Balding Blog

This young man went to a clinic that clearly didn’t know what they were doing. His hairline is almost down to his eyebrows, less than 1 inch. Every hair in the frontal hairline that is too low will have to be removed, hair by hair. He will probably be scarred as well. This is a very costly repair. and it will take some time to see if he can get all of these hairs out. As soon as I saw this, my mind wondered into the type of people who can do this type of mutilation to a young man that just wanted to look better. Worse, they are probably doing this over and over again. I blocked out his face to preserve his dignity. He posted this on Reddit. I wonder if this could be a photoshopped photo, exaggerating it to get comments.

I had an FUE transplant a few years ago and I’m not real happy with my hairline. My hairline is a cm or two lower than I’d like, it doesn’t match my temples and it’s a bit low for how thin my hair is. It would look more natural if it were a bit higher.

Has anyone dealt with this or have any suggestions? I’m shaving a bit off of it right now but it certainly looks a bit off as the hair shaft is just shaved. I saw a transplant specialist and they suggested that if I plucked those hairs it would scar. Did she mean that it would show the scars from the implanting of those hairs I plucked? Cause when I have tried plucking before it wasn’t very noticeable to me. Would plucking be a good option? Where do I find a laser if that’s the best option? Do I need a specific laser for scalp? Any other recommendations? Thanks for any advice.

I tried to search this in this subreddit but didn’t find anything with “pluck” or “hairline too low”. I saw a thread or two that looked similar but there were no comments. Through the search though I found out plucking may spur hair growth in the plucked area though?

Hairlines that are placed too low at a hair transplant are a real problem to fix. If you laser the hairs to move it up, there could be scarring seen at the point where each hair follicle was placed as the skin of the graft could be depigmented by the laser and result in a whitish dot. This is particularly a problem the darker your skin is, less of a problem if you skin is very white. The key it to be absolutely sure that you are your surgeon design the hairline so that it is never too low. To high is easy to fix as it can be brought down, but to low, there is little that can be done.

I will tell you what I think. The design of the hairline is terrible, the multiple V-shaped protrusions of the hairline is absolutely abnormal. In addition, the crusting is terrible and the patient was never instructed on how to take care of his hair transplant after the surgery. Imagine, walking around looking like this?

How did the doctor decide to do such a transplant? The answer is that they did not want to make a straight hairline and maybe he did not know how to do this. This saw-tooth hairline is most certainly as bad as a straight hairline. A feathered hairline is what you see in a non-transplanted person. Just look at any woman or man’s hairline and you will see that there is no such thing as a hairline, just a place where a bare forehead transitions into hair with a “no-hairline hairline”. Below is an example of just one of over 15,000 surgeries we have done creating feathering hairlines. As you can see, this man (below) does not have a hairline at all, just a feathered transition from his forehead to a full head of hair.

(NOT NHI patient)

Hairlines like yours is easily fixed even with limited donor hair remaining. I have repaired and balanced hairlines like yours in people with depleted donor areas because it often does not require a great deal of hair. Sometimes, hair can be obtained from behind the hairline (mid-scalp) as a donor source. ?

If you are under 25, the drug finasteride might reverse it, especially when combined with topical minoxidil. These drugs work best on young men. If you are over 25 and did not have a response to these medications, a hair transplant is a perfect solution.

Hairline revival possible? from tressless

Hairline after 7 months of minox from tressless

From time to time we treat patients that will then refer other family members. Both the man below and his brother had hair transplants, and they’ve both been just delightful. Jokes and humor abound during the surgeries and the follow-up visits. Such a good natured, fun person to be around. It took 4 surgeries spaced over a few years, but he met his hair restoration goals and is excited about the results. I am too!

Click photos to enlarge.

After a total of 4539 grafts:

 

Before:

 

Update:
I should’ve explained the case better in the initial post, so I’ll attempt to do that here.

The before photos that are posted above actually reflect far less hair than the pictures indicated. The patient’s hair is fine, so each hair shaft has less bulk than an average person with medium weight hair. The hair thinning went back some 5 inches beyond the leading forelock shown in the picture, but I originally decided that just advancing the hairline would suffice without going back to the thinning area. The entire forelock disappeared after the first procedure and he had more hair loss behind the area that was originally transplanted, so the second procedure was done to thicken up much of the forelock area which was lost.

The original plan that was created brought the hairline down considerably. It took two procedures (3288 grafts total) to get him what he wanted and to fill the area behind the site of the original transplant. For the patient that is taking the drug finasteride, rarely some additional hair loss may occur after the first transplant, as was the case here.

He is a bit of a perfectionist and the two other smaller procedures (553 grafts and 698 grafts over a year apart) were done to deal with some more hair loss behind the transplanted hair. He also wanted to put some more grafts in areas where he thought additional hair would help.

The frontal hairline should be created with only single hair grafts to produce a “no-hairline” hairline which means that the forehead transitions to a full head of hair without seeing a hairline.