Scarring and Hair Transplants

Hi,

I visited two companies that do hair transplant techniques. Basically although I have many questions the key one is this. FUT leaves a scar and means that the individual cannot wear his hair short whereas with FUE you can. The first Doctor I visited left me with the impression that I have at most a level 2 or 3 barber shave. The second person I met, who is not a doctor, but has qualified technicians working for him, said as long as I do not care about shaving my head go with FUT since I have plenty of donor hair on my scalp. This person said I can cut my hair as thin as I want but I just cannot SHAVE all of it off. DOing so would reveal the 1 mm thick scar.

So who is right? The doctor leaves with the impression that I cannot cut the hair as thin as I want whereas the second person seems to tell me thinness is not a problem as long as I do not shave the hair off.

My second qeustions is that if I decide to get FUT, and later on want to shave my head, can I get FUE to cover the scare area?

Thanks!

All cuts in the skin produce some form of scar. In an FUE the scar is punctate (like a ball point pen) while from a strip excision, it is linear. If a trichophytic closure is used (see here) then most patients will not develop a detectable scar, even with a close hair cut. I wouldn’t recommend shaving your hair. Obviously, once you move hair from the donor area to where it is needed elsewhere, that hair is gone from the donor area. So using techniques to minimize the appearance of missing hair is how you’re going to get a shorter haircut without a detectable scar.

FUEs can be used to transplant into a scar.