HAIR TRANSPLANT FORUM

This result is beautiful.

Cheers!

There are many keys to a soft hair line. First, you must make the incision site at the proper angle. if it is too vertical, it will not fall over properly. a more vertical incision will grow downward rather than upward. Second. every graft has a down side and an up side or a belly and a back side. The graft must be placed with the belly down. you cannot put a graft in on it's back becasue this will result in hair that grows vertically. Next, you must have a nice transition zone. you cannot create a wall of hair on the hair line. the transition must be from a bald forehead to density. Along the way, you need to see some skin. If you go from zero to sixty kilometers per hour in one second, the viewer will immediately recognize that something is wrong. he will be thrown back in this chair and exclaim that looks like a hair transplant. Finally, it is very important to have a transiton zone composed of the proper number of one and two hair grafts. every patient is a little different. Some need more one hair grafts than others. It is important to build a wide zone of one hair grafts first, then a zone of two hair grafts. This will allow for a soft natural transition.

Thank you Dr. Cole, you did an excellent work on golfhair.
This results will enacourege many norwood 5-6 with limited donor area to choose fue.
Golfhair, can you answer my question above? your case is very interesting...

To Eurostar:

I chose FIT because it is is much less traumatic than strip. Remember, with FIT they remove each graft individually from the donor area and then place it on the scalp. With strip they are chopping out a section of skin and then removing the grafts from the section. FIT is much easier and the recovery time is more or less immediate.

As for pain it is minor as they give you injections. I had no pain post the procedure.

Best of all is the fact that I do not have a scar which you would get with strip. I can have a hair cut to whatever length I wish.

Thanks golfhair...again, i really like your results!, i can't help imagine if i take all this 5000 grafts and put them in a norwood 3 like me
I'm happy to hear that the surgery was painless and smooth, It is very encouraging to know that...

A strip procedure is far more invasive. A strip procedure involves a deep incision into the subcutaneous fat. This will result in a scar that develops the entire length and depth of the incision.

The enclosed photograph shows scar formation in a patient who came to us with a wide scar that required a scar revision. You can see remnants of the scar in the lower margin that extend very deep into the underlyinig fat. One arrow shows the depth of the scar tissue on the lower margin. The other arrow shows the residual scar tissue on the lower margin. This scar formation shows just how invasive a strip procedure is. The scar tissue is a whitish gristle that is hard in nature.

You can see intact hairs at the upper margin that are not as deep as the scar. The longer arrow at the top of the incision shows the depth of the hair follicles. The hair follicle extends only 5 mm deep to 6 mm deep. A FIT incision is only 3 mm deep. This 3 mm depth is approximated by the shorter arrow on the upper margin. As you can see, a strip procedure is far more invasive than a FIT procedure. We have dissected areas that previously had a FIT procedure and we did not see any residual scarring.

Was the "Donor area very close up" photo taken before or after surgery? And if it was taken post-surgery was this before or after the 2000 body hair augmentation to the donor area that Dr. Cole mentioned? Thank you.

the photo of the donor area was taken before the augmentation. it was taken after over 5000 FIT grafts were taken from the donor area, but before the second FIT procedure. We did not augment the donor area with the first 5000 plus FIT procedure.

drcole wrote:the photo of the donor area was taken before the augmentation. It was taken after over 5000 FIT grafts were taken from the donor area, but before the second FIT procedure. We did not augment the donor area with the first 5000 plus FIT procedure.

Thank you Dr. Cole; I just wanted to confirm that this was indeed an "after" photo of the donor area before I commented. It is really nice to see such a good quality closeup of a donor area on a nearly shaved patient after harvesting and healing. The results are stunning really. I cannot see any visible scarring in the donor area. It looks as if he never even had any hair harvested from this area. No one will mistake him for a shotgun blast victim!

Appearance of scarring in the donor region is an important issue for those considering a FIT procedure, like myself, that may wish to have their hair cut very short on occasion.

Do most FIT patients of similar skin shade in the donor region achieve such a great scarring result (or lack of appearance of)?

After I looked at these photos I said, "wow!" Congratulations Golfhair and Dr. Cole & staff.