The Knee cap area

Hair Transplant
1

In many individuals, we find that the hair follicles in the knee cap tends to be of better quality and often doubles and triples.


A variation of SFET method of extraction that has been in use for a long time now has made it possible to safely extract these follicles for use.

CASE I

In this instance about 650 grafts were thus retrieved

Case II
The patient is the one depicted here: http://www.hairsite4.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=12&topic_id=54156&mode=full&page=

600×800 39.5 KB

The knee cap area harvestation calls for specific precautions that the doctor would have to exercise.

S. Umar, M.D., FAAD
DermHair Clinic
Redondo Beach, California
+1-310-318-1500
1-877-DERMHAIR (US residents)
info@dermhairclinic.com
NEW WEBSITE www.dermhairclinic.com
Single Follicule Extraction & Transfer (SFET)
Using Head and Body hair

For more SFET-FUE and BHT results go to www.dermhairclinic.com

2

Dr Umar,

From the last few posts and procedures that you have posted, you have really been pushing the envelope with BHT and are clearly a major proponent of this procedure.

There has been a lot of doubt over the predictability of BHT and you have made a several comments that intimate that you have cracked the problem of unpredictability of the BHT outcome.

Would you be prepared to state what percentage of your patients that have sessions of over 2000 BHT could expect 70% or more yield in one year.

I do not mean to put you on the spot here but with the kind of explorations that several surgeons are now making with BHT, one assumes that there is enough experience to give this kind of statistic.

Thanks,
Marco.

3

Dr Umar, I’ve clearly noticed the same thing. It has significantly more hair density and better quality.

I’ll go one better, the same seems to be true around my wrists as well with the doubles and triples. I started thinking that it might have had something to do with being around a “joint”??

4

I am very curious to know what kind of scaring is left on the body.

5

Hi Damon,

You bring up a very important point. The healing aspect of the extraction points is nothing less than critical.

Those are my knees in the picture. It has been about 10 days since those pictures. Right now, the extraction points look like little red dots, but each day they seem a little less noticeable.

I must admit, my heart skipped a beat when work was done around the knees, but everything seems to be working out just fine.

I met with heliboy, one of Dr. Umar’s patients, to check out his extraction points before deciding to continue with the surgery and that gave me confidence. For me, I would not have continued without seeing another patient in person to check out their healing. I was lucky that he was willing to share his experience with me.

It would be heartbreaking to see someone scarred or disfigured from a hair transplant surgery. In my opinion, if a person has any doubts that may happen with their doctor they should really think whether that risk is worth it.

Dr. Umar also extracted beard hair which is really putting a lot of faith in the doctor to extract from the face area. And this healing also seems to progressing just fine.

Dr. Umar’s years of experience as a dermatologist also gave me a since of confidence. I am not necessarily trying to promote one specific doctor. But I do believe it is imperative that credentials be researched before making a final decision on a doctor.

I don’t have a camera with me at the moment, but I will try to get some pictures out here within the next week or two so people can see how things look at this point.

In my opinion, this is very important. These procedures need to be done by very trained doctors in a location where they can be held accountable in a worse case scenario.

Hopefully, some other folks will reply with how healing appears at 6 months and beyond since it has only been 10 days for me.

Sorry I rambled a bit on the reply.

6

Each man heals differently,I guess whether the donor hairs leave scars all over your body depends on your bodies individual way of healing.My biggest fear would be to have my chest & legs covered in white dots.I’ve seen some pretty bad photos over the net.The skin on the chest is very sensitive & prone to scarring.That scares me,I don’t know what to do.

What you consider ramble I consider knowledge.Talk all you want.

7

What you said definitely makes sense to me that each individual’s healing will be unique. I have also seen some of those photos on the net with the white dots on people’s bodies and head. I believe this often leads to discussions about size of surgical instruments, doctor’s experience, etc.

I was also worried about that. And like you, tried to learn as much as I could about it. I think in the wrong hands very bad things could happen. I can at least speak to my personal experience. At this point my little red dots are still getting smaller. I will keep you updated over time the progress of extraction sites. At this moment, 2 weeks after surgery I am not concerned about extraction sites. Again, I did meet with a former patient in person and reviewed their extraction points before deciding to mover forward with the process.

I also had this thought that maybe when the doctor was done that my legs, arms, and chest would look completely bare and have a shaven look forever. I only have an average amount of body hair. And after having that large amount of work done the amount of hair on my body looks relatively the same. It doesn’t look like I shave my legs or anything like that. Again, I am sure each person’s story is unique. I was more concerned with explaining to everyone over time why I shave my legs and arms. But it does not appear that way at all. And I suspect that people with a lot of body hair wouldn’t even notice the loss of hair from the legs, arms, and so. That was a good surprise to me and I am curious how that plays out over time.

At this point in the process I am at the following point. I no longer have any concerns about scarring with the correct doctor. Of course, there is always risk even in the best hands. Now only time will tell whether the BHT grows on my head and how it looks. Unfortunately, I won’t know the answer to that for 6 months or a year. I was satisfied with Dr. Umar’s former patients to give it a try. And I guess that varies from patient to patient also. My specific case is a combination of scalp, beard, and body hair which hopefully will work out well. I am planning on wearing my hair very short. No doubt, the doctor’s techniques and exact placement and angles of the hair must have some affect on the appearance and success of the outcome. I have heard different opinions on how long the body hair grows (if it grows). Seems like I have heard maybe an inch or two over time. But I think this process is so new that we don’t know for sure.

The doctor has his own protocol to ensure the patient is not in pain during the process. Among other things, a “local” is used on the extraction sites and on the head. It reminded me of going to the dentist. I mention that only to stress that this is a serious medical procedure. The doctor needs to be qualified enough to know how drugs interact with each other and so on. Not something to be taken lightly. Each morning there is a medical check before starting to make sure there aren’t any surprises during the day.

I learned in a very short time that the doctor did not want me to feel pain. For two reasons actually. Most important is that he did not want the patient to feel pain. But also I learned the extraction of the hair is a critical part of the process. If my body jumped because of a prick of pain I could bump the doctor’s hand messing up the extraction. If the extraction gets messed up then the hair is lost. I learned that this is a very, very precise process. There is absolutely no room for error. And if I did feel pain I needed to tell him and he would fix it and it was no big deal.

You end up spending a lot of time together. And I have an appreciation that this is a serious process from a health and success ratio process. The doctor better be excellent or very bad things could happen. Also I learned that when dealing with BHT, every part of the process must be perfect or the success rate will suffer. This is obvious in hind site. But now I appreciate this is a very tedious, exact process and everyone has to work together as a team. This worked for us very well.

8

PLEASE NOTE: This is a continuation of my post above:

The doctor also has “before” surgery instructions and “after” surgery instructions. I have been doing my best to follow his protocol exactly. With BHT I am trying to be as good a patient as I can be to help with the success rate. I don’t want to share the instructions out of respect to the doctor. It has taken years of hard work and experience to attain the process and I don’t think it is right to just give it away. Plus I am not trained enough to explain it properly anyway. But, in general, you need to work together.

It does appear that different doctors may have different success rates. There probably isn’t a large enough sample to say that for a fact statistically. But there does appear to be some tricks to the trade. I don’t know what those tricks are; I am just hoping that this works.

Another funny thing that I learned was sometimes I would fall asleep during the surgery. Hard to believe I know! However, as I fell asleep I would start to move my head making a moving target for the doctor. And the doctor would say in good spirits, you’re not falling asleep and moving your head are you? Another funny story was when extraction sites were made from the abdomen and chest. I would create a moving target because my breathing kept moving my stomach in and out and my chest in and out. So the good doctor was doing these exact extractions on a moving target. I learned over time to breath from my chest when he worked on my abdomen and to breath from my stomach when he worked on my chest. I got a feel for it over time. I didn’t have to be exactly still, but the patient and doctor have to work together. Of course, the doctor has been through this before so he helped me along the way. And, at first, I was a little nervous so I am sure my breathing movements were a little exaggerated initially.

9

Thanks for all your info Endhairpeace & please keep us updated with as much detail & photos as possible.
BHT is my only choice right now because the donor area on my scalp is mangled by strip surgery.I am considering seeing Dr Woods but when you have been bitten by a snake you are petrified of a lizard.

10

I most certainly understand!

Your situation sounds very similar to heliboy (and many others I am sure). Some really bad experiences from the past. That, I believe, is called wisdom. I know that he has used BHT for some repair work and so on and so on.

I am so new to this that it is easy for me to be optimistic.

I never tried surgeries in the past because it just never crossed my mind. And when I hear the horror stories from the past I am so glad that I didn’t even know any of this was going on.

I had no idea until about 2 years ago what a huge industry this is. And apparently quite competitive with some very strong views.

From what I have seen on the net. Dr. Woods certainly has a great reputation with very good and established results.

As a new person. It seems to me that there are the same handful of names that come up concerning BHT. If you are not in a rush, you could wait to see how my case turns out and Taz and some of Dr. Umar’s other patients. If they are failures then that would be nice to know. If they are successes that would be nice to know also. I believe that heliboy is largely viewed as one of Dr. Umar’s success stories.

Of course, for all of these doctors, I imagine that the majority of their patients don’t post to the forums and put their information on the net. So I think it is tough to get a real handle on what the “real” total of successes and failures are for any of the doctors.

In my opinion, if you are ready to jump in now, Dr. Woods is certainly very established and respected as far as I know. I obviously chose to go with Dr. Umar. I am not paid by Dr. Umar. But I do like him very much.

I will be honest, I never met with or considered going with Dr. Woods because they are not located in the United States. But clearly, in this specific case, Dr. Woods has an excellent reputation. But call me old fashioned, if something goes wrong, I want to make sure that someone is going to be held accountable to the utmost extent of the law. Of course, there are great doctors outside of the USA and they are held accountable for their actions. I just felt more protected here as a US citizen. When someone starts to stick needles in my head it makes me a little nervous no matter how great their reputations may be :slight_smile:

I am not doing a sales job here. Please believe me. Dr. Umar, as a patient himself in the past, has had some pretty good scarring that a doctor did to him in the past. So I know that he is sensitive to this issue and I believe his personal experiences as a patient helped drive his passion for this industry.

From these forums I am gathering that Dr. Umar is viewed by some as a new kid on the block. Some success stories, but not truly established for 15 years or so. I believe he has been specializing in this process anywhere from 5 to 10 years. He was already an established dermatologist before that. I think some of the other doctors are maybe more like 10 to 15 years. There are so many ways to view this situation in any industry.

I did meet with four other places for consultations. I just never got that wow feeling that something great may happen from my specific case.

In my opinion, as a patient, this was the right time to go with Dr. Umar. Experienced enough to have substancial success stories. New enough that he is hungry and completely driven. Of course, the proof is in the after pictures, and I will have to wait 6 months to a year to see if this works or not.

There seems to be some movement in this industry and it is unclear how it is all going to play out. That is exciting in many ways.

11

We have also noted this phenomenon. The hairs around the kneecap tend to be coarser and occur in twos and threes more than elsewhere on the leg.
We were initially reluctant to go after these, but experience has shown this to be a good source of BHT.
As for “scarring” (I use quotes because it is really more of a hypopigmentation than a scar), it varies from person to person and from body area to body area. The chest is often more apt to “dot” than other areas.

As far as the potential for denuding areas of the body: the body has its hairs in a much higher telogen percentage than the scalp. For example, if the scalp has roughly 90% in anagen (active growth phase) and 10% in telogen (dormant phase), the various areas of the body may have a much different range (perhaps 50 to 60% telogen in some areas, or even more!)
Therefore, even if seemingly “all” of the FU’s are harvested from a particular body area, upon revisiting in 6 months to a year, there may be a whole new crop of hairs which were lying dormant at the time of harvesting. When observing through high magnification, there are many, many “empty” follicles with no growing hair present. Later, they may sprout at the end of the telogen, or beginning of the anagen phases.

12

Thanks,

This is some great info.

13

I already have a huge scar on the back of my head that has made me extremely conscientious.I don’t want more marks on the rest of my body.
Dr Woods has said in the past that as long as his patients don’t join a neo nazi group then nobody will be able to tell that they have had FUE.What does that tell you ? BHT is obvioulsy going to leave scars all over the body.
I need a magic pill or HM & neither one is coming.
Sadly,I hope for a fatal accident,inoperable cancer or Al Qeada doing a terrorist attack in my street.

14

Hello Damon,

You mentioned the following:

Dr Woods has said in the past that as long as his patients don’t join a
neo nazi group then nobody will be able to tell that they have had
FUE.

That statement by itself would scare the daylights out of me also. Even more so if I had your past bad experiences.

I don’t know if this indicates scarring (dotting) or just a doctor covering themselves legally as to have not promised perfection.

Might be good to hold off for awhile?

It may be worth visiting patients and check out their extraction sites first hand ? Of course, that is no guarantee either, but at least a bench mark.

When I met heliboy, I could not see any dots at the extraction points.

But I am certainly not an expert.

You are far more experienced than me so I would trust your gut instincts.

I am not far enough along in my process to state a long term experience.

But you are certainly welcome to check out my progress over the next several months.

Again, I will post some pictures here within the next week or two so that you can see my extraction points at the couple of weeks mark.

I admire your experience and caution and I hope to continue learning from you over the next several months.

15

» I already have a huge scar on the back of my head that has made me
» extremely conscientious.I don’t want more marks on the rest of my body.
» Dr Woods has said in the past that as long as his patients don’t join a
» neo nazi group then nobody will be able to tell that they have had
» FUE.What does that tell you ? BHT is obvioulsy going to leave scars all
» over the body.
» I need a magic pill or HM & neither one is coming.
» Sadly,I hope for a fatal accident,inoperable cancer or Al Qeada doing a
» terrorist attack in my street.

I hope you read my post above. There are many instances where it is completely undetectable that anything has been done on the body. Other times, there is some white dotting. One way to find out is a test run with a small number.
I think Dr. Woods was talking about the fact that shaving the scalp MAY reveal the presence of hypopigmentation (or may not).
Also, for perspective, an ear to ear strip scar and tiny white dots from FUE do not stack up in the same way as far as the aesthetic impact, at least for me, and I’ve had both.
But if someone cannot abide the possibility of ANY marks of ANY kind on their scalp or body, hair transplant surgery is not an option, period.