Seems like from everything i read the donor scar area seems to be a hurdle in which transplant doctors have not found the best way to have a perfect result.Does anyone know really who has the best way to close the wound after strip surgery.Myself i have a wide donor scare that i am not unhappy about.Just wondering who might have the best way of preventing a bad result,Maybe some new procedures are becoming developed? Thanks Ken

Aloe Vera gel after the sutures comes out helps...

Ken,

In recent years more attention and care has been given by leading surgeons to removing and closing the donor area.

Some surgeons use internal sutures beneath the skin level to draw the donor area together, thus relieving tension on the sutures used to bring the scalp skin together.

Many surgeons are also careful to not remove donor strips that are any wider than 1.5 cms. Thus donor strips these days tend to be longer rather than wider.

Many leading surgeons are also using a technique called Tricophetic closure in which the skin tissue at the suture is beveled so that the hair follicles in the underlying lip will grow up and through the suture line. This not only hides a thin scar but also strengthens the closure.

Dr. Paul Rose is a big advocate of this technique. Although while visiting clinics this past summer I did see this technique used in several leading clinics.

Frankly, I think the issue of donor scarring has been over blown by some clinics selling their FUE (Follicular Unit Extraction) procedure. The leading clinics who take the time to do excellent and careful donor removal and closure have a very low incidence of cosmetically significant donor scarring. Strip excision is also much more cost effective for transplanting large amounts of hair.

To learn more about the relative advantages and disadvantages of these two donor removal techniques, click here.

Pat

Pat:
With regard to the Tricophetic closure technique, you state that Dr. Rose is a big advocate but that "while visiting clinics this past summer I did see this technique used in several leading clinics." Could you please name some of those other clinics that use this technique? Thank you.

JW,

Just off hand I believe that while visiting clinics east of the Mississippi this summer I saw Dr. Jeff Espstein in Miami, Dr. Griffin in Atlanta, Dr. Bernstein in NYC, Dr. Haber in Cleveland, Dr. Shapiro in Minneapolis and Dr. Konior in Chicago, and Dr. Parsley in Kentucky performing trichophytic closures. No doubt others who I did not see recently are also using it, including Hasson and Wong and others.

This technique has been extensively written about in the "Hair Transplant Forum", which many hair transplant surgeons read. I suspect that many more leading surgeons will be integrating it into their donor closure process.

In my opinion it's a great technique and the mark of a surgeon who cares enough to take the extra time to make the linear donor scar as invisible as possible.

Maybe the scalp exercises that Hasson and Wong reccomend would be helpful too. You can find them on their website.

A few more that come to mind are Dr. True, Dr. Dorin, and Dr. Cooley. Those are just off the top of my head.

-Robert