Category: Other Surgical Procedures

There’s a new article about transplanting eyebrows, and features quotes from myself and my colleague Dr Bernstein, and contains before and after photos of an eyebrow patient of mine. Here’s a snippet from the story:

Throughout the country, follically-challenged and over-tweezed women (and some men) are discovering a new solution to their eyebrow woes that does not involve tattoos or makeup pencils.

Eyebrow transplants accounted for just 3 percent of all hair transplants in 2006, according to the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery, but they grew by 35 percent over the previous two years and appear to be gaining momentum

Read the rest of the article here — Transplant perks up fading eyebrows

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Dear Dr. Rassman,

I understand that hair cannot be donated from another person, yet why is it possible that organs can be?

I was reading an article today, Doctors Report Transplant Breakthrough, that mentions the possibility that organ recipients could one day not have to take anti-rejection drugs the rest of their life. If this prove to be true, can hair transplants from other people be a reality?

Unless the genetics are a perfect match, any organ that is transplanted (including hair, which is an organ) has until now forced the patient to take drugs to knock down the rejection process. The reason that a hair transplant works is that each person is his own donor and therefore has perfectly matched genetics. The drugs that you take for controlling organ rejection from a heart or kidney can kill you, but not having a heart or a kidney will kill you anyway. Rejecting hair from another person won’t kill you… just leave you bald and it it 100% certain that the hair from another person will reject.

The five patients in this article all had kidney transplants and were on anti-rejection medication for a period of time and have received marrow from the donor. I would not want to be the first volunteer for such procedures, and the relationship between these patients and a potential to harvest hair from others are decades away.

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I saw a patient earlier this week who had a well known surgeon place hundreds of body hair grafts into a bald area of his scalp about two years ago. This surgeon is one who promotes his body hair transplant procedures quite heavily, particularly on various websites and hair loss forums. No, I won’t name names (do your research and you’ll probably figure it out). There was 100% failure for the body hair to grow. Yes, a complete disaster. As one might expect, this patient was quite angry because he spent $11,000 and had great hope for this procedure, as he was depleted of donor hair from the back of the scalp.

Those looking to use body hair to transplant into their scalps should strongly consider other options if they are available, as this is not the first time something like this has occurred. I’ve read various reports and have heard quite a bit about this level of growth failure before.

Respectfully, the patient has requested that his photos not be published here.

Greetings;

We all understand and trainned under sterile surgical technique. We know the importance of asepsis in every surgical procedure. We also have great understanding why the we can do our Hair Transplantation procedures under “Clean Technique”. EX. Vascularity of the head, local immunity, ect.

MY QUESTION IS THIS:

COULD WE ACTUALLY DO 100% TRUE STERILE ASEPTIC HAIR TRANSPLANATION SURGERY?

Thank you for your inquires and your advice.

More power to all the world of Hair Transplant! Give it up to the Hair Transplant Technichians.

Since we are working with hair, one can never really create the type of sterile field one does in an operating room. The presence of hair suggests that bacteria are present. The key is to get the bacterial count down to a very low, acceptable level. The use of hair washes with either Betadine or Hibiclens the night before and morning of surgery is the best way to reduce bacterial count to manageable levels. Even in the operating room, bacterial counts are never zero, as it would require autoclaving, something that would kill living tissue.

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