Doctors on Hair Loss & Hair Transplant surgery.

I heard the tern “Donor Recharging”, what does it means?

CIT donor recharging is a method of preparation where each extracted scalp follicular unit is replaced with a body hair follicular unit. The exchange of these grafts isn’t always one for one but the purpose of CIT donor recharging is to replete the donor area and help the donor area from being too thinned from harvesting with hair transplant. CIT donor recharging also stimulates the production of melanin, a pigment in the donor area. Donor recharging allows patients with higher degrees of hair loss to maximize their scalp hair donor supply and fill-in the absence of extracted follicular units. The results with donor recharging are subject to the same limitations as BHT and results cannot be guaranteed. CIT donor recharging results vary from patient to patient and the appearance of the results is unpredictable.

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Rechargeable donor area ?

Donor After 6,000g Harvested with donor Recharging

Tags: appearance, bht, cit, donor area, donor recharging, follicular units, Grafts, hair transplant, patients, pigment, results

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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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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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Tags: donor area, Grafts, hair transplant procedure, hair transplant surgery, high density, inflammatory response, recipient area, shock loss, transplant shock

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I had hair transplant procedure a week ago and I’ve note that the hair is still growing in the grafts. Does this mean the hair has been accepted and that it will continue to grow?

Following hair transplantation hair in the grafts will continue to elongate for about 10 days. Some of this may be continued hair growth, but it also reflects a move toward anagen effluvium. In anagen effluvium the dermal sheath begins to contract and move toward the surface of the skin much like an accordion. This shortening of the dermal sheath will push the bulb of the hair shaft toward the surface of the skin. Therefore, some of the elongation of the hairs is not due to growing, but rather due to a contraction of the dermal sheath toward the skin surface.

Once the dermal sheath contracts, the hairs will either begin to shed on their own beginning in two to three weeks after the transplant. Some of the hairs will continue to rest on the surface of the skin for a prolonged period of time. Eventually the scalp skin will either begin to form a wall around the resting, non-growing hair, or the scalp will form a pustule or pimple like reaction that will eventually burst and the non-growing hair will exit the skin with the exudate from the pimple or cyst like structure.

It is probably a good idea to minimize the number of the cyst like structures that you get because they represent unnecessary inflammation. Inflammation may not always be a good thing. In theory inflammation might sometimes lead to an autoimmune response toward one’s own hair and this in turn may compromise future graft growth.

In order to minimize inflammation, we generally recommend that patients begin removing non-growing hair fragments beginning three weeks after the hair restoration procedure. The best way to manage this is to aggressively wash the scalp with soap and a wash cloth. Non-growing hair will come out easily like removing a pin from a soft stick of butter. Growing hairs on the other hand must be plucked and it takes a good bit of force to accomplish this.

Sometimes hairs do continue to grow following a hair transplant without ever going into the resting phase, but it is unlikely that you will see more than 10% go into the resting phase. It is far more likely that the hairs will shed. Occasionally hairs almost shed, but then continue to grow. We can easily recognize these hairs because they have a dark tip that is coarse followed by a narrow constriction that is of lighter color. This is followed by a gradual darkening of the hair shaft and increase in hair diameter once again. We call these hairs that exhibit signs of this trauma pol pinkus hairs and they are a sure sign of recently transplanted hairs that have continued to grow.

Tags: anagen effluvium, cyst, dermal sheath, dr. john p. cole, Grafts, hair diameter, hair growth, hair restoration, hair shaft, hair transplant, hair transplant surgery, hair transplantation, inflammation, non growing hair, patients, pimple, resting phase, scalp

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