Emina Karamanovski, one of Dr. Lam’s surgical assistants and a key member of his hair transplant team, recently authored a textbook designed to educate hair transplant surgical assistants about all aspects of hair restoration procedures. The textbook, titled Hair Transplant 360 For Assistants, is the second in a two part series. Part one of the series is a book authored by Dr. Sam Lam titled Hair Transplant 360 for Physicians, which provides a comprehensive look at all critical aspects related to hair transplantation procedures for physicians.

Although Emina was the primary author of the textbook geared to educating surgical assistants and Dr. Lam primarily wrote the version geared to physicians, both had a key part in rounding out the needed knowledge for each book. Dr. Lam turned to Emina to add her expertise as a leading hair transplant surgical assistant when writing the text for physicians, while Emina relied on Dr. Lam to provide his medical expertise and experience for use in the book she created for use by surgical assistants.

Emina and Dr. Lam together recognize the critical role that a surgical assistant plays in the success of a hair transplant procedure. Unlike other types of surgical assistants, hair transplant assistants dissect tissue, separate hairs and implant extracted hair follicles into the areas of the scalp that require additional hair. Due to their extremely hands-on role during hair restoration procedures, hair transplant assistants can greatly affect the end result of a hair restoration.

Unfortunately, despite the key role surgical assistants play in hair transplant procedures, there has never been much formal training given specifically for individuals in this role. Most hair restoration assistants typically learn from the physician they work with while on the job, and this results in a long, drawn out and slow learning process. More recently, hands on training has begun to improve slightly, such as through the offering of a two hour basic training course offered by the International Society For Hair Restoration Surgeons, but to Emina and Dr. Lam, this still didn’t seem like enough.

This lack of formal education for hair transplant surgical assistants is what led Emina and Dr. Lam to decide that a comprehensive textbook was needed to provide additional information to surgical assistants in the field of hair restoration. Additionally, Emina and Dr. Lam organized a four day workshop for both surgical assistants as well as hair restoration physicians geared to improving knowledge and providing a venue for practicing actual skills.

Emina is well suited to write a textbook for hair transplant assistants. She is a leading hair restoration surgical assistant and has over twenty years of experience in the field. In addition to assisting in hair restoration surgeries, Emina provides training and speaks about topics related to hair transplant surgery around the world. She also recently spent some time with Restoration Robotics, the developers of the cutting-edge ARTASTM system that is used in follicular unit excision (FUE) hair transplant procedures. While at Restoration Robotics, Emina served as the national and international training director for the ARTASTM system and has an unparalleled level of expertise with the state-of-the-art technology. She has also served as the co-director of the Hair Restoration Cadaver Workshop for the last five years (in St. Louis) and was a 2010 recipient of the Distinguished Assistant Award.