HAIR TRANSPLANT FORUM

Honestly, not really. As far as who did the work during the procedure, the other doctors did all of the extractions. Dr. Cole did all of the new hair location punches and then his techs put the grafts in.

I did an all BHT with grafts coming from my chest and belly (I have plenty of hair there). The scarring ended up being a lot more noticeable on my chest and belly than I had expected and from the photos of other patients had led me to believe. I understand that people heal and scar in different ways, but it is certain more than I expected and if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have done it.

The grafts were placed throughout my front to back of the top of my head and some grafts were placed into a strip scar in the back of my head from a small prior HT from another doctor. Total of about 1300, I believe. The main thing that bothers me about the hair line work is that when the hairs grew in, they came in at angles that didn't match the natural hairs that surround them. This baffles me as one of the main reason I came to Dr. Cole was because people here and elsewhere raved about his excellent hairline work. I am not sure what happened with my procedure, but I am not as happy as others have been.

I always am intrigued when I read that someone is disappointed with their body hair transplant.

Body hair is very unpredictable. Sometimes it grows quite well. Sometimes it does not grow well. Sometimes the yield is quite high and sometimes the yield of body hair is quite low. There is nothing new with regard to my comments on body hair. Sometimes the result is quite subtle. Sometimes the result is quite remarkable. Sometimes when the result is subtle, patients are quite happy with their results. Sometimes they are not happy when the result is subtle.

When you remove body hair from the chest, the chest can heal with white spots. Sometimes, it will heal flawlessly. You can also see white spots on the abdomen. You rarely see them on the neck or back, but they most likely can occur there, as well. In addition, the legs and beard almost always heal without flaw, but there can be flaws. There is nothing new here in regard to this revelation. i've been saying this to my patients since the first white spot i saw over 6 years ago. Even though you tell every patient who is considering body hair transplants all the limitations, complications, and potential disappointments, and, even though you put all these negatives in the surgical consent form; you sometimes have people who claim they were never told what to expect. As a result they are unhappy and disappointed.

I have not seen any worse scarring on the chest or abdomen over the years when comparing the results from one patient to another. Quite frankly, I am not sure these are scars. Rather, i think they are hypopigmentation and this can occur.

Anyone who has a body hair transplant in my office and then later claims i did not warn them that the growth may be unacceptable or that they might form white spots on their body from body hair transplants is simply forgetting everything they were told or read prior to the procedure.

i've seen it many times over the years with body hair. i tell all the patients that the growth might be poor or non-existent, but they still want to have the work done. Usually, these individuals who complain were the poorest candidates in the first place. They really should not have had a hair transplant done in the first place, but they had it done and now they are left looking absolutely ridiculous because there simply was not enough to finish the job in the first place. They turn to body hair as a last resort and they elect to proceed with this last result even though the probabilities are much less in these individuals because they did not respond well to their scalp hair transplants to begin with. What makes them think they will have a miraculous result from their body hair transplant? Quite simply they want to believe there is hope and they feel that somehow i have miraculous powers to rectify a situation that was essentially hopeless to begin with.

Then there is another group of patients who want body hair transplants. These are the individuals who have plenty of scalp hair, but do not want to touch it. Sometimes, they've had previous hair transplants as in this case. They have strip scars. They don't want any more strips, but they want more hair. They turn to body hair. When they do this, I always tell them that they are at risk of white spots primarily on the chest and abdomen with body hair transplants. I always tell them they are fools to use body hair when they have so much scalp hair. I always tell them that you cannot predict the yield or the coverage from body hair so they should use head hair. I always tell them that you cannot predict the appearance on the hair line if you use body hair so they should use head hair. Sometimes, such in this case, you have a patient who hears all the risks and all the negatives, but then they want to proceed with body hair even though i recommend against it. Now, who is at fault if you tell them the probabilities are not as good and the risks exist with body hair?

Anytime you have body hair transplants on the hair line, you are at the mercy of the body hair with regard to how it appears and how it grows. Some people think that I can control the curl or wave of a hair. I can't. Only God can control this. God and the nature of the body hair determine how it will grow. This is why you should always have scalp hair done on the hair line. Some people don't have enough scalp hair, however, so they turn to body hair. Unfortunately, they are at the mercy of the body hair. There is nothing anyone can do, including myself, with regard to how body hair grows or appears.

I have never allowed anyone who was not fully trained to perform extractions in my office. While I have trained many physicians from around the world, i let them practice their skills in their offices and on their patients rather than on my patients. I don't even let them touch my patients. I have never allowed physicians in training from a foreign country to perform surgery in my office. I have had multinational surgery staff over the years and they have worked on my patients just like surgery technicians work on all hair transplant patients.

I perform all my extractions and have for some time. There is nothing wrong with having someone else, who is fully trained in extractions, assist you with this process. I feel this is totally acceptable provided I am in full control of determining exactly how the grafts will be removed and what instrumentation will be used. As previously stated, however, I perform my own extractions and have done so for a long time. Some day I may bring on more helpers, but it is more likely that I will slow down my practice as opposed to increasing it. I am more interested in properly training other physicians today than I am in increasing my practice volume.

I have a number of helpers and sometimes people get confused about who does what. My procedure is a team procedure and my team is highly trained and skilled. My surgery staff is the best surgery team i have ever seen in all my travels around the world. They have a much better understanding of how to assist in a hair transplant than other surgery teams. This is because they were trained properly from the beginning.

Body hair has a variable degree of growth. Body hair may heal with dark or light spots on the skin from the harvest sites. Body hair may not give you any visible improvement in coverage. Body hair is the worst option for your hairline because it is often more coarse than the desired diameter on the hair line and the hair is going to grow in wavy. you may not be happy with the angle it grows at due to this wave.

Therefore, you should stick to scalp hair. Do body hair as a last resort or not at all. if you are considering body hair, then consider a trial prior to having a larger procedure done because it is much easier to accept a disappointing result from a small number of grafts than it is to accept a disappointing result from a large number of grafts.

There it is stated yet once again. Those who elect to have body hair performed should recognize that this is exactly what i've been saying since my very first body hair transplant back in 2003. Nothing has changed. The best solution for all patients is simply to stick to scalp hair transplants because these are controllable to a much greater extent.

Frankly, I am no fan of body hair transplants because they are so unpredictable. I prefer not to do them. I'd much rather let physicians who don't care if their patients are unhappy with the result perform the body hair transplants. I do care about what my patients think, therefore, I hate it when they get a result that does not meet their expectations. Unlike a physician in California who threatens his unhappy body hair transplant patients with a law suit, I care when they are not happy. Body hair transplants have the highest rate of dissatisfaction of any form of follicular unit transplantation so I would prefer not to do them. Caring, however, does not mean that I appreciate it when someone implies that they were not told that body hair was not a good option for the hairline, that they were not told the results were unpredictable, that they were told the healing would be flawless or "better than they were lead to believe", or that you body hair is not the best or even a good option for the hair line.

The only complaints I ever read about my hair transplant work are related to body hair. It all goes back to the unpredictable nature of body hair transplantation. The only reason I still offer them is because they can change someone's life who is out of other options and out of hope. It does not always happen, but it does occur from time to time. All individuals should have a test procedure, however to see how you respond to your body hair transplant.

Hmmm, well, let me say first off, that I am not looking to pick a fight on-line with you, Dr. Cole. I actually hesitated to respond at all to the previous poster's question. This tread wasn't even about my results, it was about who does the work and I initially simply responded with my experience concerning that. And I thought that was that. Then they asked a simple question, was I happy with my results? And I answered them honestly.

I don't believe I was dishonest in my response and I never made mention that Dr. Cole didn't inform me of the risks of BHT as opposed to scalp hair. I still remember that his words were "head hair is king."

In terms of scaring, I was aware that there would be some scaring and certainly Dr. Cole informed me of this. What I was responding to in my post is that it turned out to be more than I expected with regards to how noticeable it is in terms of white-ness, size of the dot, and the fact that all of the scars are raised. During a consultation, you are not shown a real, live other patient so that you can inspect their scars and photos in a book or on the website only have so much resolution, so you have to take some of this on faith based on limited visual information you are able to see.

With regards to the hair placement, I again was informed by Dr. Cole of the differences in scalp and body hair. I never said I wasn't. And I can understand Dr. Cole's perspective on the body hair being wavy. But my perception is that the are a number of the body hairs placed at such an angle that waviness alone can not account for the angle of incidence in reference to the natural hairs around them.

I am not normally someone who likes to air their "dirty laundry" in public or on a forum such as this. I believe and much prefer that this conversation be a private one that happens between my doctor (Dr. Cole) and myself, but I responded as I know (such as leading up to making my decision on what I wanted to have done and which doctor to use) that people seek out information and experience of prior patients to aid in their decision-making process. Perhaps I could have placed my words a little better in my post, but I don't believe I spoke dishonestly.

I guess what does baffle me a bit is that Dr. Cole mentions in the second to last paragraph that what he does care about is when a patient of his has a result they are not happy with, but he makes no mention of suggesting that this patient contact him to discuss the outcome. In fact, the reality is that I actually made two follow-up appointments after the procedure to discuss my concerns, but both were canceled by his office and another one was never rescheduled. Now, this was not in Atlanta, I am a patient in the Mid-Atlantic area that had my pre-procedure consultations in Washington, DC when Dr. Cole was traveling up here periodically to meet with patients. Both follow-up appointments were scheduled during his later trips back to DC, but both trips were canceled the day before the appointments. I have never been able to get a DC appointment scheduled since. Now, I understand things happen and trips get canceled and maybe Dr. Cole is no longer doing DC consultations, but my making a trip to Atlanta is pretty expensive just to have a follow-up with Dr. Cole, so I have never done it. I just kept on waiting for Dr. Cole's office to call me when he had a trip to DC scheduled like they said they would. They said they had me on the list to call when that happened and Dr. Cole himself said in an e-mail to me that he was planning a trip to DC, so I just waited. That was over a year and a half ago.

Again, I am not one to want to get into this kind of discussion on the web, but Dr. Cole's response seems like he took offense to my post (that was not my intention) and I felt the need to explain myself.

The reason you've had a problem getting an appointment for a consultation out of town is because i have not done any out of town consultation since March of 2008 in the USA. i did some in Amsterdam this past July, but those were the only ones I've done out of town since March of 2008. I've also gradually closed all my out of town offices over the years. The most recent one i closed was in New York. The one prior to that was close to Washington, DC. I may do some consults again in New York and Washington, but I don't have any plans at this time.

Again, I'm really not convinced that what we see with white spots is really scar tissue that creates the problem. The real culprit is a decrease in pigment. We see this on the chest and on the abdomen quite often, but you can take out grafts from the neck and you almost never see anything. I also almost never see any evidence on the legs. I think the white spotting is more of a post surgical inflammation. I think the inflammation is greater on the chest and the abdomen and that we see this expressed by an attack on the melanocytes locally. I also think the hairs add pigment to the skin.

Now if you look at these close ups from the neck, you see no white spotting. If you look at the ultra-close ups you see some capillaries, but no other evidence.

Body hair transplantation is very difficult because we simply cannot predict the outcomes. It can be very frustrating to both the patient and the physician.

I think that if you are not happy with the growth of some hairs, the best solution is to take some out. I can do that for you without a problem. I'm really not sure what to do about white spotting. Perhaps a laser might help reduce the color change.

i think ultimately, the best thing to do with regard to white spotting is to try a few grafts and if you see spots that you don't like, quit before you make too many of them.

let me know if you want to take a few grafts out.