Body Hair Transplant for Repair of Donor Scar
We have discussed different methods to repair hair transplant donor scar in the past. There was an interesting article in Dermatologic Surgery Magazine last months on repairing the wide donor scar using body hair by Dr. Robert Jones from Oakville, Ontario, Canada. 
Dr. Jones has reports revising a wide donor scar after previous hair transplant surgery by body hair transplant. He uses chest hair removed by follicular unit extraction method using a 1mm punch device. He has transplanted the grafts directly into the scar area so follicular unit grafts did not have to wait more than a few seconds.
Three months post-op follow up pictures were shown with some hair growth on transplanted donor scar with some reasonable coverage. The growth of the transplanted hair is not completed before 6-8 months after hair transplant and it is expected to see better coverage by the end of that period.
I have had a presentation on revising neurosurgical scars using hair transplant with follicular unit transplantation in the annual meeting of International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery in 2007. In that meeting, I presented four patients who underwent hair transplant surgeries to revise the widened scar of their neurosurgical scars. The results of the hair transplant on those patients were great and the appearances of the scars were completely vanished in all four of them.
Again the current article by Dr. Jones proves that hair restoration could be used effectively for improving the appearance of scalp scars. My personal preference and the method that I use in our Los Angeles hair transplant clinics is to use scalp scar rather than body hair unless patient’s donor area is completely depleted and there is not enough harvestable hair on the donor area. In those cases body hair transplant could be an alternative if patient have good quality body hair for a body hair transplant through FUE (Follicular Unit Extraction).
Tags: body hair, body hiar transplant, Canada, donor scar, fue, hair transplant, los angeles hair transplant, Ontario, wide scar
October 17th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
I received a moderate hairtransplant, about 1200 follicles. My question is. Can a person purchase someone else’s hair follicles? If so what are the pros and cons? If not why not?
Thank you,
October 18th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Hi Mike,
Thanks for your question. Hair is like any other organ (heart, kidney) and could be transplanted from other people. However, the recipient of the organ transplant, need to stay on anti-rejection medications that are generally not without complications. In fact the use of anti rejection medication tends to suppress the immune system and can create many serious side effects.
If it was for heart and kidney that people die without them, transplantation could be justified, but for hair transplantation it is not really practical. There are reports from the people who had hair transplants from other people while on anti rejection medications for a previous kidney transplant with some success, however it is not something that I recommend to my patients.
November 14th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
It is not out-of-date information? Because I have other data on this theme.