With FUT hair transplant, does the donor area grow back hair or is that permanently gone?

Question

My hair is thinning at the front and in my temples. I'm interested in a FUT procedure and want to know how "permanent" hair transplants are and also want to know what happens in the donor area? Does that hair ever grow back or is it permanently gone? If permanently gone, does the hair in back just appear thinner? Thank you!!

Young R. Cho, MD, PhD · Answer

Thank you for your question.  With follicular unit extraction, those follicles are permanently gone from the donor area.  So you are thinning the donor area.  Fortunately, you can tolerate quite a bit of donor transplants before you can visibly see the effects of transplanting follicles from the donor region.

Jae Pak, MD · Answer

Your donor hair will not grow back from where it was taken.  Think about hair transplant surgery as moving hair follicles from one location to another.

Prima Tossaborvon, MD, MSc · Answer

The concept of hair transplant is to MOVE permanent hair from the donor area to the problem area. So, the hair that is removed will not grow on the donor area but the recipient area instead. With the FUE, the donor are might be thinner by 10-15%. If you go with the FUT, the donor area will not look thinner.

Kapil Dua, MBBS, MS · Answer

The skin bearing hair which is removed in FUT for harvesting grafts is removed forever. The hair do not grow back as the same hair are then implanted in the bald area. The hair in this area are not under the effect of the hormone DHT and tend to last for a long time...

Greg Williams, FRCS (Plast) · Answer

In any hair transplant procedure the hair is removed from the donor site and transferred to the recipient site. With Strip FUT there is potentially a non-hair bearing linear scar which can sometimes be disguised by a trichophytic closure method. The donor zone is not thinned out with this method but is with FUE, and progressively so the more times harvesting is done. Hairs that are transplanted will last as long in the recipient area as they would have in their donor location. If they were taken from the safe donor zone and don't have DHT receptors they will last until old age at which time they might deteriorate from a non-androgen dependant mechanism.

Ryan Welter, MD · Answer

In FUT transplant, the donor area that is to be transplanted is surgically removed as a linear strip and then dissected into individual hair units which are transplanted to the top of the head.  Because all of the hairs in the strip from the back of the head are moved to the front, they do not grow back in the donor area since they are now in the recipient area.  In FUE transplant, hairs are extracted individually from the back and placed in the front.  In these surgeries, pieces of tissue can be left behind in the donor area which sometimes do grow back, although not always to the same density as before surgery.  Most often, none of these hairs grow back unless only micro grafts are taken which is not the normal procedure.  The use of cellular therapies such as PRP and stem cells has helped enhance the surgical aspect of FUE tremendously, promoting growth factors that would otherwise be dormant.

Omeed Memar, MD, PhD (license suspended) · Answer

The strip removed is closed in a straight line.  If there is tension on the line,  the scar that forms can widen and there would not be any hair in that scar.

Michael Meshkin, MD - Account Suspended · Answer

The hair that is harvested for transplantation whether it is done by FUE or FUT technique will be removed and relocated to the thinning areas.  However in FUE you may experience general thinning of the donor area after the procedure.  whereas in FUT, if done right by an experienced hair transplant surgeon using the latest technique, your own hair should  grow from the donor line and and eventually the scalp will stretch and appear no different than before the surgery.

William Rassman, MD (retired) · Answer

Once hair is removed with either the strip surgery or the FUE surgery, the hair is permanently removed and will never grow back. Essentially, hair transplantation takes hair from one part of the scalp and moves it permanently to another part of the scalp

Sheldon S. Kabaker, MD FACS (retired) · Answer

Since the beginning of my experience in hair transplantation (1970) , there has always been the need for the patient to understand that more hair is not created by any  hair transplant process. Existing donor hair, chosen for its potential  propensity not to become bald,  is moved to another place where it can provide cosmetic coverage. The hair that is is transplanted does not regrow in the donor area whether it is taken by strip, FUE, scalp reduction,  free flap, pedicle flap or any other harvesting method. In male pattern baldness, we are dealing with an increasing demand for a decreasing supply, so it has to be planned wisely. The removed hairs are replaced by disguiseable scars in all methods. The implication that FUE or any other harvesting method yields a scarless donor are is untrue. The donor hair area zone coverage has to become thinner but may not appear so if it is not overly harvestedid and is styled properly.

With FUT hair transplant, does the donor area grow back hair or is that permanently gone?

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