Donor area pain after FUE

[eternaldenied]

Hey Guys,

 

I recently underwent a FUE . I am 6 days Post Op and I feel a burning and pinching sensation in my scalp donor area. Its nothing that I can not bear but on a scale of 1 to 10 , I would rate this pain as 6-7. Is this normal ? I am alittle concerned because its causing me a great discomfort and I have to get back to work in few days from now. With this pain its hard to concentrate.

 

Its worth noting that beard donor area has been absolutely fine with no pain at all.

 

I have sent an email to my doctor regarding this and awaiting a reply from him. Meanwhile I thought I would ask experienced people here in the forum to figure out if this is something I should be worrying about ?

[JohnnyDrama]

Having read into this before, it turns out that experiencing your kind of pain that long after surgery is rare enough, but not unheard of. You may have some 'overactive' nerves that were damaged to some extent (which happens). The nerves sort themselves out and reconnect over time and the pain eases up. Ibuprofen can be quite helpful (400mg I believe).

[JohnnyDrama]

Massaging aloe vera can sooth the donor area too, and taking vitamin B can help to calm the nerves.

 

Again, this is stuff that I have seen experienced FUE guys go through, and not my own experience.

[eternaldenied]

JohnnyDrama,

 

Thanks for posting. The pain was severe enough to made me google on this topic and this is what I found. And I thought FUE was painless.

 

1. (Link removed by moderator)

 

2. http://www.hairrestorationnetwork.com/eve/142085-terrible-pain-donor-area-after-fue-procedure.html

 

I get the exact same feeling as 'keeping-it-short' has described in the post.

 

As it appears ibuprofen does seem to help but I am always cautious about side effects of pain killers;however, I will go get some asap to help me if this pain goes out of control.

 

Hope this pain goes away soon. I was infact hesitating to post thinking people would not believe me if I say I am suffering from pain after FUE ?! This medical science is so different from engineering. We can not generalize a thing.

 

This is definitely something to be aware of.

Edited November 28, 2013 by David - TakingThePlunge

[Hossam]

I am having the exact same pain in the donor area. I had my FUE on the 31st of October and now is day 6 . I have pinching , burning sensations, electric waves sensations, subsides and rises, sometimes itchy, burns to the touch of the skin. The antiseptic that I use seemed to worsen the feeling to the extent that I felt blood rushing to my headto the extent that i ran to o wash it off and it calmed down. The two pains are irrelated One is from within ( The pinching itching etc), which I believe is due to neuro damage and as for the antispectic my doctor just prescribed a new one and he said the neuro pain from within will subside by time. It started day 4 and now is day 6 and i am still waiting for the pain relief.. A pain killer helped me have a good night sleep .. Anyone knows when this will fade out? I was very happy with my FUE but thought it was a peaceful painless process..

[Dr. James DeYarman]

Do either of you know the size of the punch your doctor used to extract the grafts. It would be interesting if the size of the punch would make a difference in post-op pain.

[sl]

Some patients get occipital nerve pain post FUE.

 

I've had it once in all my surgeries only, it comes around day 5/6 post op and is worse at night. I found painkillers, massaging cold aloe vera to the donor helps and took vitamin b tablets. It is a type of neuralgia and usually passes in a week.

 

Punch size for me was always 0.75mm to 0.8mm manual, but maybe the injections more than punching that causes it. As said I only had it once in over 7,000 scalp FUE and never had it on my beard, it really does emanate from the occipital area outwards usually and when I describe it to patients they usually say it is exactly as I describe and all of the above help.

 

Best wishes.

[jbrant]

it comes around day 5/6 post op and is worse at night. I found painkillers, massaging cold aloe vera to the donor helps and took vitamin b tablets. It is a type of neuralgia and usually passes in a week.

 

+1 Had ~2500 FUE recently and the sharp pains about 4-6 days later, which improved significantly at about day 10-12. Kept me from sleeping though the night for several nights as the pain from having the head support it's weight on the pillow was significant. From what I've read people who have had this feel 'back to normal' by about 6 weeks. Hopefully this will be my experience as well.

 

This is probably somewhat more common than known/reported.

Edited November 28, 2013 by jbrant
speling :)

[KhanS]

Hi eternaldenied,

I am in same situation and start having pain 6 day post opt. I am on 7th day and still have pain. pain killers only help for few hour.

Could you please share your experience. How long it take to go away in your case. I am little bit worried about this.

[Badboi]

How bad is the pain and who did your HT?

[Didi]

After my FUE, I had the same pain which started from the 3rd day. Kept me awake at night. Continued for about 2 weeks. Normal pain killers did not help too much. What worked for me was Lyrica, B Vitamins and lots of Aloe Vera gel. I was told this was nerve damage. People with longer roots may be more prone. But inexperienced doctors (worse on motorized punch) may go too deep and damage nerves.

[KhanS]

My pain is on 6-7 /10. i am taking 2 tablets Tylenol 500mg which usually work for 6 hours. This pain was started on 5th day and this is my 9th day post opt. There is no change in last 4 days.

I have done my FUE in India with around 4000 graft.

 

Anyone has the same situation in past. Please share your experiences. I am still worried. Is it possible to have this pain permanent.

 

Thanks for you reply.

[slimhead]

I had my 2500 fue and I'm in my 8th day post. I'm having similar issues of pain in the donor area which started on day 4th. How are you feeling now?

[imnothere]

Same here. Pain started on about 4th/5th day. Started to calm down day 10

 

Its really rather unpleasant, the worse pain of the whole procedure. Kept awake at night.

It gets ALOT worse as the evening draws on. It wasnt really a problem in the day, but after 7pm it really got painful.

Im 14 days out today, and still have traces of it. can still be uncomfortable on sleeping on my back with my head on the pillow - but nothing like before.

 

Top of my head is a bit numb still, but no pain.

 

This is something not to be overlooked with FUE.

[GRIGRIMAN]

My friend,

 

I had the same experience. I was told by my patient adviser that it would disappear by about day 10/ 14 and it did.

[Dr. James DeYarman]

I have been following this post and some questions might be is the amount of donor pain have any outcome on the amount of hair growing. If the patient had a lot of post-op pain did it result in poor result. If so it might be that doctor doing the extraction might have gone too deep resulting in nerve damage and transected hairs. It would be helpful that the patients that have replied to this post with pain also share how the outcome was with the transplant. Good topic.

[slimhead]

I will keep you updated.

I think my pain is due to the anesthesia shots and I could tell that they are located at certain spots. If I press on it and then the pain radiates shockingly. These shots may have touched the nerves and now is on the healing process.

But I can't say for sure that the nerves may have been touched during the harvesting of grafts.

Anyway, I'm hoping for this pain to go away soon!

[zealander]

This seems to be quite a common occurrence by the number of people posting here, my understanding was FUE was painless, hence reason patients were opting away from the Fut Strip procedure, it appears might be painless during operation but not after the locals wear off.

Or does it come down to the expertise of the Surgeon carrying out the procedure, pain is one element that puts a lot of people off, so it well be interesting to hear who is in favour of FUE/FUT ...Of course it is logical and natural that both procedures as the healing takes affect well cause a certain amount of discomfort, but I would have thought FUT would have been the more painful one due to suturing.

 

Interesting topic indeed.

[JohnGage]

Dr. DeYarman,

I believe this type of pain is usually in the donor area only.

[Mickey85]

This seems to be quite a common occurrence by the number of people posting here, my understanding was FUE was painless, hence reason patients were opting away from the Fut Strip procedure, it appears might be painless during operation but not after the locals wear off.

Or does it come down to the expertise of the Surgeon carrying out the procedure, pain is one element that puts a lot of people off, so it well be interesting to hear who is in favour of FUE/FUT ...Of course it is logical and natural that both procedures as the healing takes affect well cause a certain amount of discomfort, but I would have thought FUT would have been the more painful one due to suturing.

 

Interesting topic indeed.

 

Neither strip or FUE are painless procedures. FUE is less invasive but it still has the potential to induce pain. Even something like piercing your eye lobe emits the sensation called pain and that is considered far less invasive than any hair transplant surgery.

[imnothere]

Yes, but i think the issue some people are having with FUE pain (myself included) is the delayed onset and the intensity of it.

Getting an ear pierced would only be very short term pain.

[gillenator]

IMHO, much of the post-op pain in the occipital zone is related to the increased level of inner scalp inflammation and swelling. Even though there may not be visible signs of inflammation to the outer layer (epidermis), it's the level of inflammation in the inner dermis layer.

 

And yes indeed that zone is enriched with nerves and they do regrow with time but it is much longer than we think.

 

Ibuprofen contains an anti-inflammatory agent and does help more so than other over-the-counter pain relievers.

 

Using ice packs can also effectively provide some temporary relief especially just before bedtime so that the chronic nature of the discomfort subsides enough to fall asleep.

 

IMHO, over the counter pain relievers generally are safe as long as you do not overly abuse the amount taken and also that you do not use them along with actual narcotics and those that contain large concentrations of codeine.

 

And to address your concern of the level of pain at this point in time post-op, we all react differently to the trauma just as well as the meds to relieve the pain. Certainly not uncommon.

 

Time passing in itself will help as our bodies go through the healing and repair process...

[gillenator]

One other thing. The larger punch sizes also bring a corresponding higher level of trauma and increased level of inflammation.

[slimhead]

I'm surprised that the pain sufferers are in the minority.

Gillenator, in your experience, how long should this last?

[gillenator]

Roughly 3-6 weeks, on the longer end 6-12 weeks.