Dealing With a Bad Hair Transplant

Large grafts are probably the number one cause of bad hair transplants. This is mostly due to the fact that older hair transplants from the 70’s and 80’s used large sections of donor hair that made the scalp look artificial and clumpy. But even recent hair transplants can use grafts that are too large if the hair restoration surgeon is not experienced and careful.

To understand why over-sized grafts lead to bad hair transplants it’s important to understand something about the scalp. Our scalps have what is called visual redundancy. The human eye cannot even see hair loss until it goes over 50%. For this reason the new donor hair should not exceed 50% but earlier transplants and their modern equivalents had large grafts that provided way too much density. Too much density? Certainly that shouldn’t be a problem for somebody who doesn’t have enough density. But donor hair from the back and sides of the scalp are not inexhaustible resources. And often the plugs are so large that there isn’t enough donor hair to fill the areas between the plugs….leaving the hair restoration surgeon with two options. Spread that “plug” look throughout the scalp evenly or fill the areas between the plugs and leave other areas looking sparse.

Luckily scalps that suffer from this can usually be fixed. Of course it depends on the size of the grafts and no result is guaranteed, but procedures like Follicular Micro Grafting are perfect for getting a more natural look with large graft transplants. By filling in the gaps and not removing the current plugs you can avoid further scarring and provide a more functional and healthy look to the scalp. Something you probably wanted the first time you got a hair transplant.