Thin Hair in Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) Hair Transplant Donor Site: Shock Loss or Over Harvested?

This question, from a member of our [tag]hair loss[/tag] social community and discussion forums, was answered by a staff physician from Coalition hair transplant clinic Shapiro Medical:

I am very concerned about my donor area. Recently I got a 860 graft [tag]follicular unit extraction[/tag] ([tag]FUE[/tag]) [tag]hair transplant[/tag]. Unfortunately,my donor is not what I expected, it looks very thin in my opinion (with just 860 grafts taken out!)

I think there a three options:

1. They over harvested the donor area (to much grafts on too small area)
2. Shock loss
3. It is normal and will get better soon

Photos are pre-op and one month post-op. What do you think?

From your post-op pics, it does not appear that the donor was over harvested. The FUE sites actually look appropriately spaced. Even though there was not a large area of your donor used for the procedure, you had a relatively low number of grafts removed in one session. If you had a greater need for grafting, in my experience, we could have yielded 2500+ grafts over your entire donor area in the span of two days.

I believe the choices you gave of #2 and #3 may be more in line with what is actually occurring. Some people’s follicles are more susceptible to shock loss than others. I believe this is what we are seeing. It may take a few months before the donor area returns to normal.

Some [tag]hair restoration[/tag] physicians advocate the use of [tag]low level laser treatment[/tag] ([tag]LLLT[/tag]) and/or [tag]Rogaine[/tag] ([tag]minoxidil[/tag]) at this time to try to speed up the [tag]hair growth[/tag] in the donor.

How is the recipient area in front responding?

-Shapiro Medical
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David
Editorial Assistant and Forum Co-Moderator for the Hair Transplant Network, the Coalition Hair Loss Learning Center, and the Hair Loss Q & A Blog.

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