Hair Transplant | Botched Hair Transplant - Please Help

Botched Hair Transplant - Please Help

As the unhappy recipient of three botched hair transplants, I can not believe that I’m thinking about going down this road again, but at this point I do not think I have any other choice. After reading through your website is is apparent that I made a poor choice in picking a surgeon in the past and I’m hoping that I can be helped. I had three hair transplants by Dr. Gary Hitzig in New York. The outcome is disastrous. The transplanted hair looks very unnatural, it is impossible to style normally and the back of my head looks like a road map. I am forced to wear cover up makeup both in the back and on top of my head. Before I had the hair transplant I was not that self conscious about my appearance. I just thought it would be nice to have more hair, but now life is much more difficult for me and I find dating impossible.

Can I be made to appear normal again? I am not asking for a full head of hair. I just want to be able to walk out of the house and feel comfortable in the world again. Dr. Hitzig took that away from me and I have been a little gun shy to seek more surgery after my experience with him.

First, let me say I am very sorry you are unhappy with the results of your hair transplant. I know this can be very difficult to deal with on a day to day basis. Without an actual examination of your scalp and donor area a specific recommendation would be difficult however I will try to give you a general idea as to how I approach such situations.

First and foremost is how natural your hairline looks. Is it pluggy, poorly placed and designed, too low, asymmetrical? If so, then the most important issue to address is hairline repair. This can often be accomplished by graft removal and recycling to thin out a pluggy look and reshape and/or raise the hairline.This alone can result in substantial improvement. Second, is there hair available in the donor area? If so, then during the same procedure, donor hair is removed and used to fill in pluggy and thin areas in the hairline and frontal area. Third, is the vertex appearance. If the vertex has very apparent plugs that are visible, then sometimes it makes sense to remove theplugs, recycle them, and transplant them to the frontal area to make it as natural and dense as possible. Other times, if enough donor hair is available the vertex density can be increased by adding grafts. Finally, we come to the scarring in the donor area. With extensive scarring, it is often difficult or impossible to perform a scar revision. I have found that medical tattooing of the area to match your existing hair color can be quite helpful and reduce the visibility of these scars, while freeing from the task of applying makeup everyday.

Gregory Pistone, MD
Member, International Alliance of Hair Restoration Surgeons