Fue question?

[john2399]

Is it possible to shave your head bald after an Fue procedure? Will the white dots still show? Im just curious if i get fue and decide to shave my head down the road, if it will be an option.

[35YrsAfter]

Is it possible to shave your head bald after an Fue procedure? Will the white dots still show? Im just curious if i get fue and decide to shave my head down the road, if it will be an option.

Some patients can and some can't. It depends on how well you heal and your tendency to get hypopigmented scars. When you shave your head, every flaw is exposed. Very few of our patients shave their head. The ones who do, shave the back and sides, keeping the top at about 1cm length. Most of our patients came to us because they wanted more hair and prefer not to minimize the appearance of their hair.

Four major objectives of the top hair restoration physicians are natural appearance, excellent growth, donor preservation and an excellent appearing donor area. Strip and FUE are not perfect solutions to hair loss. Products that promote better healing like ACell are improving the appearance of patients donor areas.

The image below is of a 1cm area where 12 FUE grafts were removed. ACell was used as well as some other healing technologies. I can't see any white dotting looking at the patient in person. This photo was taken 3 months post-op. I can see four extraction sites out of the twelve in the closeup photo. The empty-looking spaces aren't necessarily extraction sites. This particular patient has fairly dense donor hair and the spaces in the donor site are consistent with the surrounding hair. Magnified up, his scalp appears to have less dense hair growth.

-35YrsAfter works at Dr. Cole's office

[topcat]

I would agree it depends on so many different factors that no one can possibly give you an answer and can only tell you about their own experience. My suggestion would be to have only 100 fue extracted in a fairly tight space. Then shave your head one year later and believe only what you see in the mirror. If you are not willing to do this then not only are you taking the risk but you need to bear some of the responsibility. All my scalp fue's were extracted from the sides of my scalp and I have been cutting my hair fairly close to the scalp. There are no visible indications anything was performed. Would be great if I could do the back the same but massive strip scarring prevents me from doing so. Here is a picture of my sides currently.

[35YrsAfter]

Is it possible to shave your head bald after an Fue procedure? Will the white dots still show? Im just curious if i get fue and decide to shave my head down the road, if it will be an option.

The image below represents aligned photos. The upper left photo was taken immediately after the 12 grafts were removed and the bottom right photo represents the donor area 3 months post-op. The second and third images are the first image superimposed over the last image at varying opacity.

From the ACell Website bullet point:
"Constructively remodel site-specific tissues where scarring would be expected".

Hair restoration surgery is moving in the direction of better looking donor areas.

-35YrsAfter works at Dr. Cole's office

[gillenator]

There are in fact many variables. Some years ago when FUE was first being learned and performed in North America and abroad, the surgeons were learning with much larger punch sizes, some over 1mm. Some of the donor areas that I saw were virtually moth-eaten in appearance. Since then, a fair number of doctors have refined their manual extraction skills and subsequently moved to smaller punches.

Also, I noticed that some surgeons for whatever their reasoning was, seemed to over harvest a defined extraction area rather than spreading out the extraction sites to minimize thinning out any particular zone.

In addition, the rate and way an individual heals can also make a huge difference in the post-op appearance. For some, the healed extraction sites eventually resume some normal color and can be hard and sometimes very difficult to locate unless the scalp is completely shaven.

We all have different collagen levels in the body and our overall physiological makeup can make all of the difference in the end. Some heal with obvious dotting and very little blood flow to the scar tissue which can potentially show up and especially on individuals who are fair skinned but can tan to very dark levels.

ACELL is showing more promising post-op results as well IMHO.