I would really appreciate any input from any of the surgeons.

1. My surgeon says he used FU's only in my surgery. But his staff did not use microscopes to dissect the grafts. His description of Follicular Units was accurate. I know that the transection rate would be higher and that lighter hairs would be missed without the use of backlit stereomicrospes, but is it possible with older methods of magnification (they used a goggle system) to distinguish and separate naturally occuring follicular units from the donor strip?

2. My grafts consist of 1-4 hair clusters. Among the 2-4 hair grafts, the hair shafts appear to emerge from a single, shared "channel" within the scalp. This is only visible upon very close inspection. The multiple hair grafts are plume-like in appearance, again on close inspection. Is this how an implanted FU grouping should look? I imagined the implanted grafts would look something more like a small, random cluster of hairs with minute but visible tissue between hairs. I imagained, that this was partly what was meant by a more natural look with FU transplantation.

3. My surgeon said that he successfully performed FUE's in 1990, but found an unnacceptable rate of post-surgical infection caused by the open wounds after surgery in the donor area. If this posed a serious problem, doesn't it make sense that the same problem would occur in the recipient area since this area is not sutured? If this is a real problem, what would account for it - significantly larger wounds created when excising the donor hairs or something else?

4. My surgeon also said that while FUE left no surface scars, a scar "sheet" tended to form under the skin surface causing deformity in the donor area. Again, if this were a problem, wouldn't this happen sometimes in the recipient area.

I would appreciate any of your thoughts. I am especially interested in just exactly what an FU graft looks like on close inspection after implantation and healing are complete. What is it about the appearance of an implanted FU that distinuishes such a graft from a non-FU, 2-4 hair graft? Can a surgeon distinguish an implanted 3-hair non-FU graft from a 3-hair FU-graft based upon appearance alone?

Thank you,

Mark

1.) If assistants have excellant eyes and good hands it is probable that they can do reasonable good work without a microscope.

2.) The hair of follicular units emerge from the skin very close together and sometimes look to the naked eye as coming from the same "channel".

3.) Follicular Unit Extractions leave an open donor if not sutured. The recipient area leaves no open hole, since the graft fills it. Infection is very rare in scalp surgery.

4.) Scaring is usually minimal, but may vary with technique.

Appearence: Follicular Units look exactly like your natural hair, beacuse they are exactly the same grouping of hair, other grafts may not look natural, and be detected by the naked eye.

Dr. Limmer/jal
hairlimmer@aol.com

Dr. Limmer

Dr. Limmer,

Thank you very much for your reply to my questions

Mark