I am appealing to any experienced FUT professional (doctor or patient) for a favor. I did my surgery on last week and I cannot tell if my doctor (who is highly reputable) did as many grafts as he said. Could you kindly look at the attached photo and give me your opinion as to how many incisions/grafts this appears to you (we focused just on the frontal area)?
Many thanks to any one who gives me some guidance.
If you really want to improve your capacity to know exactly how many recipient sites were made, you should insist that your physician use the Counting Incision Device from Device For Hair. You can see this at Counting Incision Device (C-ID) . This device will cost your physician only 22.00 to use and he can give it to you at the end of the case. This device allows you to know precisely the number of incision sites filled with grafts and it is the only way you can know for certain how many incision sites were made. Of course, if you have a site that is not filled with a graft, then you should not be charged for the graft.
We have found that most physicians are not willing to spend the extra 22.00 to be accurate with their incision site count. While the Physician is making thousands of dollars on your procedure, he appears to be less concerned with accuracy and more concerned with the extra expense. Therefore, you might want to purchase one for your physician and insist that he use it and then give it to you at the end of the case. This way you can be certain what was done.
Don’t rely on the surgery staff to count your grafts or your incision sites. They have no real interest in being accurate and they are often more concerned with what they are going to have for dinner than an accurate graft count. Try sitting at a counter and cutting grafts day in and day out. It becomes routine and monotonous. Over time, the surgery tech’s mind begins to wander and they next thing you know, they have lost count.
Insist that your physician use the Counting Incision Device (CID) so that you can be certain what the exact graft count is.
One important point to consider with the CID is that it is disposable. There is no way to properly sterilize it once it has been used. Insist that the physician use a new one on you and not one that he used on someone else the day before. It really is up to you to insure that you get what you pay for and that your physician use properly sterilized single use CID instruments on your case.
Getting back on the subject of your grafts, there is some elongation noted and many of the hairs appear to be falling over to the side suggestive that they are about to be expelled from the skin and lost in your shower drain. This would not happen one day after a procedure.
Our latest study on body hair transplants involved a bald crown and a small number of grafts from the back, chest, and beard. We transplanted 137 grafts from the back and 65 were growing at one year for a yield of (47%). We transplanted 28 from the chest and 24 were growing at one year for a yield of (86%). Finally, we transplanted 24 from the beard and 15 were growing at one year for a yield of (63%). The cosmetically most significant growth was with beard hair. The patient was trimming all the body hair grafts to equal the length of hair in other regions. This study confirms previous studies where we noted that different regions of body hair seem to grow at a higher yield than other regions when transplanted to the same individual in the same region of the balding crown. The before photos and after photos are depicted in the following photographs.
(Click on the image to enlarge)
Body hair sometimes produces a very significant result, but often times the result is subtle. All individuals should keep this in mind when considering body hair transplants. We continue to recommend head hair first over body hair whenever possible.
If you transplant gray hairs from the body, will they be the same color on the scalp?
Hairs grafted from one location to another do not change their color. Generally, the amount of pigment remains the same, as well. This means that if your hair is brown, the grafted hairs will produce brown hair. If the grafted hairs are white, they will grow white hairs upon transplantation and regrowth. With age, hairs loose their ability to make pigment. Some hairs loose that ability before other hairs. For instance, hairs on the side of the scalp loose this ability to produce pigment sooner than the hairs on the top of the scalp or the back of the scalp. Some regions of body hair produce white hair sooner than other regions due to the loss of pigment formation capacity.
The cells that produce pigment are called melanocytes. When the ability to produce pigment ceases, the hairs will turn white rather than grey. Therefore, the term grey is really is inaccurate. Actually, true grey hairs are extremely uncommon, but they do occur due to a decrease in the am
ount of pigment rather than an absence of pigment production.
Hair also tend to maintain the same diameter as the pre-transplanted area. On some occasions the diameter will be slightly greater upon transplantation and other times the diameter will be the same.
Will stopping to use Nizoral have as dramatic of an effect as stopping Propecia? I know whatever benefits you get from using the shampoo will be lost upon stopping to use it but would it be as bad as stopping Propecia?
I’ve never seen a remarkable result from Nizoral or Minoxidil. I have not seen improved hair growth with Nizoral alone, but it is supposed to work as well as Minoxidil alone. They both stimulate some hair growth and may slow hair loss in some patients. I have seen rare remarkable results with Propecia, but most of the remarkable results on Propecia seem to occur when patients combine both Minoxidil and Propecia. When patients stop any of these medications, they will loose what ever benefit they received from the medication. If your benefit from any one of these medications was slight, your loss will be slight. Most of the time patients simply note a reduction in the rate of hair loss with these medications. Therefore, you can expect the rate of loss to increase once you discontinue any of them.
This class 3 vertex patient has medium caliber, dark brown hair with well above average donor density. Dr. Cole’s treatment plan for this patient was to transfer 740 CIT/C2G grafts into the vertex. C2G is a CIT (non-strip) preparation method where advanced technology allows our surgical team to harvest over 1500 grafts in an 8-hour day, without exposing any scalp. This method gives our patients the option to leave our clinic without any trace of extraction/harvesting in the donor area. The goal of this patient was to improve the overall appearance and density in the vertex that once existed. Subsequent to the CIT procedure, the patient received a small session of micro/mini grafts. The pre-existing mini grafts may require redistribution to eliminate the grafted appearance.
Transplanting too high of a density into a recipient area that is already relatively dense can cause fatal trauma to the pre-existing (native) follicles. High densities placed into an already progressively thinning crown can create a bigger problem than most patients seem to know prior to the procedure. For example, a surgeon transplants 200 multi-hair grafts on a patient who only has a 50 sq. cm. size area of recession, the patient will have a great risk of having an unnatural appearance.
Continue Reading…
