HAIR TRANSPLANT FORUM

Dear dott. Cole,
first of all, sorry for my english. I'm italian and I know you through the experiences I read on the web (I often read "hope", an italian guy that had more of 3000 uf and show a very nice growing..) and through some mails sended and received with you one year ago about my situation.

I write you for some questions:

-in a forum that I follow, a poster link us an image when I can see scars that apparently come from a FUE procedure.

photo: http://www.hairlosshelp.com/forums/atta ... /mk9%2Ejpg
discussion (in italian and english): http://www.ibfree.org/index.php?mforum= ... wtopic=491

I don't know who is the surgeon, but I'm interested to know your opinion on this. This situation is normal? Or these scars are exceptional? In you opinion what is the percentage of situation like this. How importance have the dimensions of the tool to extract the UF?

-about the density i know your opinions and i know your explanation. But, if a person wants 50 or 60 uf/cm2 in one pass, you'll think about performing the ht or it's not an option, but a sure refusal?

-What do you think about lateral slit? Do you use this tecnique. In any case (yes or not) can you explain your choice?

-I heard that you can consult in london. I hate airplane and it would be a wonderful place to have a procedure for me. Have you intention to open a clinic and to perform ht in london? Or perform without opening a clinic, like in it was in cipro?

Sorry for the post so long, for my english and for the caotic questions!
I hope you can answer me,

Thank you,
best regards,
Davide

Thank you for your interesting questions! I will attempt to give you some insight, as the doctors cannot always answer as promptly as I know they would like to. These are just some broad ideas – not surgical recommendations.

The photos you presented are not a good representation of what should be expected with good FIT surgery. Dr. Cole's extractions create tiny “entry wounds” - these contract significantly. The FIT process should NOT litter your head with visible scarring – this is (one of the many) advantage(s) of Follicular Isolation.

Density: 40-50 grafts per cm are quite usual in a single pass. Over 50 up to 60 can grow well but I believe these would need to be single hair grafts. 60 fu/cm has been grafted in a single pass with some bht (body hair) cases as well. Your HT will be customized to your needs, your degree of hair loss, and donor availability.

Lateral slit: This is a good technique. Dr. Cole uses needles (for single hairs at the hair line) and customized blades for behind the hairline and through the scalp. In designing the hair transplant, the orientation (angle and direction) of the pre-existing hair shafts are followed for optimum naturalness and coverage. This is a mainly lateral orientation but, as far as I know, this method is not the lateral slit technique as described by other surgeons.

London is limited to consults at this time.

By the way, your English is just fine Good questions. I'm sure you will get more in put here.

Thank you for the answers FITlocks!

I hope also Dr.Cole will write something about my questions..

best regards,
Davide

Hi,
FIT (FUE) is a very good technique and normally it leaves a non visible scar with naked eye.Unfortunetaly some patients can end up with white dots as shown in the pictures.Patients with dark skin tend to react like that.You just have to tell the patient that it could happen.It is neither punch size related nor procedure size.Now ,in our post-op care , we came up with some precautions to prevent that (medications,compression of the donor area,...).We also realize that by grafting those dots , you can fade their appearance and make it less noticeable.We are doing that for the older punch grafts technique used in early 80's.

Hair angulation varies from place to place.We don't use lateral slit everywhere.Our incisions are usually parallel to the direction of the graft.So our incisions will be lateral on top,oblique behind hair line,radial in crown.We costumize them according the specificity of each patient.

Density:We won't exclude a patient because he wants us to dense pack.We did it in the past and we find out that the benefit were not that exceptionnal.With a density of 35 to 45,we are getting great results also.
If someone is totally bald ,I don't see any problem to dense pack and usually 50 to 60 fu / cm2 are reached in the frontal zone where we used a lot of singles and two hairs.
For someone who has existing hairs (30 to 40 fu ),if you dense pack with 60 fu,you may end up with shock loss of those existing hairs.Then you loose the benefit of dense packing.You will loose maybe 10 fu in overall.When hairs will grow back, you will have 80 fu.Which will be close to someone who didn't dense pack(30 to 40) ,plus the previous 30 to 40 equal 60 to 80.
Each patient is different and we need to be very carefull with what it says out there.
Best regards.