Reverse Hair Transplant?

[Approach]

I am Norwood 7 even though I had transplants 25 yrs ago.  I'm out of donor hair.  Are there other options I may have, for example shave my head?   (The long the long-scar on back of head will show though.)   Do guys sometimes remove transplants, then cover up the scars with it?  Any other thoughts?

[gillenator]

A high quality hair system is your best option based on your stated case.

[Gatsby]

You could shave your head and have SMP for the scars or as  @gillenator has stated go for a hair system. 

[baddecisions]

Sorry for being direct but, please, no ink in the head, no wigs/hair systems.

Look for someone who is capable of and willing to punch out the grafts on the recipient and put them in the scar. Maybe some bht will be required as well. It will not be perfect, may leave some minimal scarring (if done properly) but you will look natural.

[Berba11]

You’re probably not out of grafts. What I would do is look to have grafts from your beard, chest and/or scalp donor placed into your FUT scar. That’s going to give you a much better chance of wearing your hair very short and not having to worry about the scar being too visible. 
 

Can you post a picture of your donor area?

[Gatsby]

@Approach can you share pics of your donor? 

[BaldReaper]

just shave your head and move forward

[Al - Moderator]

If you have a lot of beard and/or chest hair then you have several options.

1. You can use some of that to transplant grafts into the scar, so it won't be so noticeable if you shave your head. However shaving probably will still leave the scar noticeable if you're shaving down to nothing, but it may tend to be less noticeable. Transplanting into a scar has a way of giving back some color to the skin due to the grafts being placed there, so it blends better with the surrounding skin.

2. As in #1, transplant beard/chest grafts into the scar, but then also transplant additional beard/chest grafts to the top. You already have some transplanted hair growing, so you may be able to get away with just a light covering scattered between the current transplants with a bit more in front. If done right, that will enable you to buzz it short without completely shaving it. That will cover the scar better too as the transplanted hair there will be growing out of it.

3. If you have a LOT of beard and chest hair you could really go for it and try to transplant as much of those grafts as you can to get a decent amount of hair in the front half to give you enough to comb and look a lot better than it does now.

 

Edited February 5 by BeHappy

[Approach]

5 hours ago, Berba11 said:

You’re probably not out of grafts. What I would do is look to have grafts from your beard, chest and/or scalp donor placed into your FUT scar. That’s going to give you a much better chance of wearing your hair very short and not having to worry about the scar being too visible. 
 

Can you post a picture of your donor area?

All the hair on top of head is transplanted hair from 25 yrs ago

[Berba11]

28 minutes ago, Approach said:

All the hair on top of head is transplanted hair from 25 yrs ago

So you've got plenty of hair all across the donor area to have grafts extracted very spaced apart (meaning you won't really notice any dot scars even at shorter hair lengths), which could be used into the FUT scar. Plus you can always use beard hair as well. You typically don't need many grafts to mask a scar (depending on how big the scar is and how many grafts survive in the scar). But it seems to me you have that option.

I don't think you'd have enough grafts to do very much with the recipient area so if you were leaning towards buzzing the hair down and moving on, I'd personally get as many grafts into the scar as possible and see how that goes. You could also take hair from the recipient area and go into the scars as well as another option but I don't think it really matters which way round you do it.

[Stoner]

I would still give meds (oral fin or dut and topical or oral min) a shot and re-evaluate at 12-18 months. You may be positively surprised by the result and this would help all the other options previously mentioned (beard & body hair, SMP etc). I would also try getting in touch with Dr Zarev.