HAIR TRANSPLANT FORUM

Hi phillipedes262
First of all can you provide me tis doctor website url? i want to see what is all about...

and that to date there have been no studies published showing the viability of FIT/FUE

All i can tell you is that we see excellent growth from FUE, I can make the same claims on strip...I see patients with poor growth from strip that come to our clinic to do the FIT all the time, Does this means that strip doesn't work? we are talking about the surgeon skills here, and that means that if the surgeon skills are not good, then strip or FIT(doesn't matter) will produce poor growth. the same thing with fue...

and also sherri...he says that there is no studies, so how can he claim that fue doesn't produce good growth? if he is doing fue and he feels that there is poor growth , then maybe he personally doesn't have success...if he is not doing fue and he claims that there is no studies then it's his word against ours...but we have excellent proven results on our website from FIT patients,
Actually our practice has the most results from fue in general along with woods.

As always good post Lock...

I've copied the text from the website below. The doctor is Dr. Seager in Ontario, and his site claims he has won the Golden Follicle

here is the text from Dr. Seager's website:

”Follicular unit hair transplantation, dense-packing, and microscopic dissection of grafts have been the greatest developments in the history of hair transplantation. They have revolutionized hair restoration and the efficient achievement of extremely natural results.”

Historically, these were significant developments. We developed them in the early 1990s. This is like saying the automobile was a significant advancement in the development of public transportation. The model T is now antiquated though. We cannot live in the past. We must move forward and continuously strive for a better result. We were innovators in the follicular unit revolution and adopted the technique well before it became popular. We adopted it because it was more natural in appearance. We did not adopt it because it was popular or because it was easier. It was much more difficult to perform, but the results were significantly better. The only physician I know of who adopted the follicular unit approach before me was Dr. Limmer. He did it in 1988. That was before I started doing hair transplant surgery. When I began doing it, I was not aware of what Dr. Limmer was doing, however. In other words, my adoption was not influenced by Dr. Limmer. I did it because it looked better.

”The vast majority of patients who have donor strip harvesting, especially in our hands, have very narrow scars that are easily and totally hidden by the surrounding hair.”

This is a poor statement. Define narrow. In whose mind is a strip scar acceptable? Dr. Seager’s mind or that of the patient? In good hands a strip scar is 1 to 5 mm wide. While everyone hopes for 1 mm, you cannot predict width. The average scar is 2 to 3 mm wide. Bad scars are up to 5 mm wide. If you utilize poor technique the scars can be over 5 mm wide. If you are comfortable with a strip scar that may be up to 5 mm wide, then have a strip surgery. If you are not comfortable with strip surgery, then consider FUE. It is that simple. You must also be aware that you may require a second strip incision scar to obtain over 5000 or over 7000 grafts Via strip. You might even require a 3rd insicion scar. If you are comfortable with this, then have it done. The point is that it is no longer a requirement to have the strip scar. You can have FUE. FUE leaves much less noticeable scarring. You also do not disturb the natural geometry of the follicular donor area with FUE. With strip scars, you pull the lower donor area superiorly. This elevates the growth of the hairs in the lower side of the scar so that they stick straight up. You can never resolve this problem.

”Overly aggressive donor harvesting and/or poor technique and/or poor patient selection have caused some patients to have wide donor scars that are hard to conceal. Even conscientious hair transplant surgeons paid much more attention to the recipient area than the donor area. By harvesting more grafts at one time, they left patients with multiple scars or wider than desirable scars, that could still be concealed as long as the hair was not cut very short. We constantly adapt and improve our method of strip harvesting and donor area management to ensure that scars are minimal. As an alternative, some physicians have developed methods to harvest donor hair without removing a strip of skin.”

There is much truth in this statement. When I did strip surgery all the time, I constantly worked on ways to produce a better scar and to maximize the donor area yield. I pushed the technology to its limit. The gold suture, which Dr. Wolf has pursued, is the only major breakthrough that we did not try. As far as I know, this suture has not obtained FDA approval yet. The gold strands stay in your scalp indefinitely. Are you comfortable with this? There can be a fine line between harvesting the maximal amount of hair without exposing strip scars, and harvesting too much hair so that it is difficult to hide strip scars.

”Different surgeons have different names and slight variations for this technique but we will use the generic term, "follicular extraction", to describe the method in general. Typically, a small punch is used to break the surface of the skin in a 1 mm circle around 1 follicular unit then the graft is pulled and teased out of the opening. The small openings contract and make smaller scars that are harder to see than the scars from donor strip excisions, when the head is shaved or the hair is really short. In fact, however, a larger total area of skin is cut per graft than with donor strip harvesting. There is more total scarring but hundreds of tiny scars replace 1 long (narrow) scar.”

This is Dr. Seager’s perception of FUE. It is not an accurate reflection of today’s standard. Also, beauty is in the mind of the beholder, not Dr. Seager. I recall some of the things my mother picked out for me to wear to school when I was young. They were beautiful to her, but my friends had a different opinion. Do you rely on your hair stylist to tell you how to cut your hair or do you tell him/her what you want. Do you choose your car or does your car salesman. Do you want your hair transplant surgeon to tell you that the scar he will put in the back of your head is imperceptible, or do you want to make that decision. After you have a 30 cm by 2 to 3 mm wide scar in the back of your scalp, try shaving your head. Then see how many people ask you what happened to you. When you find that you cannot cut your hair short, go to a hair stylist to produce a nice longer look. Every time you go, see if you are not afraid that he/she will ask you how you got that scar. Now add a second or third scar. Your problems just doubled or tripled.

There is nothing worse to a man with hair loss than being exposed that he made an effort to conceal his hair loss or to treat his hair loss and this effort resulted in obvious scarring or cosmetic disfigurement. We see patients every day who had prior strip surgery. They are not happy with their scars. They tell us how they cut their own hair to avoid explaining the strip scars to their hair stylist. They tell us how uncomfortable they are with their strip scars. Many tell us they wish they had never done anything about their hair loss because they are embarrassed by the strip scars.

At one time, there was only one way to do a donor harvest. Now you have options. Many will be comfortable with a strip surgery. Many will not.

While some surgeons have been performing a lot of follicular extraction, there have been no published studies to date comparing results of growth, survival, or appearance of transplanted extracted grafts vs. transplanted dissected follicular unit grafts. In medicine there is a rule of thumb that you should never be the first to offer a new treatment to your patients nor should you be the last. In other words, it is best to only offer proven methods but you must also keep up-to-date. Our current view about follicular extraction is that it is useful in certain situations but it should be studied more carefully before being offered to everyone.

I do not understand the logic here. If you should never be the first to offer something, how can something new be developed? In other words, you should not develop new ways to treat heart disease. You should always do bypass surgery. This is a much more invasive procedure than angioplasty or the placement of a stint in a closed vessel. With bypass surgery, you open the chest and bypass new vessels to the closed vessels. Then you close the chest and leave a scar down the center of the chest. In angioplasty or stint placement, you enter the closed vessel from a periphereal artery. The scar you leave is a small entry wound. Strip surgery is a much more invasive procedure too.

There are no well done hair count studies in hair transplant surgery. Many, including Dr. Seager have attempted to compare large graft hair growth to small graft hair growth. None of the studies have produced accurate data. In fact, they have allowed their non-physician staff to count the hairs. Counting hairs is a very difficult thing to do. If you are going to do it, expect it to take hours to do it accurately. Also, you should not allow non-physician lay staff to do the work. Allowing this opens you up for mistakes.

I recall one hair count study that we did at the Orlando live surgery workshop. We were comparing the microscope to the loop dissection of grafts and we were trying to see which method produced more hair. I had two sets of grafts. One was cut under a microscope and the other was cut by loops. I had two physicians count the grafts and the total number of hairs cut by the two methods. The two physicians I choose to count the grafts and hairs both had experience counting hairs. One of them was one of my staff physicians from my office. His work was well known to me. He had been involved in numerous hair count studies with me in my office. He knew that we insisted on accurate hair counts and he understood the meticulous, exacting nature of the business. He knew we did not tolerate mistakes. The other physician who counted hairs has done many hair count studies over the years. His work has shown many times that larger grafts produce more hair than smaller grafts. My staff physician took about 1.5 hours to count the grafts and the hairs. The other physician did it in about 15 minutes. My staff physician’s results showed about 50% more hair. I knew that the data was not accurate so I had my staff physician count the same grafts that the other physician had counted. When he did, he fount 30% more hair than the other physician had counted. In other words, doing a study accurately takes time. It is physically impossible to get accurate hair count studies from grafted hairs. You will count hairs in each graft, but will suddenly find yourself asking whether you counted a specific graft already. You could try it through photography, but this will not be accurate either. In fact photographs can never pick up all the hair. Therefore, this entire statement underscores the lack of understanding that many physicians have about hair transplant surgery studies. They are impossible to do well so you should not try to make absolute statements based on studies, whose results cannot be verified as accurate.

In the absence of scientific study, we have to go by clinical experience and impressions. So far, in our opinion, the patients that we have seen who have had follicular unit extraction and transplantation, performed by other surgeons, have less growing transplanted hair than patients who have had the same number of grafts transplanted using our method. To date, we have not seen results of a patient with extensive hair loss (Norwood VI or VII) treated exclusively with follicular unit extraction. Some similar patients have chosen to have 8000 or more grafts in total transplanted after 3 sessions of “strip harvesting” and have had dramatic results and are able to conceal their donor scars completely. We have yet to see the recipient area or the donor area of someone who has had this many grafts extracted from their scalp and transplanted. Most men that we have seen, who have had follicular unit extraction, are younger men with early hair loss so it will be years before their hair loss progresses enough to judge the full effect of follicular extraction and transplantation.

FUE produces an average of 2.5 hairs per follicular unit compared to 2.3 hairs per follicular unit by strip in initial procedures. Therefore, given the same number of grafts, the results from FUE will be better.

I do not think that a class VI or class VII should necessarily have a strip initially. They may not be happy with the see through look they will achieve from the hair transplant surgery. With FUE they can still shave their head. With strip they cannot without exposing the scar. Since Dr. Seager is in Canada, I suppose he is seeing patients from Canada who had FUE. There are the same number of follicular units in the donor area regardless of whether you have strip or FUE. Transection rates are similar for FUE and strip and actually are better in most instances with FUE. Transected hairs from strip are tossed in the trash. Transected hairs from FUE remain in the donor area. You can always switch to strip at any time after doing FUE without any problem. If you start with strip and then go to FUE, you will still have the donor scar. We have done many class 6 and 7 patients who also had strips. The addition of FUE to these individuals allows them far more hair than they could have harvested by strip alone. Therefore, anyway you slice it, FUE is just as good as strip or better without the strip scar.

”Extracting follicular units is very demanding and there is very little room for error. Some or all of the hairs in a follicular unit can be cut if the angle of the punch is not perfect or if the hair bends under the skin more than expected. The depth of the incision is critical. If the cut is too deep, there is a higher risk of cutting hairs. If it is too shallow, the graft may not tear away intact. As with any skill, extracting follicular units improves with practice and experience. You rely on “feel” as much or more than “sight.” No matter how much practice someone has had, however, extracting a fully intact graft will always be more difficult than dissecting one under a microscope, where there is much better visualization and control.”

I disagree with much of this statement. Depth control is an essential element of our patented instrumentation. There are many ways to improve the margin of error and to achieve a nearly flawless extraction process. Every case is slightly different though so you want someone with experience and skill. Most physicians don’t cut grafts. In Dr. Seager’s office all the physician does is remove the strip and sew the wound. The grafts are cut by the lay staff, the recipient area is cut by the lay staff and the grafts are placed by the lay staff. Would you rather have the physician cut your grafts or the lay staff. With FUE the surgeon cuts the grafts. With strip the lay staff cuts the grafts. Which method do you suppose the physician has more control over?

Extracted follicular units also have much less tissue around the hair and the root than follicular unit grafts that we prepare under the microscope.

This means they are more delicate and must be handled carefully. This is one reason you want an experienced FUE team to do your procedure. The less tissue allows for smaller incision sites in the recipient area. This is advantageous to your result.

Extracted graft (on top) has less protective tissue than the microscopically dissected follicular unit graft (on bottom)
Dr. Seager has published an article that clearly demonstrates that hair in “chubby follicular unit grafts” survives and grows better than hair in "skinny follicular unit grafts." Skinny grafts may be more subject to drying or crush injury during the transplantation process. It is also possible that resting (Telogen) hairs in a given follicular unit may not come with extracted grafts

This was an example of a study that produced inaccurate data in my opinion. A graft with two hairs will grow less hair than a graft with 4 hairs. If you do not count all the hairs before you plant them into a recipient area, it will appear to grow more hair than you originally counted. A graft that has more hairs is more difficult to obtain an accurate count on. It is easier to count a graft hairs in a well trimmed graft than one that is not well trimmed. In one study Dr. Seager found that his grafts produce over 30% more hair than he originally counted. How could this happen. Dr. Seager feels it is due to the “invisible telogen hairs”. In my opinion it is due to the hairs he did not count the prior to planting and the hairs he counted twice after the hair grew. It is that simple. You cannot make 130 hairs grow for every 100 that you plant. Grafts that are more traumatized take longer to grow, but they do grow. Had these studies been carried out longer, more hair growth would have been seen in the more traumatized group.

I applaud Dr. Seager on his study attempts. I do not wish to imply that he did not attempt to create good data. I simply point out that it is very difficult to obtain accurate hair count data from personal experience. I also point out that even the best strip surgery should produce a yield of only 91% since about 9% of the hair will be in the resting phase (telogen). This is the best you can expect from any hair transplant procedure to the scalp. The best you can expect from scalp to body is 40 to 60% growth since 40 to 60% of body hair is in the resting phase.

Telogen hairs reside in the dermis. They are not in the subcutaneous fat. The dermis is extracted intact with fue. You cannot guarantee the same from strip surgery. FUE has the capacity to produce more hair than strip surgery in almost all instances. If we plant 40 grafts per square cm in FUE, we see 40 grafts per sq. cm grow. The grafts may take up to 15 to 18 months to achieve full regrowth though. One should not be concerned with rough handling. This does not affect growth in the long run, but is a common statement by physicians. There is not good scientific data to support this claim but plenty to refute it.

There are also practical drawbacks to follicular extraction. Follicular extraction
is labor-intensive and time-consuming and surgeons generally charge a much higher fee per transplanted graft than with gold standard follicular unit hair transplantation. Fewer grafts can be transplanted in a day so multiple sessions are required to cover a reasonable area of baldness or thinning. If there is decreased survival or growth of hair with extracted grafts, more grafts will have to be harvested to give the same coverage as with strip harvesting and transplantation. The scarring under the skin could change the angle of the surrounding hair making subsequent extraction more difficult. Finally, there is concern that repeated follicular extraction from the safe donor area could lead to a moth-eaten look. This method has been used to harvest hair from other areas of the body but body hair does not look or grow like scalp hair.

FUE is more labor intensive by the physician and therefore, the cost is higher. In strip surgery, the physician often finishes his part of the surgery in 30 minutes to 1.5 hours while the lay staff performs the rest of the 5 to 8 hour surgery. Certainly the strip surgery should cost less. Perhaps FUE should cost even more based on this analogy by the Seager clinic. Scarring does not affect growth angles with FUE, but it does affect hair growth angles with strip surgery. Yes, if you over harvest with FUE, the donor area will be thinner. There may be a limit to how far we can push the donor area and still leave an imperceptible look. Still FUE is less invasive and the post-op course is much less painful. Few patients who had strip and then FUE ever want to return to strip surgery. The recovery from FUE is much quicker and easier. We don’t know enough about body hair at this time to make any conclusions regarding appearance or length.

In summary, follicular extraction is an interesting technique that merits further study. At the Seager Hair Transplant Centre, we have performed follicular extraction for corrective work. For example, 3-haired grafts can be removed from a previously transplanted hairline and recycled. We have also adapted some of the ideas of follicular extraction to improve our strip harvesting and the resulting scars. Follicular extraction could be considered for patients with a small area to transplant (such as a scar or an eyebrow) who have a low likelihood of going on to develop extensive male pattern baldness. Until more is known about the long-term effectiveness and effects, we will not offer it as an alternative to our usual, highly successful method of follicular unit hair transplantation for people who have or could develop significant male pattern baldness. After more practice and experience with follicular extraction, we may directly compare the 2 methods in a study of our own.

It is nice to see that they are trying it. If they do perform a study, I hope they produce more accurate data than previous studies. I recognize the futility of large scale hair count studies, however. You will not be able to draw any conclusions from any of the large hair count studies especially if you limit the time frame to less than 2 years. If you base the data on photographs or laymen hair counts, you can toss the data in the trash. It is worthless. I also am not sure i would want FUE done by someone who does not embrace it, experiments with it, and feels the results are not as good. In my opinion, you should embrace something fully and give it your maximal effort or you should not do it. anything worth doing is worth doing well. give 100% or don't go to work. this is our motto. Think of it this way. If i asked a carpenter to make me some nails, he could probably produce 100 irreguallarly shaped, poor quality nails in one full day of work. If i asked a nail maker to make me some nails, he might produce 1000 high quality nails in one day.

We do not see anything wrong with strip surgery provided the patients are given all their options. I am glad to see that Dr. Seager is providing his patients with options. I am concerned with his arguments however. FUE is a new procedure. I can honestly say that experience is a major factor in the overall success of the procedure. All of us would have been much better off had Dr. Woods and Dr. Campbell released their techniques and ideas from the very beginning. We had to cross all the barriers and stumbling blocks to produce the FUE procedure we have today. We began with small cases and built our way up. If we had difficulty, we did not do the larger cases. In this regard, one can honestly say that FUE is a much safer procedure in the hands of someone with experience. This is not to say that the novice cannot produce excellent results. It means that they cannot produce excellent results in a broader patient base. Some cases are easy and some are very difficult. If the case is difficult, it is better for the novice to stop the case. This is what we did until we developed the knowledge, skill, and ability to perform the more difficult cases.

Strip surgery has advantages to patients. You can produce more grafts in one day. You can get the result for less money. These are the advantages to the patient.

The advantages to the physician are that he will not need to work as long or as hard on any case. He can do more grafts in a single day and make more money. He does not need to learn a more difficult procedure (FUE). He does not require as much hand-eye skill.

The advantages of FUE are a less perceptible scar, more hair per graft, often faster hair re-growth, less invasive surgery, less painful donor area after surgery, less numbness after surgery in the donor area, more hair styling options, less risk of embarrassment from the donor area scarring, greater donor area efficiency from smaller procedures, faster return to athletic activities, a better solution for the young patient or the patient with extreme hair loss, a greater potential donor area, use of body hair, etc.

Over one year ago we began training a team in Cyprus to do strip surgery at an affordable rate. We trained a physician and an entire staff. The team spent months with us in our office and we worked closely with them in Cyprus. We also sent one of our physicians to Cyprus to over see the work and continue the training. They are now producing outstanding strip surgery results. If you want strip surgery, this is an excellent choice for you. The cost will be far less than it is in the USA. Unlike many clinics, our physicians are intimately involved in the procedure from start to finish. They take the strip, make the recipient area, cut the grafts, and place the grafts. They are trained in all phases of the transplant. This is the only way you can assure quality control. You must understand the basics. All of our physicians begin at the lowest level of training. They learn how to be a good surgery technician first. Once they gain these skills, we elevate them to higher skills.
As I pointed out the advantages of strip surgery to the patient are cost and number of grafts in a single day. If you want these advantages, I invite you to our Cyprus clinic where you can take advantage of them. I want to make it clear that i did not begin promoting this clinic in Cyprus until we began to see several high quality results from this clinic. We are seeing great results. Therefore, i am now promoting the clinic for high quality, low cost strip surgery.

We have not introduced FUE in Cyprus at this time. There simply are too many variables that we want to understand more fully before we introduce it. When we do implement it, we will let you know. For now, if you want a low cost, high quality strip surgery, go to our Cyprus office.

I think the best decsion one can make if they are indecisive is to simply wait.

I am not concerned about growth rates with FUE at this time. We have seen enough and developed enough to resolve almost all growth issues. There are many variables we are looking at with FUE, however. Time is almost always on the side of those who can wait. As Dr. Seager pointed out, he developed better ways to manage the donor area Via strip surgery over time. We did the same thing. We certainly will have an even better FUE procedure as time passes. We do not still comfortably with a great result. We constantly strive for an even better result.

There are a number of physicians who offer excellent results Via strip and Dr. Seager is one of them. It is understandable how he could state that he feels growth rates are better via strip at this time. FUE is not a procedure that is performed the same with the same result in every patient. Almost every patient is slightly different and almost every region of the donor area requires a slight modification to achieve optimal results. This goes back to my original statement regarding your commitment to a technique. In order to achieve ideal results in the majority of patients with FUE, you must be committed to making the procedure work. Otherwise, you will run into a patient whose results are not ideal and you will simply say, "oh well, time to get out my scalpel". Our emphasis has been on FUE and we have worked very hard to make it sucessful in the majority of our patients. the only ones we find difficulty with at this time are me of African ancestry. Even with these individuals we are often quite sucessful. Last week we obtained 650 grafts on an African American via FUE.

I want to point out something that is very important to understand regarding our hair transplant surgery. We did not shift from strip to FUE as a marketing decision. We had a very busy practice doing strip surgery. The shift acutally was very hard on our practice and made it difficult for us to pay our bills for a very long time. We shifted because we felt the donor area scarring appeared better. We felt the shift resulted in a better result. Along the way we found that we were averaging more hair per graft and a few other positives such as faster re-growth in many.

We will do our best to generate more data, but do not look for a side by side strip Vs. FUE study. this is not likely to come since we cannot understand the value of giving a patient a strip scar at the same time we give him the benefits of FUE. We do anticiapte a study looking at a graft survival rate in FUE. Once again, i feel it is futile to attempt a hair count study that looks at survival rates. It simply is not going to yield accurate data in anyone's hands.

This is true. We have a tendency to remove a greater amount of dermis surrounding the individual follicular units or follicular groups. This allows us to transplant a larger percentage of invisible exogen hairs. exogen hairs are in the telogen phase and have fallen out of the dermal sheath. these hairs are located in the dermis of the immediate surrounding follicular unit. More of the dermis is often trimmed when making grafts from a strip. This puts the exogen hairs at greater risk.

Interestingly, most grafts trimmed by strip harvest method are larger even though they often have less dermis. The reason they are larger is due to the extra subcutaneous fat. This fat does not produce hair, but it does add volume to the recipient area. This volume can lead to ridging.

The fat does act as a protective barrier to the grafts, however. This protective barrier allows the graft to stay outside graft storage solution for up to 15 minutes without damaging the follicles. The outside of the fat dries out quickly and the graft becomes hard like a pretzel. Still the inside around the dermal sheath may stay moist. Think of a choclate covered cherry. the inside creamy filling is moist and protected by the outside hard choclate. Grafts that have less fat, may dry out faster.

With FUE, there is no fat or minimal fat. This means the grafts are much more sensitive to the environment and must be moved quickly. We try our best to move them from donor to storage area to recipient site as quick as possible. We try to place very few grafts at a time so that the grafts have less exposure to the outside environment. one must be very careful with grafts obtained by FUE. This is one reason the procedure is not a good one for the novice. The novice tends to be more concerned with getting the grafts out than with getting them back in. This can lead to drying out and a growth rate that may not be as good. We prefer to teach the extraction process under close supervision so that we can monitor how the grafts are handled. An interesting study done by Jerzy Kolasinski showed that the trimmed waste from strip surgery often grows hair. That's right. If you plant the trimmed waste you will see some hair growth. You cannot see any hairs in the waste, but it grows hair. We don't have this problem with FUE.


Another very interesting study was on transected hairs. If you transect a hair, you will find that 60% of them will re-grow if you follow them out to 18 months. Of course, transected hairs with strip surgery are more often lost to the trash can. With FUE the transected hairs are planted or stay in the donor area. We can get transection rates below those of strip surgery in most patients these days.

Another study focused on traumatizing the follicular unit by breaking it up into separate components. in other words, a three hair follicular unit was separated into a two hair graft and a one hair graft. The growth rate of the intact three hair grafts was compared to that of a split three hair graft (2 hairs and one hair). The split grafts took longer to grow, but after 18 months the growth rate was the same for both groups. Since FUE grafts may be more at risk to trauma due to the decreased fat around the grafts, the growth may take a little longer. Still all the components necessary for growth are transplanted so there should be growth provided the grafts did not dry out.

We often see much quicker re-growth with FUE. Some take a little longer to grow. Others have very fast growth in many areas, but delayed growth in isolated areas. I suspect these isolated areas were areas where there was greater trauma to the grafts prior to placement. Still the growth comes in.

FUE still needs a survival rate study. This will be the next one we tackle. We need a slick bald area to place the grafts and the patient will need to accept a much longer time frame prior to restoring the hair loss since we will need to keep the study area limited to a small number of hairs and grafts and follow that area out for 18 months.

One more study that is very interesting was the study transplanting head hair to the leg. This study showed that only 60% of the hair from the head to the leg survived. However, head to head hair survived 90% of the time. When the head hair from the leg was moved back to the head, 90% of the hair survivived. these percentages correspond to the telogen rates in each area.

phillipedes262,
if you ask a doctor who does strip but cannot/does not do FUE about FUE do not expect a very positive response

if you monitor the general trend with hair surgeons you will find that most are still not embracing FUE. That will take time. If you look at the leaders in the field, you will find that they are beginning to warm up to the procedure. most simply want to see more results and learn how to sucessfully perform the procedure. You will find that those with the best hand-eye cordination and vision eventually adopt the procedure at least in some capacity.

on a personal note, i have performed FIT and strip on the same patient in the same day on numerous occassions in an effort to increse the single procedure graft count to the maximum level. i find the FIT grafts are of better quality than the strip grafts. As such, i am a much greater advocate of FUE and FIT than ever before. To me, strip is still a vialble procedure, but it is not as good. A combination of strip and FIt will yeild the highest number of grafts, but it will leave a strip scar. It is my belief that state of the art FIT may soon mean that we relocate one body hair graft to the scalp for every FIT graft that we remove from the scalp. This will re-populate the donor area and create the most aesthetic result on all fronts. prior to adopting this modification to our FIT procedure, i want to first evaluate the results we get from those individuals we have previously performed this FIT Farming procedure on.

Could'nt say all this better myself Dr. Cole.