Safe and Unsafe Donor Zone - Where is the limit?

[Bigmac]

The topic of the Safe Zone for harvesting hair was of particular interest. Here are a few of Dr Feriduni`s slides.

The area associated with being safe to harvest and transplant

Fue produces scarring.

Some interesting points on the below slide.

The doctors discussed the safe donor zone in great detail. The conclusion was there really is no safe zone but a safer zone. What this means is the hair extracted from the area marked in picture 2 has a far greater chance of survival and growing forever compared to hair extracted outside the marked area.

The reason the donor zone should be classed as the safer area is that over time the majority of peoples hair thins out, this applies to the donor area too. This means that x amount of grafts extracted from this area will eventually die, no studies have been complied to measure this.

This probably explains why some patients have a great result, then over time they experience more thinning in the transplanted areas. Others factors could also attribute to this such as losing more native hair naturally, meds losing their effectiveness.

 

[Bigmac]

This topic should be discussed more as it could prevent a lot of stress if it happens to you.

 

[janna]

I really like this topic and the presentation made by Dr. Feriduni. It's important and I think that with all the new clinics opening up, there's not enough planning and thought process going into donor management.

 

[Mickey311]

I`ve consulted with many clinics over the years, what I have found is clinics that harvest higher and lower than the safe zone usually insist the patient take Finasteride. The reason I believe is they want the hairs that are at risk to stay as long as possible with the aid of Finasteride. Once the drug begins to lose its effectiveness these hairs will slowly wither away over time.