I have had 4 strip surgeries. I’m looking to lower my hairline and build up my temples, using FUE. Also, I want to fill in my crown. I don’t have enough head donor for all of this.
I want to use head hair to build up the hairline, and beard and body and some head hair for the crown. Also, I probably want to “re-charge” my donor area with some beard hair, to allow maximum extraction of head hair, initially.
Here’s the dilemma: The doctors who I am thinking of for hairline/temple work are not the same for beard/crown work because the don’t do beard hair.
I don’t mind having two separate procedures, but am I losing an opportunity to “re-charge” the donor area simultaneously when the donor hair is extracted from the head, or should I do my head/temples and simply do the crown work and re-charge at a later date?
Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.
Body hair can be used to help hide strip scars with varying degrees of success. Realistically, there is no viable donor recharging available with today’s technology. Lowering your hairline is risky and after four strip surgeries, you’re pushing your luck.
Unfortunately, the process of “recharging” the scalp donor with beard and/or body hair while simultaneously extracting scalp hair is a myth. I’ve yet to see one case where this worked, and it’s been talked about off and on for a decade at least. It sounds great, seems like it would work when considering the possibility, but reality has proven otherwise.
Thanks for the reply, Joe. I’m aware that things that sometimes seem intuitively obvious don’t always actually work. In this case, I’m a little surprised by your info.
We know that beard/body hair will work on the scalp, even if the graft survival rate is closer to 50% vs. 90%+ for head hair. So, are you implying that if “re-charging” is NOT done simultaneously, it has a better chance of working?
Perhaps the extraction of head hair creates a lot more trauma making the simultaneous implantation of beard hair iffy, compared to creating a spot to implant a graft in the usual manner?
Or do you think that implanting beard grafts in the donor area simply don’t work as well as, say, the crown, period?
Your further comments are appreciated.
So, are you implying that if “re-charging” is NOT done simultaneously, it has a better chance of working?
I’m saying that the evidence points to that being the case, yes. Why? I can’t answer that. But look at the historical record where this has been discussed. I think I recall seeing one or two macro photos showing a body hair placed into a fresh extraction zone but I don’t recall ever seeing a donor area that had any quantifiable improvement with this approach. My only guess as to why is because the extraction process is more traumatic than you are led to believe and this trauma prevents the fresh scalp donor extraction area from being conducive to body hair survival. BHT is already more difficult and traumatic for the graft to begin with, so maybe this extra issue puts the probability of success into the “unlikely” category.
I do remember when this idea and theory was first floated around on the interwebs, and I believe I said then that if it were possible, then this would be a regular approach, thereby allowing us to see regularly occurring 10K graft cases and more. This has yet to happen ten or twelve years later.
That was before beard hair was discussed as a donor source like it is today and we’ve learned that beard has a higher success rate, generally speaking, compared to chest/back/leg, etc. But I do feel that placing hair into the donor after it has healed from the initial extraction session(s) is a better approach but even then, it is a crap shoot.