The Importance of Donor Preservation in Hair Transplant Surgery

This audio podcast has been transcribed using an automated service. Please forgive any typographic errors or other transcription flaws.

This podcast is on donor preservation. And so this is a complex topic I could spend hours talking about it. I’m going to try to make it as carefully, judicious, and brief as possible and still accurate. Donor preservation basically means saving or preserving donor hair for future use number one and also to not allow full donor depletion on the backside that would lead to positive visible scarring. As you know, there are two major methods of harvesting from the back of the head FUE and FUT or strip procedure. The issue with FUE is over harvesting the area causing it to be mothy which is interesting is that you know, everyone’s worried about a linear strips scar, but they don’t talk about the fact that an overharvested backside cannot ever be fixed. There is no, you know a strip car can be fixed with FUE, can be fixed with SMP and overharvested backside obligates someone to either way their hair is super short or super long. And so the reason I thought about this podcast is I did a podcast on the state of the industry today where doctors are really not either performing the procedure or even having a conversation with the consult One of my patients was offered 4500 grafts from a salesperson and there’s just no way that person even has half that number and is donor area available as you know. It’s just these are things that people are just in the hands of salespeople just told okay just sell them, you know this number of grafts and that can completely decimate the donor area to the point where one is there’s no viable future use of hair as but also complete scarring on the backside with complete devastation of the back. And that’s something that people don’t talk about. People talk about, you know scarring, they talk about, you know, linear scarring, they talk about maybe white dots from FUE, but this is a type of scarring that is related to the lack of donor preservation. So what’s so important when you talk to a physician, this is why it’s important to talk to a physician not a salesperson is what can be done in terms of donor preservation. The funny thing is this patient also showed me like 15 texts from the sales person trying to give them discounts to schedule with them when my God, it’s absolutely frightening looking at what has happened in the hair industry right now, and it’s not, you know. In the old days, which is maybe, so let’s talk about 40 years ago. The biggest issue was, you know, doll’s head plugs that looked absolutely stupid looking and we’re fake-looking that migrated to a much better results. And then it was talking about overharvesting the backside with strips scars which looked horrible. And now I think we’re entering a generation of FUE especially practices that only perform FUE that have way overharvested donor areas in the back side leading to the inability to wear your hair short which is sort of interesting because that’s the whole reason to FUE. And and so these are things that are maybe difficult to grasp, especially something if it’s this is the point of this is that salespeople should not be making judgments about you know, what stage you should do or or even having a transplant. A physician must be in control of deciding. What would be the best options for you and be able to discuss with you those pros, cons, limitations, and future issues in a very rational way. You know for me whenever I talk to a patient it is not a sales job. It is really to understand pros and cons and limitations and go through that very thoroughly with them. So they understand sort of future risk things that are unacceptable things are acceptable things that because not all future risk should be just given to the patient and said look you don’t get it. You know, you got a choice to do it, but the patient doesn’t understand future risk, salespeople definitely don’t understand it but patients don’t understand it a hundred percent. So there’s a fiduciary obligation by the physician to be able to counsel the patient and reasonable way and that begins with understanding donor preservation, it doesn’t be that aesthetic goals of transplanting bald areas is of course important. Don’t get me wrong. It’s the whole reason why you’re here, but what’s to me equally important is donor preservation.