Cutis Verticis Gyrata

Q: Dr. Eppley, I have a mild to moderate case of cvg (cutis verticis gyrata) that has started in the past 6 months. I have 4 very long vertical creases in my skin. Two are very long going from mid forehead to top of skull. What is strange is it doesn’t look or feel like I have extra skin on my head. They just look and feel like long large scars. In the morning apon waking they look like fresh deep scars. And at night they don’t look too bad at all. I saw your article where you discussed an alternative to normal scalp tightening surgery so I wanted to find out more about that. 

A: When it comes to cutis verticis gyrata, no one knows why it occurs or how to effectively treat it. There is not standard proven therapy for it. Cutting them out has been the only treatment that has been proposed in the past and up to the present time. But the scar tradeoff does not seem worth it in most casesand its effectiveness is poor. I have proposed doing fat injections instead to treat what cutis vertices gyrate really is…linear strips of scarred scalp tissue. The goal is to introduce healthier cells, including stem cells, into the very fibrotic scalp tissue.

Dr. Barry Eppley

Indianapolis, Indiana