There are ways to conceal hair transplant scars. While surgery does leave scars, they will generally fade with time as your hair grows back out.
Micropigmentation treatments
Micropigmentation treatments use permanent ink to cover scars on your scalp.
An FUE hair transplant
An FUE hair transplant could also graft new follicles into scar tissue for maximum coverage.
The donor site
hair transplants involve harvesting grafts from the back of your scalp (the donor area) to cover thin or balding areas on your head. However, this requires cutting incisions in your skin, which inevitably leaves scarring behind.
Choose a skilled surgeon
Choose a surgeon with enough skill and experience; the scars from your FUT or FUE procedure shouldn’t be visible – though your hair might need to remain at its minimum length to cover them entirely.
Scar camouflage techniques
Even though scars may not be visible, it’s still important to remember them. Grafts implanted into scar tissue have less chance of growing and survival due to their reduced blood supply than normal, healthy skin. For this reason, we suggest scar camouflage techniques like Scalp Micropigmentation (SMP). SMP involves implanting permanent pigment into your scalp that acts like tattooing, thus concealing any scars or bald patches that have developed. It looks more like tattooing than surgery and can be very effective!
The grafts
Skilled surgeons possessing extensive surgical skills can carefully harvest grafts without damaging their roots, which is what your hair transplant surgeon does during a hair transplant procedure. They will employ one or both methods to collect follicular units supporting new hair growth in your new scalp area.
The procedure
Hair transplantation is an efficient and safe method to restore lost or thinning hair, creating the appearance of a full head of healthy locks. However, visible or linear scars may detract from its overall effect and diminish its success. Modern hair transplant procedures tend to leave minimal scarring; however, older techniques may leave visible marks that require camouflaging surgery to help mask under thick heads of hair. Scar camouflage surgery offers another effective way of hiding these scars by making them less visible. Like a hair transplant procedure, this process will involve your surgeon extracting and stitching closed a strip of skin from the back of your scalp before creating openings in scar tissue for inserting grafts and implanting follicles. After installation, gaps in scar tissue will be closed off by cotton and gauze covering. It may take time before hairs begin to grow back from these follicles, but eventually, your scar will blend in seamlessly with surrounding strands of hairs.
The scar
Hair transplant surgery inevitably leads to some degree of scarring. But there are ways to cover up this unsightly side effect and encourage healthy hair growth, which may significantly diminish its visibility. One effective method is the hair tattoo, also known as medical scalp hairline tattooing. This uses pigment injection to fill in gaps caused by scar tissue, effectively concealing it from view. Other techniques, including using steroid injections to thin the scar and debulking it by extracting portions, can make the skin more amenable for hair transplants but may require multiple surgeries before producing cosmetic results that meet your expectations. Recent research demonstrated that transplanting hair follicles into scar tissue led to significant skin and tissue layer changes, evident six months post-transplant. For instance, double thickness increased along with an increase in blood vessels similar to healthy skin layers compared with previous transplantation attempts.
