Dr. Cam Simmons practiced hair transplantation as an associate of the Seager Hair Transplant Centre from 1999 to 2005 and founded the Canadian Hair Transplant Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 2006. Dr. Simmons was fortunate to have some of the senior medical technicians from the Seager Hair Transplant Centre join him.

Dr. Simmons and his staff's technique and procedure remain very similar to the "stick and place" procedure performed at the Seager Hair Transplant Centre under Dr. Seager's tenure.

The "stick and place" technique describes the process in which the technicians make a recipient site incision and then immediately place the graft into the incision. By placing grafts immediately into a fresh incision that have not had time to contract or coagulate incisions can potentially be smaller relative to the size of the typical graft.

The stick and place procedure performed by Dr. Simmons is actually performed by experienced technicians who follow the design created by him. However, Dr. Simmons often does the stick in the critical hairline areas.

Dr. Simmons uses 19 and 20 gauge needles (which create incisions of approximately 1.1 mm and 0.9 mm) to create the incisions for the grafts. His staff trims the follicular units so they include the surrounding tissue. Dr. Simmons believes that these "chubby grafts" have a higher rate of survival and growth than grafts that are trimmed into skinny or tiny grafts.

Dr. Simmons is reluctant to trim smaller grafts and place them into smaller and potentially denser packed incisions since he is confident in the results he and his staff now produce.

In my opinion, Dr. Simmons does perform large high quality follicular unit grafting sessions with very good results. However, his adherence to trimming "chubby grafts" does limit he and his staff's ability to dense pack grafts to achieve the highest densities possible.

On the day of my visit, the patient was scheduled for a small 1,000 plus graft session. However, his clinic regularly provides sessions exceeding 3,000 grafts. His well equipped clinic was custom built for hair transplantation.

Dr. Cam Simmons does not have the rights to the photos of the patients he did surgery for while at the Seager Medical Group. Thus he is limited to presenting only patients who have done surgery with his new clinic since October of 2006. However, the photos results I did see were impressive.

Pat,

Hard to tell with the photo as to the refinement of the work, but we'll have to take your word for it that his work is good.

Is it common to take the grafts from the sides only? That is what it looks like here. Wouldn't they typically have an even scar along the back for a 1st timer? I would think that it would give more balance to things as we all know that sometimes you get that "funky dent" at the donor site.

NN

NN,

I've posted some additional photos of two other cases that Dr. Simmons provided me with. This should give you and others a better sense of his work. The immediate post ops look more invasive than we typically see with the Coalition clinics performing minimally invasive ultra refined grafting. But the end results I find impressive, especially given the short duration of time growing.

I do agree that normally a physician would harvest a strip centered along the back of the head. I'm trying to recall why Dr. Simmons took the strip from the side. Perhaps I can get an explanation from him.

I welcome your comments regarding the two additional patients I added after your first comment.

Best wishes, Pat

Pat,

I agree that Dr. Simmons appears to do solid and quality follicular unit transplantation. I also believe from what I am seeing in the pictures that his donor closure technique is superb leaving virtually no visible scar.

I still stand by my original view however, that the use of "skinny" grafts can produce just as much of a high growth yield as chubby grafts in the hands of a skilled physician. It also gives the clinic the ability to densely pack grafts closer together where appropriate. I hope that as time continues, that they will adopt this philosophy.

Best wishes,

Falc

Pat,

Things do look good. I appreciate the added photos as it shows the level of refinement. Nice looking results.

NN

Ive had 2 hair transplants thus far, the first one in the summer of 2007 at another clinic in Toronto (which i will not mention) with about 1200 grafted hairs to my front hairline. In the end i was not very satisfied with the procedure as the front hairline did look unnatural and the scar left on the back and sides of my scalp were quite large and noticeable. Wanting more work i found Dr. Simmons and had a consultation , he suggested more grafts and fine tuning the front hairline and also a reduction of the scar which was left on my scalp from the first surgery at the other clinic. So i went ahead with the 2nd surgery with Dr. Simmons and his staff in October of 2008 about 1150 new hair gfats put in place, it is now 8 months later its a resounding success my front hairline looks very natural and he was able to drastically reduce the size of my previous scar by removing scar tissue while harvesting the new grafts for my surgery. I cannot begin to describe how satisfied i am with the results , i am currently using 1mg finestricide and rogaine foam everyday which i learned from Dr.Simmons also helps speed up the process of grafted hairs to grow in faster. I highly recommend him for anyone looking to have work done.