Hair Transplant | Is It Possible To Have My Hair Transplant Grafts Removed? Will My Head Look Normal?

Is It Possible To Have My Hair Transplant Grafts Removed? Will My Head Look Normal?

I am 28 years old and had a hair transplant procedure of 1800 grafts two years ago. The transplant isn’t really horrible or anything, but it just Isn’t as natural as I hoped it would be. What I really want to do is just have the grafts removed, shave my head and move on with my life. Can this be done? And if so, will my head look relatively normal after?
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If you are convinced that you really just want to shave your head, my guess is that there is a pretty good chance you could make your head look relatively normal. Let’s start with the recipient area. The first thing you should probably do is to closely shave a small area of transplanted grafts to make sure that you don’t have any scars there that would bother you if there were no hair to hide it. If your hair is dark and coarse, you might even choose to pluck a small area of grafts or to use a small amount of chemical hair remover designed for beard hair to really get an idea of what your scalp would look like bald. Assuming you are comfortable with the look and you want to proceed with graft removal, I would suggest laser hair removal. This may require 3 or 4 sessions and occasionally touchup sessions every couple of years, but the advantage is that it is relatively quick and it does not scar. You should understand, however, that it may not work well for blond hair. In that situation, you could consider electrolysis, but this is very tedious and time consuming.

Now let’s move to the donor scar. This could be more problematic depending on the length and width of your healed scar. Some men heal so well and the scar is so fine that there is really nothing more to do for it. However, if your scar is more noticeable, you could consider using follicular unit extraction to harvest grafts relatively inconspicuously from the surrounding donor area and then have these grafts implanted into the scar line to better camouflage it. It should be noted that it is possible for this technique to leave very small 1 mm white dots were each follicular unit was removed. In order to avoid that scenario, you could even have your surgeon extract the follicular units from somewhere on your body if you have enough body hair.

Before you venture down this road, I would urge you to thoroughly investigate the option of possibly getting another transplant, perhaps at a better clinic, and the possibility of using something like Avodart in the hopes of maximizing your chances of regrowth. I have seen numerous men who were originally unhappy with their transplant, that with some extra work, are now very pleased with their hair.

Sincerely, Blaine Lehr, M.D.
Member, International Alliance of Hair Restoration Surgeons
Member, American Hair Loss Association