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9 months post FUE, lots of stubbly little hairs haven't grown


baldiebrit

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I had ~2200 FUE grafts in February earlier this year. The results are somewhat "Meh" - have more hair than before but is somewhat sparse and transparent on top, definitely not my ideal state and I'm considering another surgery with the same doctor.

One strange thing is I can feel lots of small stubbly hairs in amongst my longer hairs. Almost like the transplanted hair is still in place and not growing. I spoke with my doctor earlier this week and he says this does happen - some get 'stuck' and for me it's a small percentage so not impacting my overall result too much. 

However, I can feel a lot of these stubbly hairs over the transplant area and have a few questions:

1. Are these failed grafts or should I expect them to eventually grow out?

2. Would it help if somebody was to carefully pull these out with Tweezers to (i) accelerate the chance of them growing out and (ii) because I don't love the feel of them (* not too worried about ii - I can live with the feel if that's the best thing to do)

3. Does this indicate that a future surgery would likely have a similar problem?

I searched around and couldn't find anything about this situation - any articles or posts about this would be great to share with me, thanks!

Thanks in advance

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Leave them be and wait.  I had some that went static like that but eventually grew.  Not sure it took 9 months for me but everyone's different.

4,312 FUT grafts (7,676 hairs) with Ray Konior, MD - August 2013

1,145 FUE grafts (3,152 hairs) with Ray Konior, MD - August 2018

763 FUE grafts (2,094 hairs) with Ray Konior, MD - January 2020

Proscar 1.25mg every 3rd day

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Can you post pictures?


I’m a paid admin for Hair Transplant Network. I do not receive any compensation from any clinic. My comments are not medical advice.

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21 hours ago, baldiebrit said:

I had ~2200 FUE grafts in February earlier this year. The results are somewhat "Meh" - have more hair than before but is somewhat sparse and transparent on top, definitely not my ideal state and I'm considering another surgery with the same doctor.

One strange thing is I can feel lots of small stubbly hairs in amongst my longer hairs. Almost like the transplanted hair is still in place and not growing. I spoke with my doctor earlier this week and he says this does happen - some get 'stuck' and for me it's a small percentage so not impacting my overall result too much. 

However, I can feel a lot of these stubbly hairs over the transplant area and have a few questions:

1. Are these failed grafts or should I expect them to eventually grow out?

2. Would it help if somebody was to carefully pull these out with Tweezers to (i) accelerate the chance of them growing out and (ii) because I don't love the feel of them (* not too worried about ii - I can live with the feel if that's the best thing to do)

3. Does this indicate that a future surgery would likely have a similar problem?

I searched around and couldn't find anything about this situation - any articles or posts about this would be great to share with me, thanks!

Thanks in advance

Okay, finally someone has posted the exact same situation that happened to me.  I am 16 months post op and still have these stubbly hairs that have not grown. I contacted Dr. Arocha this last summer and he assured me they would grow, well, they are not growing and I believe these are failed grafts. Now whats interesting is that its only on one side and my other side is fuller, no stubble. This stubble in my opinion is due to technician error as I had 2 techs working on me, one on each side. I might be wrong but there really is no other explanation. Now, I don't want anyone to take away from Arocha as I think he is one of the best in the business and he did not implant the grafts, the techs did. I still plan on visiting his office for a follow up and have him explain why i have this stubble that has not grown only on one side. Hope this helps but I can tell you at 9 months this stubble will not grow if it hasn't by now.

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18 hours ago, Melvin-Moderator said:

Can you post pictures?

I will try but I don't think it will be easy. The stubble is really hard to see with the naked eye in amongst my hair so be hard to get a shot that shows it. I'm gonna consult with another Doc. 

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3 hours ago, Betterhair said:

Okay, finally someone has posted the exact same situation that happened to me.  I am 16 months post op and still have these stubbly hairs that have not grown. I contacted Dr. Arocha this last summer and he assured me they would grow, well, they are not growing and I believe these are failed grafts. Now whats interesting is that its only on one side and my other side is fuller, no stubble. This stubble in my opinion is due to technician error as I had 2 techs working on me, one on each side. I might be wrong but there really is no other explanation. Now, I don't want anyone to take away from Arocha as I think he is one of the best in the business and he did not implant the grafts, the techs did. I still plan on visiting his office for a follow up and have him explain why i have this stubble that has not grown only on one side. Hope this helps but I can tell you at 9 months this stubble will not grow if it hasn't by now.

Appreciate you sharing your similar story - my instinct is these are failed too. Hard to imagine that a healthy root would hold that old hair for so many months :/

Have you tried pulling some out? My doc that performed the surgery said they would grow in and that pulling them out should make no difference either way. I'm tempted to pull out half from one side of my head to see if there's a notable difference. 

I'm already planning to consult with a different doctor. 

What are the possible cause of failure in grafts? Technician error might be one  - what else? 

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Obviously the doc will say,"they will grow in", what else would they say, oops, sorry but these won't grow! If i did not have the side to side comparison, I would have different thoughts about the failure , therefore it has to be tech error. Now if this is occurring all over for you, and two techs worked exclusively on their respective sides then it could be improper postoperative care or mishandling/storing of grafts during the procedure. Improper implantation can damage the papillae too hence no growth.

I still have a very good hairline but my stubble side is not as dense. Arocha called me quite often to see how everything was progressing and has offered help with anything i needed, so i'm happy with that part.

Good luck!

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So I had my wife go through my hair with magnifying lenses and tweezers to better assess what was going on. To me it felt like there were many 100s of these hairs and it accounted for over 10% of my grafts - that was how it felt.

 However she was only able to find less than 50. We pulled them out and it doesn’t feel stubble anymore. 
 

I feel better about this situation not, 50 from 2200 doesn’t seem too bad. 

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Glad you feel better about your situation.  Post some pictures in a couple months and include current pictures as well.  Glad you on had an issue with about 50 grafts.  Keep us posted.

I am an online representative for Carolina Hair Surgery & Dr. Mike Vories (Recommended on the Hair Transplant Network).

View John's before/after photos and videos:  http://www.MyFUEhairtransplant.com

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I am not a medical professional and my opinions should not be taken as medical advice.

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I had this happen to me. My doctor told me to pull up with a tweezer lightly to see if they would come up. I had to do this for about 20 grafts. I actually had one graft Finally  fall out after 7 months! 
 

 

Age: 40

Hairloss began at age 23. 

Oral Finasteride 1mg daily since 2006, Topical Minoxidil since 2012. Hair transplant 3,400 grafts 2019. Second hair transplant 2,400 grafts in 2023. 

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  • 3 months later...
  • Senior Member

Not to doubt anyone experiencing this, but I have no idea how grafts would stay in place that long after a procedure without falling out. At the very least, you would think they would fall out once you started vigorously washing your hair like normal at least a month after the HT. I honestly have no idea what the explanation for this would be, but at least the OP reached a fairly rational conclusion in that at the very least, this may have impacted 50 hairs out of 2,200 - which, at about 2-3%, wouldn't make a visual impact either way. 

I am a patient advocate for Dr. Parsa Mohebi in Los Angeles, CA. My views/opinions are my own and don't necessarily reflect the opinions of Dr. Mohebi and his staff.

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FUE surgery by Dr. Mohebi on 7/31/14
2,001 grafts - Ones: 607; Twos: 925; Threes: 413; Fours: 56

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I’ve heard of this phenomenon, I’ve yet to figure out how or why this happens. This would be an excellent question to ask a surgeon. Please post pics, so I can try and get the community an answer.


I’m a paid admin for Hair Transplant Network. I do not receive any compensation from any clinic. My comments are not medical advice.

Check out my final hair transplant and topical dutasteride journey

View my thread

Topical dutasteride journey 

Melvin- Managing Publisher and Forum Moderator for the Hair Transplant Network, the Coalition Hair Loss Learning Center, and the Hair Loss Q&A Blog.

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Not possible to post a picture without specialist equipment and I'd already pulled them out. There was only ~50 hairs so not able to tell if they grew back or expect to see any big change in density. 

Interesting update though - I went in for another round of FUE (3000 grafts) at a different practice. It was such a different experience: the first time they took 7 hrs to do 2200 grafts, this time just ~5 hours to do 3000. They used different equipment so extraction seemed much quicker. 

3 months in and the results are much better after this surgery. The hair has grown in much more quickly, thicker and is notably an improvement vs last time. However, I still have a bunch of short spiky hairs. I'm going to give it a couple of months and pluck them too - but they've clearly not grown and not fallen out. 

Maybe it's an individual thing. I'll see if I can get a picture, but it probably would need special equipment.

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  • 2 years later...
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I also have a lot of stubble hairs that remain in the same state and length as right after the procedure (7,5 months ago).
 

But what’s weird about this situation is that some hairs in the same multiple grafts grew, while the other remained the same or shed..

Could it be that some hairs in a multiple graft survive and others don’t? You would say that the graft itself is alive or not..

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