A London hair transplant clinic claims to offer U-FUE hair transplant procedures that are undetectable immediately after the procedure, even by the patients nearest and dearest.
Under normal circumstances, the patients hair must be shaved prior to the procedure to enable access to the scalp. Hairs are then moved from the donor site to the recipient site, where the wound around the follicle heals, and the hair is hopefully retained by the scalp.
The issue is scarring, as cutting the hair short before the operation begins exposes the scalp and makes the resulting scars much easier to see. The strip method produces one or more large lineaer scars at the back of the head, whilst more advanced FUE (Follicular Unit Extraction) techniques leave multiple small round ‘dot’ scars at the back of the head, and usually some uneven ‘pitting’ scars in the recipient area.
This ‘undetectable’ technique claims to make the surgery harder to identify, as instead of shaving the hair beforehand, donor hairs are extracted at full length. The hair is then cut and inserted into the recipient area as a follicle with a much smaller hair protruding.
There is no doubt that this adaptation represents a great advancement for many patients, as the evidence of surgery is much harder to discover whilst the scalp is going through its healing process after the procedure. To call it undetectable however, is a little misleading. We do not believe the clinic involved are deliberately falsifying information given to clients, but the wording does allow the possibility of people getting confused about exactly what can be achieved.
Scars are an inevitable by-product of hair transplant surgery. Although techniques have advanced considerably since the old plug surgeries of the 1970’s, with even strip harvesting becoming rarer by the day, scars are still unavoidable given what we currently know. Any incision of the skin, especially one as invasive as used during hair transplant surgery, is going to cause a scar. Skilled surgeons using modern techniques can minimise them, but they’re still there and definitely still visible.
What happens in the future?
A hair transplant is not a ‘cure’ for hair loss, in fact nor is our own scalp micropigmentation technique for that matter. After your transplant, you will continue to lose hair as nature unfortunately intended.
This means that over time, the remaining hair you have that is conveniently concealing those hair transplant scars, is only going to get thinner. How will you conceal those scars with less hair to work with? Another hair transplant? How much money are you prepared to spend, and what is you have insufficient donor hair? When you finally admit defeat, how can you shave your hair to avoid the dreaded comb-over with all those scars on show?
There is a revolution taking place in the hair loss industry, with many thousands of men shunning traditional hair transplant surgery in favour of safer, less invasive scalp micropigmentation techniques like ours. Only you can decide which option is best for you, but make sure you do your homework before committing to any form of hair loss treatment.
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