I am planning to get FUE hair transplant surgery and would like to know how can i be sure that the doctor provide me with the accurate number of grafts i have requested?
There is an excellent way to know how many recipient sites were made, you should insist that your physician use the Counting Incision Device (CID) from Cole Instruments Inc. You can see this at the Cole Instruments website: FUE hair transplant tools. This device will cost your physician only 22.00 to use and he can give it to you at the end of the procedure. 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.
I am a 22 year old female and 6 months ago I moved into a house that is on well water. My hair has thinned a ton, and I’ve been to the doctor to test my iron levels, thyroid levels, and hormones (including testosterone). All the levels are normal. The dermatologist said I might have mild alopecia. I KNOW that is not the case. I had a beautiful head of hair up until I moved into this house. When I pull my hair back I can see through to my scalp. Should I get a Reverse Osmosis water filter? The doctors said that well water wouldn’t cause hair loss, but I have found so much evidence that says otherwise. Please help me, the thought of loosing my hair is consuming my life.
The main thing to do is to first identify the cause of your hair loss.
There are many medical illnesses that can cause hair loss in women. The lab tests you have done are helpful, but usually they are all normal. One should evaluate you for chronic inflammatory diseases such as Lupus, as well. Have your DHEA level checked if this has not been done, but it is usually normal. As you mentioned, iron deficiency anemia can cause hair loss so you should check your ferritin level if you have anemia. You need to do more than look at your iron level if you have a microcytic hypochromic anemia. One should also check for Syphilis, but this is unlikely.
The next step is to have two 4 mm scalp biopsies done. They should be done in the area where you are loosing your hair and they should include intact hair follicles. One biopsy should be for vertical sectioning and the other should be for a lateral sectioning. These should be read by someone experienced in reading scalp hair biopsies such as David Whiting at Baylor.
This will probably give you the diagnosis.
You mention well water. The thing to look for here is heavy metals. These can cause hair loss, but usually this is not present.
Female pattern hair loss is the most common cause and the two biopsies will confirm or rule out this diagnosis. If this is what you have, you should then consider treatment options to include Rogaine for women.
I find this interesting. This is another FUE extraction site treated with ACEll in a hyaluronic acid mixture after 5 weeks. It is still too early to tell if the hair might regrow in the extraction site though I have seen this. It does appear that a single hair is forming in the extraction site, which appear as a black nub. What is interesting is the appearance of a capillary in the skin. These are usually missing following FUE and help lead to the loss of pigment in the extraction site. I’ve done enough FUE to spot extraction sites anytime I look at a donor area even when no hypopigmentation occurs. It is an observation based on experience with FUE. With this donor area, I could not find any evidence that FUE was performed. The red circle is where I would expect a follicular unit to be. The entire donor area looked like this. The black circle is 10 sq mm. I had the dermlite people make this reticule for me.
The long hair after 5 weeks is a result of a completely non-shaven procedure of 1464 grafts. I call this C2G. It is still to early to say for sure because I need more results, but this is an example of what I have seen in donor areas treated fully with ACELL with my method of FUE where I use minimal depth control. The initial problem was treating all the extraction sites with a powder. I overcame this with mixing it in a viscous hyaluronic acid. More recently I have been mixing in a more viscous cellulose. I have a few comparative examples where I am looking at powder, hyaluronic acid, and cellulose. Time will hopefully tell. I think the minimal depth incision technique along with Acell may result in better healing than a full depth incision. Maybe we will see more hair regrowth over time. Maybe not. Still no one could comb through this donor area and find any evidence that a hair transplant had been done. It appears that we really are coming full circle today. Not only have we produced optimal results in the recipient area such that you cannot tell that a hair transplant has been done. Even the trained eye cannot see evidence that a hair transplant was done in the recipient area.
Hair Transplant Detection
Pluggy, easily detectable hair transplant results are a thing of the past according to a new online survey conducted by the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery (ISHRS). In fact, the majority of people who participated in the ISHRS survey could not correctly identify a hair transplant in a series of photos depicting real patients and those who have not had hair transplant surgery.
Less than 22 percent of respondents were able to correctly identify the one female hair transplant recipient from a series of four photos. Similarly, only 65.5 percent of respondents were able to determine the male hair transplant recipient from a separate set of photos.
Hair transplants, when performed using the most advanced techniques and by the most skilled physicians, are virtually undetectable. Hair restoration surgery is the only permanent solution for hair loss, and one that increasingly more men and women are turning to.
The ISHRS survey additionally found that over 90 percent of respondents feel that hair restoration surgery is more accepted today than it was ten years ago. Furthermore, more than three in five respondents reported that having more hair would help them achieve greater career success. Seven in 10 respondents even reported that they would willingly trade a “treasured personal possession” for more hair.
Clearly, hair loss is an affliction that can have a significant impact on an individual’s self-esteem and emotional well-being. With over 50 percent of men and 25 percent of women affected by hair loss in their lifetimes, physicians strive to offer the best hair transplant results achievable and continue to research other possible solutions.
I have many facial hair on cheek,neck and chest, Can hair transplant serve the purpose of removing unwanted hair and on the other side regaining hair on the scalp?
Removing hair from the body and relocating it to the scalp is defined as a body hair transplant. This is commonly done today. There are certain limitations of body hair transplants, however. Body hair does not grow as long as scalp hair or as fast as scalp hair. Body hair often has a lower yield than scalp hair. Body hair may not produce a significant cosmetic result on the scalp in some individuals. On the other hand, body hair can often produce remarkable results in patients. Therefore, it is something that can be tried to produce a cosmetic improvement in patients. I recommend that you have a little transplanted to the top to see how well it grows and how you perceive the result if you are interested in a body hair transplant.
Body hair may also be removed from unwanted areas through a similar method. This will reduce the amount of body hair that you have. Of all the body hair, beard hair seems to produce the best result because it grows faster and longer than other sources of body hair. Beard hair also tends to be thicker and caliber than other sources of body hair so it tends to produce a better cosmetic result in terms of coverage. The negative of beard hair transplants are that they tend to grow in wavy. This can result in a difference between the appearance of your beard hair and your native scalp hair so you need to make sure you like the appearance before transplanting a great deal of it.
One other thing to consider is the formation of white spots where the hairs were extracted. These white spots can occur commonly on the chest and abdomen. They are less common on the back, but can occur there. There are very uncommon on the legs and beard area. It is important to use smaller punches when extracting body hair to inhibit the formation of scar particularly on the chest. With smaller punches, chest scarring is exceedingly uncommon.
