I'm considering my first HT, but the idea of a scar scares me very much. It seems that Dr Woods
can accomplish a HT without a scare. But most of the testimonial are from repair work patients.

Any one had experience for a first ht with Dr Woods?

Most critcs of Dr Woods seem to think there is high transection rate with his procedure. What does that mean?


I guess Dr Woods is my only hope, but there is not enough info about his procedure. Other than
a few people that 'worship him'

Any one has any words of wisdom

[This message was edited by yalao on July 09, 2002 at 05:43 PM.]

yalao,
Are you scared of having a scar, or scared of having a visible scar? Any strip excision surgery is going to leave you with a scar, but if you choose a good surgeon the scar won't be visible. Then again, if you don't want any scar at all, you are not a good candidate for strip excision HT surgery. As far as transection, ANY cutting through hair-bearing scalp is going to transect (cut) follicles. There is no way to avoid it. Dr. Woods claims to have found a way to minimize this, but he's not telling how he does it. Now, I'm not a doctor, I'm an engineer, and simple geometry tells me that the more cutting surface you have for an equal amount of follicles removed, the more transection that will occur. My guess is that Dr. Woods tries to predict the angle of the follicle under the skin, and he could in fact be pretty good at it. Still, his transection rate has to be higher that that of a strip excision. Why? Because he is trying to remove single FUs with a very small cutting device, and so each follicle he removes is at risk of being sliced. Or, maybe he's actually getting a good FU with each cut, and sacrificing any follicles next to it that happen to get sliced. With strip excision, only the follicles along the sides of the strip where the cutting occurs will be at risk of transection. The follicles in the harvested strip are dissected under magnification and are therefore at very low risk of being transected.
Of course, if you absolutely don't want a scar, you have unlimited money, and have a really good donor supply, Dr. Woods may be the way to go for you.

Yalao:
No surgeons can do surgery without a scar. The choice of scars is yours- Dr. Woods will leave a large number of small round scars, most other surgeons will leave a very thin (about 2mm) linear scar in the donor area. Both choices are okay because the surrounding donor area hair hide them well in most cases. No scars should occur in the recipient area that are visible using follicular unit methodology. So it is basically a choice of what you want the donor scar or scars to look like and the cost of procedure. I hope this helps you make a decision.

BLL/jal

GARY:
You are obviously a thinking engineer! The Woods' method invovles about 20 times as much linear length of incision as a simple ellipse thus the exposure of follicules to transection is significantly higher and the total follicular survival has to be lower due to the transection.


BLL/jal

Dr. Limmer

Have you viewed the Woods process or a patient that had the Woods process? Otherwise, how are you able to make statements concerning donor scaring or transection rate?

I think it is great that Doctors like Limmer and McAndrews are not afraid to discuss the differences in approaches. The choice is yours. Either way, less hair will be in donor and more in recipient when finished. If FU's are used in both cases, I would go with the one with less transection possibilities. That is a very crucial point here.

JMO