old donor scars

[blazed]

is it possible to harvest the donor area left between scars?Then suture the two scares together to make one scar?

[blazed]

is it possible to harvest the donor area left between scars?Then suture the two scares together to make one scar?

[Bill - Seemiller]

blazed,

 

Actually, what's even better is, as long as you have the elasticity for it, both scars can be removed with a new strip, giving you both extra grafts and a single scar.

 

Consult with a quality physician in person who can evaluate your donor laxity and determine if both can be removed.

 

Best wishes,

 

Bill

[blazed]

thanks Bill thats what i wanted to here and what i meant to ask.

[blazed]

Im planning to have an online consultation with doc Rahal.Then go see him in spring time.Good or no good?

[Dr. Michael Beehner]

It's all well and good to talk about taking out both scars and the hair in between and ending up with one scar, but in reality that almost never is possible. When patients have had old "stacked scars," they are spaced apart just enough and with enough hair in the space between the two scars that that overall vertical width cannot be bridged by simply cutting everything out. It will look like one very wide four-lane highway along the side of your head.

A far better way to approach this situation is to leave every one of those hairs between the scars, because you will need them desperately to shingle down over the scar - and instead use FUE in whatever areas you want, including the hair between the scars, and plant FUE grafts into the scar. Another approach is to add tattoo dots along with the FUE FU's to further help camouflage these scars.

Mike Beehner, M.D.

[blazed]

Hi doc The scars in my donor area become unnoticable when my hair around the scars reaches approx 3/8 of an inch. What i wanted to know is if there is a way to utilize any of the donor hair between them.

[Dr. Michael Beehner]

Blazed,

It sounds like you are fortunate in that your scars, even though "stacked" on top of one another, are relatively thin and cover without too much hair length. The problem still remains that, if you remove much of that hair that exists between the "railroad tracks" of two adjacent scars, it has a way visually of merging the two scars (even though they're narrow ones) into what looks like a wider scar. You are much better off having your next strip, if you elect that donor harvest method, taken from on top of the very highest scar or adjacent to the bottom of the lowest scar. This assumes that there is an adequate amount of good quality donor hair in either of these places, so that you don't take hair that may later be lost from the progression of male pattern baldness. I still would caution that the best way to obtain any of the hair between these old scars would be by FUE. I'll attach a photo of a patient I saw recently who had previous work done elsewhere, showing a "stacked" pair of horizontal scars in back. The photo on top shows him with his hair long and the bottom one is shaved. I believe we did FUE in this case. You can easily imagine, looking at the photos, how important those hairs are between the two scars. If you were to take a strip which removed the great majority of them, the scar would appear to be three times as wide, because you brought them closer together and took away the shingling of those hairs in between.

Mike Beehner, M.D.

[blazed]

Thank you doc.What you are doing in your office on this day only you can answere!!!!!At this time i am old to transplants but new to methods.Im not even sure what fue and fuet are?I guess what im trying to ask is can by fue or fuet any donor hair be safly removed from between the scares to increase the amount of grafts in total.When i learn how to download pictures i will send them to you.I had a little accident with a christmas present and was forced into shaving my entire head.It exposed my donor scars as well as the grafts on my head.Thank you again doc

[sonnyboy11]

Well, I am certainly not going to try and counter the statements of an M.D! But I did have a similar situation with a couple of stacked scars and some hair in between. Ok, maybe not quite stacked as they were offset from each other a bit. I did have a strip pulled and the scars pulled together into a single scar. So far, I can see there is improvement in the overall appearance of the donor area (it does not look as thin in that area anymore). However, I did discuss some a possible FUE procedure with my doctor (Pak) if I ended up not satisfied with they way things looked.

 

So, there is already some improvement for me and I am pretty critical so it's not just me hoping it looks better- it does. But long run I may consider some other options if I think the donor area is not quite how I want it. I suppose it all depends on the patient and I know everyone is different.