Scarring in Recipient Area After Transplant

I wanted to know if there is any scarring on RECIPIENT AREA…and this scarring as bad as that in donor area….i mean does recipient area scarring heal fast?? Thanks

The recipient area rarely shows scars. That is because the wound where the hair is put in is made with a fine needle and a needle does not leave significant tracks. Donor scars usually measure a width of about 2mm, but with a trichophytic closure, that width can be hidden inside hair that grows through the scar. Scarring in the recipient area is very rare. When it occurs, it occurs for two reasons:

1. When the hair is coarse and the healthy coarse hair has a wider shaft exiting the skin, it may create a very small dimple.
2. Infections in the area where the hair was transplanted, which will disappear when treated.

With the old techniques, the recipient area had a series of problems that made them quite detectable. That was because the grafts were larger than the follicular units themselves and this older style batched a series of follicular units together into the recipient area. These older graft techniques moved considerable amounts of skin with the grafts and the skin created an obvious whitish disc which: (1) could be higher or lower than the surrounding skin producing a phenomenon called ‘cobblestonning’, (2) would be depigmented make the grafts ‘whitish’ in appearance, and (3) they often clumped the hair within them together producing a stalky appearance, rather than the delicate normal follicular units with the modern technique. With the pure follicular unit transplants, on the other hand, the recipient area should be undetectable in most people within a week, unless there is persistent redness . The abnormalities I discussed above should not be seen with these small follicular units.