Hair Transplant News

England’s Daily Mail posted an article this morning about the use of extracellular matrix (ECM) products to help repairs the wounds of soldiers injured in Afghanistan. According to the Daily Mail, ECM has been successfully used on severely wounded soldiers. In one gaping leg wound, ECM was able to grow nerves, muscles and ordinary tissue where that had been none.

The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery maintains a comprehensive collection of cosmetic surgery statistics and data in the US. They recently released an interesting report about the impact of the recession on the demand for plastic surgery.

I was born in 1951 with a cleft lip that affected the right side of my nose. I did not have a cleft palate, but I do have a groove in the roof of my mouth. The series of surgeries started at six weeks and the last one I had was at age seventeen. The routine was to visit the plastic surgeon at six-month intervals.

This is an example of extreme alopecia areata. The affected area includes the eyebrows, front of the scalp, sides of the scalp, top of the scalp, the side burns, and part of the back of the scalp.

On January 22nd, 2010, Dr. John P. Cole and The Cole Hair transplant Group will begin offering several new treatments in conjunction with CIT® (Cole Isolation Technique) hair transplant procedures.  CIT® hair transplant is Dr. Cole’s proprietary non-strip transplant technique in which follicular units are extracted individually with the use of specially-designed tools.

We are now offering PRP treatment to our patients. We will inject the recipient area prior to making incisions for the grafts. The recipient area will produce it's own thrombin and activate the platelets, thus stimulating them to release their concentrated growth factors. We are also offering PRP gel for the treatment of our donor area extraction sites. We will assess whether it improves healing and whether it improves the overall cosmesis of the donor area. We may find that it helps to reduce the occurrence of white spotting in some of our patients.

Body Hair Transplant (BHT) is the transplantation of body hair from various parts of the body with the intent of placing it in the scalp. If performed correctly, there is a great potential source of donor hair that would be (compared to scalp hair) almost limitless depending on the amount of body hair that a patient has. BHT is relatively new in the hair transplant field and is only practiced by a few clinics worldwide. BHT is not performed like a traditional hair transplant. The standard method of transplanting hair for the purpose of increased volume and density on the scalp is via the strip method.

In the early 1990s I recall attempting to extract individual pilosebaceous units using a 1mm trephine. The success rate was quite low so I, like many others, abandoned the effort and moved on to strip harvesting. Dr. Ray Woods, however, did not give up. He continued working on individual follicular group harvesting and by 2001 we began to hear of his success in multiple cases. He called his procedure the Wpopular with timoods Technique. In early 2002 I began working on my own version of individual follicular group harvesting (IFGH) based on his success. The first attempts produced mixed results. By late 2002, however, I began working earnestly to develop my own technique for IFGH and began having increasing success. Since then I have noted progressive improvement as a function of time and instrumentation.

Recently, Dr. John Cole met with surgeons in China. The meeting was scheduled in preparation of establishing a hair transplant center that offers economical CIT® hair transplant method. The center will be headed by a team of hair transplant surgeons led and trained by Dr. Cole. At this time, several of the doctors have completed 6 months of on-the-job, one-on-one training. Dr. Cole has already setup a clinic that offers CIT® (Cole Isolation Technique) in Korea. The purpose of offering CIT® in Asia is to educate other hair transplant doctors to produce excellent results with the minimally invasive procedure. Our operation in Korea is a part of our efforts to provide quality hair transplant surgery to all individuals in Asia.

IRVINE, Calif., Oct 07, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Pharmacogenomics research and development innovator PharmaGenoma, Inc. and its subsidiary HairDX, LLC ( www.hairdx.com), today announced that it has received institutional review board (IRB) approval to begin a clinical trial of a genetically tailored therapy for female baldness (Androgenetic Alopecia).

Donor harvesting has advanced significantly over the years. One of the early advancements was to place two layers of sutures in strip harvests. We found that a single strip scar was easier to resolve and conceal than multiple strip scars. We found that second strip harvests of the same strip scar resulted in wider scars if a two layer closure was not performed.

There is a new genetic test to determine your risk for male pattern baldness. The test looks for a genetic marker on the X chromosome. Men who carry a specific androgen receptor gene variant are at a 60% risk of going bald by the age of 40 according to several studies. Men who carry the less common genetic variant of the same androgen receptor gene have a greater than 85% chance of not going bald before the age of 40. It has been determined that 95% of bald men carry the high risk variant in studies to date.

12/05/07 - Atlanta, GA - The International Hair Transplant Institute (IHTI) located in northern Atlanta has seen an overwhelming demand in 2007 for the Follicular Isolation Technique (FIT) pioneered and perfected by The Cole Group, a team of cosmetic surgeons and surgical techs led by Dr. John Cole. Up until recent years, the standard for surgical hair restoration has been the "strip surgery" where a strip of scalp is cut out and dissected under a microscope and then follicular units are placed in the balding areas. However, with the advent of new surgical tools and processes that allow the cosmetic surgeon to remove follicular units individually from the scalp, The Cole Group has taken the art and science of hair restoration to yet another level.

patent pending instruments to an overwhelmingly enthusiastic crowd of physicians from all over the world. The patent pending CID device, which counts incisions sites accurately and with great speed was widely heralded as the best new hair restoration instrument in the past several years. Physicians from around the world were captivated by the live surgical footage demonstrating the unique advantages of this precision instrument.

Dr.Cole will be Chairman and hosts of the first Follicular Isolation Training (FIT) program in Athens, Greece from June 2, through June 7 2003. Attendees will come from Australia, France, California, Florida, Georgia, New York, North Carolina, China, and Canada. We hope to begin spreading FIT to the rest of the world.

GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK) today announces that it has received approval from the Swedish regulatory authority (MPA) for dutasteride, a new treatment for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). The MPA have approved an indication for its use in the treatment of moderate to severe symptoms of BPH and for the prevention of acute urinary retention (AUR) and surgery in patients with BPH. They have agreed to act as the Reference Member State for the Mutual Recognition procedure within Europe and GSK plan to market the drug in all major European markets once approvals are finalised.

A new hair transplant technique is creating waves in the billion-dollar hair replacement industry-the Follicular Isolation Technique (FIT), witch allows physicians to harvest single Follicular hair groupings and immediately implant into balding areas of the scalp.

A new hair transplant technique is creating waves in the billion-dollar hair replacement industry-the Cole Isolation Technique (CIT®), witch allows physicians to harvest single Follicular hair groupings and immediately implant into balding areas of the scalp. Developed by John Cole, CIT® is the first in the United State to harvest hair from other parts of the body including chest, stomach and back

For many years it has been the dream of hair restoration professionals and patients to create more than one hair from a single hair.  Many studies have been undertaken over the years to bisect a single hair follicle at various levels in the hope that the two halves would grow more than one hair.  All studies to date involved bisecting hairs in the horizontal plane.  The various trials to date resulted in limited growth from the bisected halves.  In all studies it is uncommon to achieve growth from both halves and often uncommon to achieve growth from either half.

There is little debate today regarding natural hair groupings, but debate on hair orientation persists. Some individuals have become proponents of the so-called lateral slit technique and have adopted it. We do not adhere to this dogma, but we recognize its potential benefits over the vertical or parasagittal slit. We prefer to mimic nature’s natural angles. These natural angles observed in a typical patient are depicted below.

Body Hair Results (BHT) are beginning to trickle in. This case was done just shy of 14 months ago. It shows that BHT is a viable entity and a valuable source for hair transplant surgery in cases of limited scalp donor area. It is not easy to perform given today's tools. One must be somewhat of a contortionist to successfully perform the procedure.

We perform on this patient more then 4800 body hair including FIT grafts from the chest and the back of a patient over an 8 day span. The patient has a very thin donor area and huge scars all over the back of his head. It was almost impossible to take grafts with a strip procedure. Because the patient could not allow us to shave a large area of his scalp (due to his high profile job as a Fortune 500 executive) we were limited to only 1000 grafts with FIT from his scalp donor area. This patient's only solution was to do a follicular isolation technique procedure with his body hair. Fortunately, he had an abundance of hair on his back and chest. As you can see from these photos he is healing fast. After 8 days the initial FIT extraction areas are almost healed except for a pink color to the skin. We are cautiously optimistic about the potential for body hair as an additional source of hair for the bald or thinning scalp.

Dr Cole is the 1st Hair Restoration doctor to perform more then 4800 body hair including CIT® grafts from the chest and the back of a patient over an 8 day span. Body hair is a exciting new donor supply for hair restoration surgery. It is still in its infancy and more research is required. As the story unfolds, we will continue to update our website with body hair transplant results. The following cases are successful examples of how body hair transplants are revolutionizing the treatment of hair loss.

Dr. Cole is a featured speaker at the ISHRS meeting in Vancouver, Canada. < /br> Dr. Cole will review exciting new applications of FUE to corrective cases and will invite several patients so you have the opportunity to see the advantages for yourself.

A few years ago, Justin Smith of Gaithersburg noticed that his hair was thinning. Eventually, he began balding at the top of his forehead. Mr. Smith, 45, who asked that his named be changed for privacy reasons, decided to take action against his receding hairline. In December, he received a hair transplant through a new method called follicular isolation technique. Doctors moved 600 groupings of hair from the back of his head to the front.

John P.Cole, MD has been invited by the president of the Italian society of hair restoration to be Wednesday's main speaker in the XI International Congress that will be placed at the Mercure Hotel Villa Romanazzi Carducci, in Bari.
Dr. Cole will lecture about the Follicular Isolation Technique.
More details here: http://www.ishr.it/engsite/congress.htm
Dr. Cole and team will be also doing one on one consultations starting from the 1st of June 2006.
To register please call the office at 1-800-368-4247 or 678-566-1011

Cole Asked to Speak at 2003 American Academy of Dermatology in San Francisco regarding Options in Donor Area Managemen.

The American Academy of Dermatology is the largest, most influential and most representative of all dermatologic associations. With a membership of over 16,000, it represents virtually all practicing dermatologists in the United States. The Academy is committed to excellence in patient care, medical and public education, research, professionalism and member service and support.

The American Academy of Dermatology

John P. Cole, MD was awarded a Research Grant for his study of comparison of different techniques in donor site closure .

Dr Cole, MD was awarded a Research Grant for his study of apoptosis in varied regions of the scalp

Dr. Cole has been asked to include his Algorithms to for Treatment of Male and Female Alopecia in an upcoming continuing medical education symposium in the United States.

"Skin and Allergy" medical magazine has chosen Dr. Cole's work on apoptosis to add to an upcoming issue.

The Board of Governors selected Dr. Cole to chair the 2002 meeting for the ISHRS in Chicago, Illinois today. The meeting is expected to host over 600 attendees with physicians from all over the world in attendance. This meeting is the largest gathering of hair restoration specialists from around the globe. It is the premier meeting for the disclosure of new science devoted to hair restoration surgery.

John P. Cole, MD became the only American to receive a DHI award. Dr. Cole received the Bronze Medal commemorating his contributions to the field of hair restoration surgery by the DHI Medical Group in Athens, Greece. The award was presented by Konstantine Giotis, founder and director of the DHI Medical Group. The event marked the 30th anniversary for the group.

John P. Cole, MD were awarded the Michelangelo award by the Italian Society of Hair Restoration today in Florence, Italy. The award reflected their commitment to elegance, energy, and artistry in the field of hair restoration surgery. The award was presented to each physician by Piero Schiavazzi, press secretary for Pope John Paul II.