All Donor Scars Are Not Created Equal

Donor scars are a big concern for men and women exploring hair transplant options. Just the thought of an unsightly post-procedure scar is enough to push patients toward more expensive follicular unit extraction (FUE) procedures, or no procedure at all. This trend has produced an unfortunate result: Traditional strip donor procedures are getting portrayed in a negative light, often showing disappointed patients with unsightly scars.

Simply put, this is not the case.

Not all donor scars are created equally. Below is a letter from Drs. Nusbaum and Rose, lead surgeons at the Hair Transplant Institute of Miami. In the letter, Drs. Nusbaum and Rose address the misinformation surrounding traditional “strip donor hair transplant” and the results they produce.

In the past year, Miami Hair Institute has been honored by having 3 Grammy Award Winners and several television and film personalities as patients. Interestingly, half of them chose to have a strip procedure.

We invite you to read the letter below to learn how strip donor hair transplants can be performed with optimal cosmetic results.

Dear friends:

The Hair Transplant Institute of Miami is one of the first centers worldwide to utilize the ARTAS physician-guided robotic system, which is the latest technology for follicular unit extraction (FUE). To date we have performed over 175 cases with the Artas Robot and are thrilled with the results. The ARTAS procedure creates multiple tiny “dot” scars in the donor area as an alternative to the linear scar that is produced by strip harvesting. While we always strive to offer state-of –the art instrumentation and techniques to our patients, we want to emphasize that we also perform the strip procedure in a significant percentage of our patients and make recommendations as to which procedure is best strictly upon the individual characteristics of each patient.

Unfortunately, advertisements for FUE portray the strip procedure in a negative light showing obvious and unsightly scars. We wish to emphasize that these are not our typical results with the strip procedure and Dr. Rose has spent many years focusing on techniques to produce optimal cosmetic results in the donor area. Dr. Rose developed the “Ledge Closure”, which coupled with his meticulous surgical technique; creates a very thin scar with hair growing through it. Many of you who have had strip procedures in our clinic know that the scar is difficult even for a hairstylist to find. In fact, many of our patients are able to cut their hair down to the equivalent of a number “two” guard on the clippers. The advantages of strip harvesting are the ability to harvest a larger number of grafts in one procedure and also, that there is no need to completely shave the donor area so that your hair covers immediately after. If repeat sessions are done, the previous scar is removed so that you will always have only one, fine scar line.

As you know “pictures are louder than words” so we have included several photos of our strip donor area results for your evaluation.

Warm regards,

Drs. Nusbaum and Rose