Hi all Newbie here. I am thinking about having total reversal of my previous ludicrous HTs. I am now v advanced norwood, have pitted sparse pluggy grafts on front third, 70's style open hole scarring at back (extensive) and very little donor. Lucky I am very salt and pepper grey which covers the scarring mostly, but the pluggy grafts stick out a mile. I am thinking of Dr Bernstein or Dr Epstein for a coring out and sutering repair with fueing into the donor scars. I've done some reserch and am sure that due to low donor, camoflage is not an option for me. I hate the idea of yet more HT and i just want off. I know that Dr B has done a lot of these sucessfully but i have heard dr Epstein with his plastic surgery skills is also good. Has anyone had this type of work done by either of these Docs? Is so I'd be really grateful for you feed back. I know I will not get a virgin scalp back, but Dr Bs photos and results other sites have been encouraging without noticable scarring and big improvement on pluggy pits and ridges.

Hi all Newbie here. I am thinking about having total reversal of my previous ludicrous HTs. I am now v advanced norwood, have pitted sparse pluggy grafts on front third, 70's style open hole scarring at back (extensive) and very little donor. Lucky I am very salt and pepper grey which covers the scarring mostly, but the pluggy grafts stick out a mile. I am thinking of Dr Bernstein or Dr Epstein for a coring out and sutering repair with fueing into the donor scars. I've done some reserch and am sure that due to low donor, camoflage is not an option for me. I hate the idea of yet more HT and i just want off. I know that Dr B has done a lot of these sucessfully but i have heard dr Epstein with his plastic surgery skills is also good. Has anyone had this type of work done by either of these Docs? Is so I'd be really grateful for you feed back. I know I will not get a virgin scalp back, but Dr Bs photos and results other sites have been encouraging without noticable scarring and big improvement on pluggy pits and ridges.

Michaellovesnyc, Hi, its not so much fell out. In the 70's HT was in its infancy and compared to today, techniques were poor. But back then thought revolutionary and sold (sold hard) as the total cure to baldness. They used large punches to take out plugs and literally plonk them onto the top of your head, in neat rows usually. As more hair loss was experienced, the more the plugs showed, then you got more grafts... and so on to a never ending circus until you ran out of donor. The donor scars are big bald circles in the back of your head which show up if you hair your hair cut too short. Techniques are better today but beware there are still some butchers out there who still do this barbaric mutilation. If only the internet had been available back then.

Michaellovesnyc, no, sorry i didn't explain very well. a round punch was used for both extracting the donor plugs and making a hole in the recipient areas to take the extracted plugs. The recipient areas looked like doll hair and the donor holes were never sutured closed (guess they never imagined that anyone would want to shave their head back then).

Thought i'd just add, Feller is light years ahead of this type of surgery, sure you won't have a problem. He uses totally dif surgery. he would describe it much better than me. but the surgery he does today just does not compare to what was done to me many decades ago.

I got plugged back in the early 1980's and still regret the day I did it. I am not as bad as some others but the technique is outdated. These were SO detectable, the doll hair look.

Michael, the procedure was not the painful part - the afterward knowing you had been decieved and would never look right again .


Mein Hair, I decided to go with plug reduction and replantation - camoflage and am pretty happy so far. I had strip surgery done at the same time. I still have some plugs left and some of the old donor scars as well. You can check my photos under NoBuzz4me in patient photo albums section. Dr. James Vogel was my surgeon in Baltimore. Believe me, I would gladly trade all those open hole scars to a single linear one.

You are in a tough situation since your donor has been depleted. The likelyhood of hair growing back in the scar tissue is much less than if it were virgin tissue. If you pull the plugs and redistribute they may not survive in the open donor scars from which they first came.
The scar tissue is usually poorly vascularized.

The front will heal fine with core and suture but you still may want to consider stripping out all the back donor scars you can and use whatever FU's from that combined with the plugs recycled and redistributed to build a natural front hairline. The problem you may have is if the old donor scars are out of the safe zone and if that is the case they should not be stripped out (strip surgery), maybe they can be cored and sutured. Check Dr. James Vogel website as thier are several tough repair cases documented which may help you with your options. The website can explain it easier than I can. Good luck and keep us posted.

Thanks Nobuzz, be interested to hear how your results turn out (best wishes). Will def try Dr Vogels website and try sending him some photos (I'm in the UK).
Anyone else had recision of plugs done? By anyone? anyone had sucessful re-implanting back into donor scars? There doesn't seem to be many reversal pats around, yet I know there are many guys seeking repair work or covering up unsatisfactory early work.
Seems to be much talk about fantastic HT work, but when you look for solutions to crap work, there is ......

Mein Hair,
I'm in pretty much the same situation as you. The pluggy-ness of mine isn't so bad, but it's very thin. I'd be happy just to get the donor area thickened up a bit and maybe a little around the edges of the balding area so the area doesn't look so large. Obviously I can't do it with donor hair because I don't have any, so I've been thinking about using body hair to fill in a few spots. I certainly have enough hair on my body, but after 25 surgeries years ago, I'm afraid to try anything for fear of making it worse.

I've heard this before. I'm not sure I agree with it. Is there any actual data on this?

I say this because I had a strip procedure done years ago to remove an area of larger punch grafts that were then cut and redistributed to fill in other areas. Then on a later session I had the strip scar filled in with some mini grafts to blend it in with the rest of my hair. They grew just fine.