1) cut? Thank You

A hair transplant is forever, which means you shouldn’t do it unless you fully understand what is going to happen to you, even in the worst case scenario. I don’t know how to answer your question without seeing you. If the transplants were follicular unit transplants (FUTs), there is a good possibility you could shave the hairline, but based upon the what you describe, I suspect that the grafts were not follicular units. When there is any significant amount of skin in the transplanted graft, the skin will have some deformities associated with it. The larger the amounts of skin (which comes with procedures like minigrafts, micrografts, larger plugs, follicular families, double follicular units, etc), the harder it would be to get away with shaving the frontal scalp. Most people like you are easy to fix with more transplants, but it has to be done with FUTs and in enough numbers to fill in the problem area, but again I can not say this for sure without seeing you or your photos.

As you indicated that you’re in New Jersey, Dr. Robert Bernstein has offices in your area, so I would suggest that you see him for a straight answer, or you can send me photos to the address on the Contact page (reference this post, please).