FUE Eyebrow Transplant

Long hair eyebrow FUE hair transplants

Our long hair FUE (follicular unit extraction) hair transplant is a great option to enhance thin, incomplete or absent eyebrows. The hairs that grow are live hairs and are long lasting and natural looking. This technique does not require any cutting or stitching, so scarring is almost non-existent. Pain levels are also brought down to a minimum.

The procedure is done under a local anaesthetic and takes about 4 hours. It is an office procedure and patients can go home to rest after the procedure. The hairs are harvested from the back of the scalp using Dr. Harold’s long hair FUE hair transplant technique.

Only the finest single hairs are used and they must match as closely to the existing eyebrow hairs as possible. For example, if the patient’s eyebrow hairs are fine, we will harvest fine hairs from the scalp for the best results.

We plant between 180 to 250 hairs per side, depending on the existing condition, the desired goal of the patient and the design of the new eyebrow. We use the a special set of instruments to plant the delicate grafts, creating the densest possible growth. For curly hairs, the hairs are rotated to achieve the optimum direction of growth for the most natural result.

Some critical aspects of an eyebrow transplant

The downtime of an eyebrow hair transplant is about 5 days. The eyes will appear swollen for 24 hours. The swelling quickly subsides and there may be mild bruising lasting about 5 days. During this time, the redness will also resolve. As the wounds dry up, it appears as tiny crusts or fine sand on the eyebrow area. This will gradually flake off with the recovery hair spray provided. By day 5, most patients can go back to work. Some may wear black-framed glasses to camouflage any residual redness or swelling. Pain is minimal and most do not need any pain-killers. There is some pinkness of the transplanted area that may last 4 to 12 weeks, depending on individual healing variations. Eyebrow pencil or mascara may be used 3 weeks after the procedure.

The new hair is obtained from the back of the scalp, where hair continuously grows for several years. This is different from eyebrow hairs, which usually only grows for 4 months before shedding off. As such, we always counsel our patients of the need to trim and shape their transplanted eyebrows once a week. This is considered a small price to pay for a fuller set of natural eyebrows.

Most patients are very satisfied with their eyebrow transplant, but about 10% may request for a second eyebrow transplant 9 to 12 months later to further dense up the eyebrows or to refine the shape further.