Doctors on Hair Loss & Hair Transplant surgery.

If I’m not totally sure to have a hair transplant, what are some good resources to help understand the process?

Understanding the process is of the utmost importance when considering hair transplant surgery. Many men have wound up with less than desirable results due to lack of information and/or the sales techniques of unscrupulous clinics.
The forhair.com website is a good place to start. There is a voluminous amount of information there with which a person may educated themselves about hair transplantation, the various methods of “harvesting” the hairs for transplant, and also about expectations and outcomes of the procedure.
The non-surgical treatments for hair loss are also discussed at length; this website has more written information that most potential candidates could read in many weeks. The information is truthful, in depth and free from the slick marketing techniques of many clinics.

Check these Hair transplant information and resources:
Forhair.com–Hair Transplant Information
Forhair Hair Transplant Forum
Hair Transplant Guide
IAHRS.ORG
Hair Transplant Information on this site:
Hair Transplant On Hair Loss Press

Tags: clinics, dr. john p. cole, forhair, hair loss, hair transplant, hair transplant forum, hair transplant surgery, hair transplantation, iahrs

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Are many hairs transected as the surgeon makes extractions on the donor during hair transplantation?

Good question. The answer is that it varies wildly from surgeon to surgeon and clinic to clinic. We take great pride in having achieved some of the lowest transection rates in the hair transplant world.

Our transection rates with CIT are averaging less than 3% which is very low compared to the industry as a whole. Some published papers on FUE and other single graft harvesting techniques cite transection rates as high as 50 to 70% from their own clinics! This is a travesty, and should be mentioned only to be condemned. .

Single blade strip surgery has average initial transection rates (in our hands) of about 2%; again, it is all over the map depending upon the experience and expertise of the surgeon, and at least for strip, upon the experience and expertise of the surgical staff. One of the most important variables is the surgical technician staff; after the strip is harvested, the tissue is processed by these technicians. Their transection rates can range from 5% up to as much as 50% of the grafts, and is dependent on their training and skill. This is why quality control in a hair transplant practice is so very important (but unfortunately is not the norm by any means). In our practice, CIT has a lower transection rate <3% than strip; in strip cases, our technicians’ transection rates, plus the transection during harvest, averages 5%. So for us, even this relatively low strip transection exceeds our even lower CIT transection!
Remember that the training and expertise of hair transplant surgeons runs the gamut, from beginners with virtually no experience to speak of, to veterans with thousands of cases and thousands of quality results under their belts. However, there is one other factor that comes into play, which is standards. A physician may have years of experience, but set the standards in his practice very low. In this situation, sloppy work and poor technique, combined with minimal staff oversight and quality control, may produce high transection rates and other conditions that lead to mediocre results at best, and cosmetic disasters at worst.

We are proud of the high quality and dedication to excellence that we are known for!

Tags: cit, cole isolation technique, dr. john p. cole, hair loss, hair restoration, hair transplant, hair transplant surgeons, hair transplant surgery, male pattern baldness, physician, strip, thinning, thinning hair, transection

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I have a seemingly strange question. Has anyone tried taking advantage of medical donors with hair transplant procedure?

That’s a good question and one that we’ve thought about previously. I suspect one of the big concerns with this would be trying to match the donors. With life and death situation such as kidney and liver transplants, medical insurance will take care of the testing. With hair transplants, the procedure is not medically necessary so most insurance companies shy away from paying for hair transplant surgery. When someone dies, they check their organ donor status. If they are a donor, they are tested. If there is a suitable match in another state, the organs are air lifted to the patient. Such protocol for hair would be extremely expensive. Also, one often has immunosuppressive medications to prevent organ rejection. This would be quite expensive to the cosmetic surgery patient, as well since insurance companies would not pay the fee for on going immunosuppressant treatment.

Tags: cosmetic surgery, hair transplant procedure, hair transplant surgery, hair transplants, medical donors, organs

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When and how does the new hair grow in after my hair transplant ?

Many people ask this question during and after their hair transplant; some actually think the hair will all continue to grow and they will have their “new head of hair” immediately. Unfortunately, most individuals have to accept delayed gratification as part of the transplant experience!

When the grafts are placed in the balding areas, they indeed may continue to grow for a few weeks. However, by about three weeks, the hairs begin to rapidly shed and soon most all of them are gone. The good news is that the follicle cells, the ones that make the new hair shaft that grows up and out, are still lying dormant under the skin.

At about three to four months, the first hairs begin to sprout through the scalp. At first, all new hairs will be finer, and slightly less pigmented than they will eventually be after some growth time. It is important to note that the grafted hairs do not all begin to come in simultaneously; they generally sprout in a “staggered” fashion, which means that each month some new sprouts will be noticed emerging from the scalp, until they all have grown in! Full growth will have occurred, on average, after about 10 to 12 months; full ingrowth may sometimes take a little longer on second and subsequent procedures.

Of course, the full cosmetic effect may not be apparent right away. This is because length and caliber of hair, as well as density, contribute to coverage. Once the hair has grown long enough and each shaft has become thick enough, then the full coverage will be apparent and the welcome decrease in the appearance of thinning and baldness will be noticeable.

Tags: appearance, balding, balding areas, baldness, density, Grafts, hair growth, hair shaft, hair transplant surgery, ingrowth, thinning, transplant experience

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What is the importance of hair characteristics in hair transplant surgery?

These characteristics are significant in that they determine to a great degree how much coverage of the scalp there is, in order to block light. When light is not blocked and penetrates through to the scalp, the appearance is of thinning or balding.

The other big factor here is the density, which is another topic unto itself. The density is the number of hairs or follicular units per unit area (square centimeters or square inches or whatever unit you prefer; the centimeter is the standard for physicians). Although this density usually gets most of the attention when discussing hair loss, hair characteristics are equally, if not more, important.

First let’s look at color. At first, one might think that the darker the hair, the better the coverage. This is generally not correct. Lighter hair usually goes with lighter skin, and the tow together tend to mask thinning very well. Darker hair can cover well, but in the case of poor hair transplant work (pluggy looking, or larger graft on frontal hairline) they may stand out much worse than lighter hair. We will discuss color in more detail when we discuss contrast.

Curl is another very important factor in coverage. Generally speaking, curly hair provides coverage in proportion to the degree of curl (i.e., wavy hair gives better coverage than straight hair, curly hair better than wavy, very curly better than slightly curly, etc.). This has to do with light blockage as well. The curlier the hair is, the more it creates a meshwork of sorts (kind of like a thatched roof) which “stands up” a little bit off the scalp and keeps the light from penetrating to the scalp.

Contrast has to do with the difference between hair color and skin color. The closer to each other the hair and scalp are, the better the coverage. In a way, this “fools” the eye of the observer into not noticing the decrease in density. If a person with blonde hair and light skin loses 50% or his or her density, they may appear much less affected than a person with equally light skin and jet black hair. In this case the dark hairs of the second example are highlighted against the light skin and it shows the sparseness of the hair. The person with the blonde hair reveals very little difference between the hair and scalp, in other words, the observer cannot detect where the hair leaves off and the scalp begins.

Last, let’s consider caliber. Thicker strands of hair provide more “hair mass”, which is a term doctors use to describe the total effect of length times caliber. The more hair mass in a given area, the better the coverage. This makes intuitive sense. Imagine covering a hut with logs. If you place 20 logs as a roof, which will give better coverage, skinny logs or big round ones with large diameters? Of course, the bigger ones, so the thicker hairs do the same over the scalp. And remember, what appears as thinning or balding is simply the appearance of light shining through to the scalp.

Tags: balding, blonde hair, caliber, curly hair, diameter, hair characteristics, hair loss, hair mass, hair transplant, hair transplant surgery, scalp, shaft, skin

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