Donor sealing

Bradley

Could anyone comment on the effectiveness of donor sealing and whether it is an option provided by IHTI? There seems to be some debate on this as of recently. Thanks.

forhair

I don't know much about the "Donor Sealing". All i know or can remember is that Dr. Cole tried it long time ago when i started with the FIT and it doesn't work...i'm not sure what is the reason but i think that when you seal the holes , it is good for like 2-3 months after the procedure but it won't hold after that...kind of an illusion.
Also, the holes can become even bigger since it has been stuffed and that made the hole bigger.
We have a compression thechnique and a wonderful healing shampoo that all combined makes the donor area pristine.
Again...I don't know much..i just remember that it doesn't work.
I will let Dr. Cole get you the specific details.

forhair

I just remember that Dr. cole posted something about donor sealing, i suggest you to do a good detailed search on this forum and you will find it.

forhair

Hey Bradly...i did some search for you:)
Here is a quote from one of Dr. Cole's posts:

" I am not a huge fan of donor sealing. donor sealing is simply taking the top section off a graft and putting it back in the donor extraction site. This is just bald skin. It will not typically grow hair unless there is a resting telogen hair high in the dermis that is relocated back to the donor area. Mostly it is simply the top of a graft with hair fragments an no viable hairs. We tried the same thing 3 years ago, well before Dr. A even began doing FUE. we were not impressed with the results.

Placing bald skin plugs back into the donor holes will not prevent any of the potential complications of FUE and it might actually be deleterious. By placing the plug of bald skin back into the extraction site, you limit the ability of the donor extraction site to contract. The space occupying bald skin exerts an outside pressure on the contracting skin that could make the extraction site more visible.

we are well versed in using plugs of skin from our long history in the hair surgery field. Plugs of many sizes have been used for years. Skin grafts of many sizes have been used too. Typcially, we saw that the plug of skin placed into a extracted hole lost its pigment or it became hyperpigmented 15 years ago. Skin grafts do the same thing and this is essentially what the donor sealing is- a skin graft. The primary method of grafting 15 years ago was to cut holes in the top of the scalp and place plugs ranging from 1mm to 5 mm in size. The resulting skin graft was typically lighter or darker than the surrounding area. therefore, donor sealing is nothing new and it offers no advantages. We prefer to allow the extraxction sites to contract and to treat them with anti-inflamatory agents to reduce the risk of hypopigmented spotting or to place body hair grafts into the extraction sites. This offers far better advantages than donor sealing in our opinion. We've tried both and we find our techiniques superior. of course we are open to Dr. A performing a study to test all methods if he likes and then to present his data in a scientific forum. We've evaluated all methods on our own and we have presented our efforts at medical meetings to a large group of physicians. This is what Dr. A should do in my opinion, as oppossed to simply marketing a technique that he claims to have invented even though its a technique that's been around in one form or another for over 40 years. he should also consider showing the results of this effort one year later rather than before the fragments of dead hair fall out. these dead hairs are not going to grow. if they stay in too long they might even create a foriegn body infamatory auto-immune reaction that can lead to a pseudocyst formation. "

Bradley

ForHair - very very helpful...where was this posted? I think there is another forum that would LOVE to hear these words, but i wont post them. Some of Dr. A pics are impressive however especially with the BHT, but of course they are only pics.... drama and sketchy third world country docs appear to go hand in hand...lol.

Heres another question just out of curiousity...how long do you believe it will be before the price of all variations of FUE go down?

forhair

Bradley

thanks for the reply, I was enquiring more about the indistry in general...but I see this as a wonderful start. Will this price remain constant or is this a early marketing tactic to gain patients in the European areas?

I just posted something lengthy and would really like to hear your viewpoint on it when you get a chance...thanks for all your guidance...

forhair

It won't go up...i promise, there is even a chance it will go down in belgium in the future...we are looking to train more doctors so we can take the price down.
More offices are expected to be open in LA and DC. we also looking into NY.
We have a slow progress, the reason is that we try to cherry pick from out of many doctors who are willing to train. Our desire is not to become a multiple locations office that can't be controled in terms of doctors doing a good job...our desire is 3-4 locations over the US and europe with same numbers of doctors that will be well trained and will keep our ethical vision of doing hair restoration with care and best for the patients.
Thank you for your interest.