Thinning Hair | Hair Loss Press Blog

Hair Restoration Transection Rate

Posted by Site_Admin on June 18th 2008 to Hair Restoration information

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!

CIT VS Other Hair Transplant Techniques

Posted by Site_Admin on April 15th 2008 to CIT/FUE (follicular unit extraction)

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!