Eyebrow Transplant: How Soon Will Cobblestones Appear?
On January 17, 2013, I underwent an eyebrow transplant procedure.
I received 300 grafts per.
brow and most of the crusting is gone.
What I am noticing now is small bumps on my right eyebrow at the graft site.
I am still itchy and tender in the area.
My left brow doesn't feel the smoothest but I don't see bumps, anywhere.
The bumps are located at the beginning of the right brow and I don't see them anywhere
else on the brow.
I hope it's simply part of the process and will smooth out.
Thank you for your question!
So you underwent eyebrow transplant and you got approximately 300 hairs per brow and you're
describing some cobblestones and bumps and you expressed a concern.
Well, first of all, I think it's very important that you actually speak to your operating
surgeon about these bumps and understand if the doctor is concerned.
I'll share to you my approach to eyebrow transplant and what these bumps mean when patients come
and see me for my procedures.
First of all, eyebrow transplants involve a technically different style of procedure
than its typical hair transplant on the scalp.
These eye brow hairs have to be placed in an angle and they have to be placed in a very
fine way so that there isn't much tissue around the hairs.
Imagine putting 300 hairs.
Typically you can have anywhere depending on the volume of hairs.
You can have hundred to 2 hundred hairs placed in a very small space.
So what I do in my practice, when I do eyebrow transplant, I use a material called extra
cellular matrix and this material is for wound healing.
Now I have been using the same material to reverse or to treat male or female pattern
of hair loss as an injection.
And what I do in an eyebrow transplant is I actually use the same material in an injection
form as well as part of the healing process so that it accelerates the healing so that
the hairs take a little faster.
And something for you to understand is that when you have any transplant and the hairs
are close together or the hairs have been placed closed to existing hairs, well there
is a chance for trauma or injury to the existing hairs.
So what I found in my practice since using the extra cellular matrix is that the amount
of shock loss or loss of hair soon after surgery as well as collateral hair loss has diminished
considerably.
In fact, we are seeing thickness in the eyebrows such that the hairs that weren't thinning
and in many people who come for transplant in the eyebrows.
It's because their eyebrow hairs are thinning and so they found that those hairs there existing
starts getting thicker and of course the hair that we transplant also take and in some cases
we can actually see clinically appear to be more.
So there might be something like duplication that comes from this technology and in this
technique.
So to answer your question about the bumps and the cobblestones, sometimes the bumps
are related to the size of the grafts and the size of the slit.
So when the transplant is done, if there is a certain amount of skin around the grafts
and is placed into a hole that is a little bit smaller, then sometimes you can get a
bump.
The other times, those bumps can appear to be a little bit different than what's typically
normal if there is a second hair under the skin after the hair was transplanted.
So when the transplant is being done, you're placing the hairs then when you look you see
and you think that maybe that same slit doesn't have a hair in it, you can be putting hair
on top of it over the other.
Sometimes, it is referred to as stacking.
Soon in the end, these bumps have a natural course of just getting softer and smoother
and then the most common cause is just normal healing.
In the beginning or early stages of the healing process, there is something where the body
generates collagen or healing material and the areas can get bumpy.
We find this in any surgery that we do.
We can get it from upper eyelid surgery to face lifting surgery.
Initially, the skin can look a little but bumpy and then with maturation, it will soften
up.
So I think, most likely, if your doctor is an experienced hair transplant specialist
then most likely these bumps are just normal and then you'll just have to wait it out.
Proper would healing for any surgery, although generally it says about 6 months, is closer
to a year when you're thinking technically from a wound healing side.
So again to summarize, speak to your doctor and follow any kind of advice and concerns
that your doctor has if these hairs turn out to be ingrown hairs or bearing hairs.
A lot of times, the body just kind if breaks it out and it goes away sometimes.
They just have to be cleaned up.
So I hope you learned a little bit about extra cellular matrix concepts that we use in would
healing and for hair restoration.
So I hope that was helpful and thank you for your question.