Hair Grafting

There are four advantages to the destination site where the healing follicular implants are used instead of traditional hair transplants. This is to minimize the size of the recipient site surgical wound, eliminating the surface deformation of the skin, decreased skin fibroplasia associated with healing, and avoid the alteration of pigment.

By limiting the implant to the follicular elements of the skin, the wound recipient site may be slightly larger than the follicular unit itself so that the unit is perfectly in it. Because the follicular units are so compact, one small and two units of hair were essentially the same footprint and can be placed in the site size, and two, three, and four units of hair has the same footprint and can be placed in the same size site. When the crack spread contracts around the follicular unit inserted, the proper adjustment minimizes the space of a clot forms and reduce the distance for re-epithialization. In other words, the size of the wound is significantly diminished. In this situation, the fibrin "glue" will be the most effective way to ensure the implant, exudate and crust formation will be reduced and the healing time will be shortened.

It is important for all transplant patients to shampoo hair the day after surgery, letting water flow at low pressure on the transplanted area. This irrigation will allow the majority of hair restoration patients to be free of scabs in 24 hours, do not require dressings on the recipient area. We found that by removing the crusts in a single day, the surrounding erythema disappears much more quickly. In a few days, most patients have mild erythema and thatch of hair as the only indication of their hair restoration procedure.

On the other hand, when traditional methods, most grafts (which are essentially cylinders of skin and hair) are harvested, the epithelium creates an acute angle to its upper edge and an obtuse angle on the bottom edge. Hair of the back and sides of the scalp grows at an angle of about 30 degrees. When the grafts are inserted into the recipient site, they must be placed at an angle that corresponds to the angle of hair origin, which varies from about 30 to 60 degrees. Because of this angle, the mechanical forces acting on the graft immediately after placement and in healing, interrupt edge to edge alignment of the graft with the surrounding skin or cause sedimentation or elevation of the graft or both. As each graft is distorted ever so slightly, the combined effect of several grafts can produce irregular surface (cobble stoning) of the traditional hair transplant. The surface roughness becomes clinically apparent as increasing the size of the graft that the sites are made with the punches, rather than slots. This is simply prevented when the implants are devoid of the excess skin.

Slit grafting prevents squamous, but often produces a dimple or puckering on the site of the emergence of the hairs by the growth of the epidermis adjacent to the graft. Although follicular units are technically put in "slots", reducing the perifollicular epithelium in the follicular implantation, the site needed is so small (1mm) and the follicular unit so compact that this deformation does not occur.

Fibrosis resulting from wound healing biggest causes a further problem. Like angulation causes of surface irregularities, it also produces a distortion of the dermis that may not be obvious clinically. The significance of this is that the grafts are not placed parallel always end up having their hair in parallel under the surface of the skin at the dermal reorganization is complete. This distortion hinders the development of grafts near future due to the risk of damaging existing ones (even if the co angle.