CIT VS Other Hair Transplant Techniques
What are the common used hair transplant techniques and how are they different from CIT?
Hair transplant surgery can be done using several different techniques, including old-style plugs, strip harvest, The Cole Isolation technique (CIT), and body hair transplantation (BHT). Plug harvesting is only mentioned for historical reasons; it is a very poor technique and should not be used in the modern era. Strip harvest using only two incisions became popular during the 1990’s, and is still widely used today. CIT is very new, having been used only the past 5 or 6 years, but is beginning to challenge strip surgery in some areas as a procedure with much less scarring. BHT is used mostly for adding hair to scalp hair surgeries, and in patients who have had much of their scalp donor hair removed. Scalp hair is always better, and BHT is seen as a complement to scalp hair.
Hair grows on the scalp in separate units, which are known as follicular groups or follicular units. They contain 1, 2, 3, 4, or rarely 5 or more hairs. During the CIT procedure, a special tool is used to take these hair groups out one at a time. The advantage is that no long incision or wound is made in the scalp, and therefore no long scar results. Also, there is very little pain after the surgery, and the hair grafts come out ready to place in the balding areas, with no trimming needed. Sometimes there are tiny white dots left where the hair s were taken out; these are very small and if the hair is more than ¼ inch long or so, the dots are invisible.
These hair grafts are then placed into tiny slits or holes made by the surgeon into the balding or thinning hair areas; in about 3 or 4 months the first of the “new” hairs begin to sprout and by the end of a year, the full result of the transplant will be seen!
