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A woman has pubic hair growing on her face from a crotch skin graft, and doctors are confused

botched pubic hair skin graft
Although Coombs went through most of her life with the pubic hair-growing patch, she recently decided she wanted it fixed. E!

  • On Monday's "Botched" episode, a woman named Crystal Coombs had pubic hair growing out of her face from a groin skin graft she'd previously had in the area to repair a dog bite, People reported.
  • "They did the surgery, and then the hair started growing," Coombs told "Botched" doctors Terry Dubrow and Paul Nassif.
  • Dr. Hadley King, a Manhattan-based dermatologist, told Insider the groin was a strange choice for a face skin grafting procedure and that she'd never heard of other cases like Coomb's.
  • Surgeons should take skin color, texture or smoothness, hair growth, and thickness of the skin into account when choosing the best place to take a skin graft from, according to King, because that skin maintains its properties even after being transferred to another body area.
  • Visit Insider's homepage for more.
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On Monday night's episode of "Botched," a show on E! about cosmetic surgery mishaps and how to fix them, a woman named Crystal Coombs came to the show's doctors because she had pubic hair growing out of her face. It was growing from a skin graft she'd previously undergone in the area to repair a dog bite, People reported.

Coombs said the dog bit her when she was 9 years old. She was rushed to the emergency room, where a plastic surgeon was tasked with repairing the chunk of skin the dog took out of her cheekbone area.

"He suggested the skin graft, [and to] take it from the groin. They did the surgery, and then the hair started growing," Coombs told "Botched" doctors Terry Dubrow and Paul Nassif. Coombs said that she never recalled her surgeon at the time saying pubic hair growth would be a side effect of the procedure. 

Nassif was confused about the surgeon's reasoning for using groin skin for the skin graft, a procedure where a patch of skin is removed from one part of the body and transplanted to another area to repair a wound. 

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Dr. Hadley King, a Manhattan-based dermatologist, also told Insider that the groin was a strange choice for a face skin grafting procedure and that she'd never heard of other cases like Coomb's.

"When skin is grafted, the donor site skin should match the recipient site skin as well as possible because the skin will maintain its characteristics," King said.

When a surgeon is repairing a nose wound, for example, they typically take skin from the inner part of the outer ear because that skin is porous and has little to no hair, just like a nose, King said.

Surgeons should take skin color, texture or smoothness, hair growth, and thickness of the skin into account when choosing the best place to take a skin graft from, according to King.

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Skin maintains its properties even if it's transplanted to another body area

King said she wasn't surprised to learn Coombs grew pubic hair on her face from her groin skin graft because a full-thickness skin graft, or a skin graft that includes all layers of the skin from the donor site (as opposed to the top two layers needed for a split-thickness graft) "includes hair follicles, so the hair that was growing before the skin was moved will continue to grow after the skin is relocated."

No one specified the type of graft Coombs had during the "Botched" episode, but according to King, there are plenty of areas from which a surgeon could've retrieved a skin graft for Coombs, whether she had a full- or split-thickness graft.

King said split-thickness skin grafts are often taken from the butt, thighs, arms, back, or abdomen, and according to Medline Plus, full-thickness grafts are typically taken from a person's chest, back, or abdominal area, not the groin.

"It's best to match the skin as well as possible, and it's also advantageous to take it from a relatively discrete area so that the donor site is not a significant cosmetic concern," King said. "In this case, the donor site is discrete but because of the hair it's not really a great match."

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Coombs could use hair removal techniques to temporarily fix the pubic hair growth

Although Coombs went through most of her life with the pubic hair-growing patch, she recently decided she wanted it fixed.

"I, at first, thought it didn't affect me. Since having my daughter, I really started to get conscious of it. She's six months, and I'm worried about the kids she'll go to school with" teasing her, Coombs said.

Dubrow and Nassif ended the episode by explaining that they could try to help Coombs, but fixing the pubic hair-growing patch would be complicated because of its location on her face.

"That skin graft is very close to critical anatomic structures like the nose, the cheeks and the eye, that if altered, even a little bit, can change the entire shape of the face, and look very deformed," Dubrow said. 

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In the meantime, Coombs could remove existing hairs with laser hair removal or electrolysis, King said, but those methods are only temporary fixes.

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