Author: Dr. William Rassman

The donor area seems to have been over-harvested, in other words, too many grafts were taken from your original donor density. The grafts were also taken too high and too low from the donor area so that these hairs may not be permanent. I recommend you speak with your surgeon.

It is always interesting to know that you are not alone when you are worried about hair loss. You are fortunate that you are in 2020 when the art of the hair transplants is as good as the natural hair growing normally. Had you done it 30 years ago, you would not have been so lucky like Joe Biden (had plugs that were fixed) or Donald Trump (who had a scalp reduction and now is probably bald with a good hair system).

See if you can tell who had hair transplants and who has a hair system from this list: https://www.buzzfeed.com/kimberleydadds/42-celebrity-men-who-are-less-bald-than-they-used-to-be

Your donor area appears over-harvested especially because I see that the doctor went out of the permanent zone, into your neck hair which is not permanent and above the permanent zone on the right side. The area itself, looks like the density has been significantly depleted. Time will tell as you allow the donor hair to grow out.

You have a Class 3 Vertex pattern of hair loss which means that you are losing frontal hair and crown hair. At your age, I would suspect that if you lose more hair, it will not be very dramatic. You could try the drug finasteride (requires a doctor write a prescription for it) or you can transplant it. Transplants will work well for someone of your age and probably you will be stable so after a hair transplant you will just look like you never lost any hair

I’ve been soaking and massaging twice a day per my doctor’s orders. I’m on day 5 now and quite a bit of scabbing has come off, but there’s still some left to go. I’m being gentle and no bleeding at all, so I’m just going to keep at it.

It is tricky to get scabs off at 5 days as the grafts get attached under the scabs so when the scabs come off, the grafts can be pulled out. The risk goes away at the 12th day. Read this article I wrote with Dr. Robert Bernstein: https://newhair.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/mp-2006-graft-anchoring.pdf

You may have been over-harvested or just developed shock loss of the donor area which usually will reverse in 3-8 months. Go back and speak with your doctor about this

This patient had 4,500 FUE grafts and you can see in the photo the difference between the donor area, which is a bit too high, and the normal hair density on the neck side of the photo. The surgery depleted the donor hair significantly. This is caused by either (1) very fine hair or (2) a low original donor density (something that the doctor can measure in advance).

I gave him two choices of hairlines and he selected the lower one and that is what he got.

I think that there is no miniaturization in my hair but the hair seems to be sparsely separated. Could that be true?

Wonderful results. You have possibly used up half of your donor supply or more depending upon your original donor density. From the photos, it looks like you have a Norwood Class 4A pattern and the A patterns are great because it is likely that even if you lost all of the hair in that pattern (a Norwood Class 5A pattern), you would still have enough hair to cover the new balding areas; however, for others who are not so lucky and don’t have a Norwood A pattern of balding, so many grafts placed in the frontal triangle would leave them devastated with not enough donor hair to fill up a Class 5, 6 or 7 pattern. Keep in mind that a Personalized Master Plan is needed to not only treat the present balding pattern with a hair transplant as you have done, but the worst pattern that you might develop so that you will always look normal and hairy.