Great news for hair transplant surgeons, hair transplantation is on the rise. If you have taken the steps and adjusted your pricing to adapt to the economy you will stay busy. We will not go back to the days of 10,000.00 procedures, "value" is going to be a key factor when patients choose a hair restoration surgeon. Now more than ever is the time to give more value, I see some physicians that are pissed off that they had to lower their prices, so they give less, if you will increase your customer service, give patients hundreds of extra grafts you will survive this down economy and come out ahead of those that cut back and give less.
The latest ISHRS statistics show that patients are achieving their desired results in fewer session than 6 years ago, I believe that this validates that as an industry we have gotten better especially in the last 2 years. The stats also showed that patients are achieving their desired results with fewer grafts than in the years past, this shows that we are getting better and being more effective with our hair transplant techniques.
If you want a glimpse into the future of hair restoration, do a patent search, you will see who is working on what and how far along they are, don't worry we will be doing hair transplant surgery for a long time.
ISHRS 2007 Meeting Highlights
The annual meeting of the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgeons (ISHRS) took place in Las Vegas September 26-30. The ISHRS established to educate the public and physicians who are interested in Surgical Hair Restoration, it also promotes Surgical Hair Restoration to the general public. This was the 15th annual meeting, the second time that it was held in Las Vegas. Below are highlight of this years meeting.
Multi-Unit Follicular Grafting was a hot topic. Grafts that contain 4-6 hairs can give the patient's a fuller look versus grafts that just contain 1-3 hairs. These grafts are carefully used in conjuction with 1-3 haired follicular units about 2cm behind the hairline. The MFU's have a better growth rate than the smaller F.U.'s giving the patient's more hair for their dollar, it also saves more of the valuable donor hair for future surgeries.
Trichophytic Closure seems to have withstood the scrutiny and is an accepted practice in Surgical Hair Restoration. Trichophytic Closure has been used by Plastic/Facial Plastic Surgeons for at least 10 years. It is a technique in which the surgeon trims either the lower or upper edge of the donor site, when this heals it allows hair to grow through the scar. When the site heals and the hair has grown-in the scar is virtually unseen.
Length of surgery was addressed, If the total time that that the grafts were left out of the body was less than 6 hours, hair growth was optimal. Over the last few years the size of the cases has increased from 1500 grafts to 5000 grafts, this increased the surgery time from 6 hours to 12 hours. It was assumed that the more grafts placed in one session the better the results, but results presented at the meeting showed that less is more.
Low Level Light Laser Therapy (LLLT), Laser therapy seems to be a hot topic in hair restoration. LLLT seems to increase the quality and presentation of existing hairs, if a person does not have follicles present it does not seem to grow hairs that do not exist. LLLT in conjuction with Propecia and Minoxidil (Rogaine) may help to keep your existing hair more presentable and cosmetic.
Age of Patient and Quality of Donor hair are still the most important aspects of Surgical Hair Restoration. Hair Loss increases as a person gets older, so the older you are when you start to notice the effects of hair loss the better off you are as a candidate for surgical hair restoration. A typical hair loss patient will lose 50% of their hair before they notice the effects. In surgical hair restoration we try to replace 25% of that loss, and it will give the patient an acceptable cosmetic improvement. The type of hair that exists in the donor area is equally as important as the age of the patient. Your hair color is very important, the less contrast between your hair color and your skin color will result in a better cosmetic improvement with your surgical hair restoration procedure.
Automating the hair transplant procedure.
There are two companies this year that are claiming that they have the answer to speeding up the process of hair transplantation. Both methods are based on FUE, follicular unit extraction. The first is a Robot that extracts the follicle, makes the sites and implants the follicular units, they claim that it is more efficient, less painfull, and will give a more natural result vs a human touch. I don't understand how it can be less painfull because the same type of anesthesia that is used in strip surgery is used in FUE. I don't see how it can be more efficient, because we can complete a 1500 graft strip surgery in 4 hours. I can't believe that the results are more natural, because it takes the human touch to adjust to the variables of each patients skin type. My biggest concern is how does the machine deal with all of the variables that exist in a follicular hair transplant, not to mention that the largest FUE procedure on record is less than 1000 grafts that means that the patient will have to come in the next day for more grafts. Also the patient must shave his entire head.
The other machine is also based on the FUE procedure, but is operated by the doctor or technicians. It removes the grafts using a punch that is attached to suction and delivers them to a holding cup. Once they are in the cup they must be examined and trimmed into the individual follicular units. The sites are made manually by the physician, and then a technician inserts the grafts into the sites with a handpiece that utilizes suction, the premise is that since forceps are not being used the grafts will survive better. The problem with this method is that it takes more time to insert the grafts which will decrease the graft survival rate. The main issue is ergonomics, the handpiece contains the tubes for suction and this slows the insertio process.
Both devices are based on the FUE procedure, which has many limitations. The grade on both of the devices is a C, the ideas are good, but need more improvements.
Training Outline