how many FUE grafts to cover donor scar?

[multiplier]

After this last surgery with Dr Shapiro in January, his words to me were basically that my donor characteristics and density were mediocre and that I should wait a year or two and re-evaluate. He did not seem optimistic that I should or could get any more FUT due to those characteristics. It will take awhile to see the real results of these last 3200 grafts.

 

Obviously if you look at my hair loss blog, you can see that surgeries seem to continue shocking out hair that may not come back. This makes me wonder how my hair would look if I never got the last 2 surgeries with Shapiro. Impossible to say. But it feels like my loss has accelerated overall.

 

Since the surgery in January, I haven't bothered to try to grow my hair back to its previous length. I don't like how thin it looked and styling it just looked like a modified combover which I don't want. So in a weird way, it's been liberating having it look kind of buzzed. It's obvious I'm thinning, but I'm 38 so that's not so unusual. And thinning causes a lot less weird looks than a combover full of Toppik.

 

The main problem now is the length I'm keeping my hair in the back. You can see the scar if you look closely and it's exacerbated by some shock loss. For FUE, Shapiro recommended I contact Dr Cooley since he's located much closer to me geographically and has a good reputation.

 

What I'm wondering now is, if it's possible to just give up on trying to fill in the mid-crown area and just using whatever FUE can be harvested to fill in around the donor hair so I can just keep my hair shorter. Has anyone done this? How many grafts were able to cover the scar well?

 

(BTW, I would love to ask Dr Cooley directly about this, but I have called 6-7 times in the last week and have not gotten returned messages and have only gotten voicemail and busy signals).

[Spanker]

It really depends on the scar and how well you want to cover it. Is it a 2m scar or a 6mm scar?

 

You hair in your latest blog does look natural, so that is good.

 

You must have poor density and laxity to get such few grafts. I don't know if I remember seeing a regular poster with such few available. I feel like I have the greatest donor density but I have killer laxity, so I should have plenty more available. You must have gotten a double whammy.

 

Anyway. I think it looks good short.

[Mickey85]

FUE into normal skin requires alot of skill. FUE into scarred tissue requires even more. I would look at Doctors who have had experience and successful results with FUE into an FUT scar and wouldn't let location be a factor at all.... Sorry about your results from Dr. Shapiro...

[multiplier]

Finally spoke with the nurse at Dr Cooley's office. She said they had a lot of experience using 300-ish grafts to fill in people's scars with FUE, for people who go that route. She also mentioned ACell and PRP for maintaining hair going forward. Will try to have a consult there in the next few months and report back.