botched eyebrow transplant Archives - Marc Dauer, MD Hair Transplant Doctor Los Angeles

Greetings,

Today I will show a case I was recently sent. A young child under the age of 10 had an accident and part of the eyebrow and face had a laceration that needed a plastic surgery repair. The plastic surgeon repaired the wound and told the parents that he could correct the defect of missing hair in the eyebrow by transplanting hair into the eyebrow. The photo below shows the results of the eyebrow transplant. Unfortunately the grafts were placed way above the skin causing what is called “cobblestoning” meaning there are bumps throughout the eyebrow because of incorrect placement. In addition, the grafts were placed sticking straight out. Finally, too few grafts were placed to correct the defect. Bottom line, the result is unsightly and much worse than if nothing at all had been done. This is yet another unfortunate example of a plastic surgeon not respecting the art of eyebrow transplantation and performing a procedure he was not trained in and should have been doing. Unfortunately now there is a problem and the grafts probably need to be removed, the skin resurfaced, and a corrective eyebrow transplant performed.

All the best,

Marc Dauer, M.D.

Greetings,

I recently saw a patient in consultation that had an eyebrow transplant procedure performed in the office of a very well known physician. The issue is that the physician did not perform the procedure. In fact, the physician is not trained in hair transplantation at all and does not even perform hair transplant or eyebrow transplant procedures himself. What he did was have a medical assistant perform the entire procedure, from beginning to end, and the physician did not perform any aspect of it. The medical assistant performed the harvest using the neograft automated FUE machine and then created the recipient sites and placed the grafts. The patient ended up having 2 procedures like this.

The entire procedure was an epic failure. Only about 20 hairs grew from both procedures on each eyebrow and the hairs that grew were growing straight out from the skin in unsightly directions. The donor area in the back of the head was also significantly scarred from the attempted extraction of many hundreds of hair follicles.

In addition, the patient also had an eyebrow tattoo performed in the same physicians office prior to the 2 eyebrow transplants which created even more scarring in the eyebrow.

To have a medical assistant perform the entire hair or eyebrow transplant procedure is not only unethical, it is against the law in many states including California. Unfortunately this represent a growing trend in the field of hair and eyebrow transplantation. More and more companies are pitching “automated” devices to harvest hair follicles and selling physicians who have no experience in the field with a new device to increase their revenue growth. Their pitch is that you don’t need to know anything about hair and eyebrow transplants, just buy the machine and the company will supply per diems technicians to do the rest. This is the result of that.

I performed an eyebrow transplant procedure on the patient and placed approximately 300 follicles per eyebrow. The results are shown a week after the procedure. In a few months I will updated with follow up photos. Because of all the scarring from the previous eyebrow tattoo and botched eyebrow transplants, the patient will have less growth yield than someone with healthy tissue. She should still have an excellent result and I already told her she should expect to have a second procedure in 9-12 months to increase the density.

This should be a lesson to anyone considering hair or eyebrow transplants. Make sure you go to a physician who specializes EXCLUSIVELY in hair transplants or if you are going to have an eyebrow transplant someone who does many of these procedures, and that they have dozens if not hundreds of results to show you. Just because the physician is skilled in another field does not make them an excellent hair or eyebrow transplant surgeon.

All the best,

Marc Dauer, M.D.