ACell, a Current Review of Applications in Hair Transplant Surgery

[wolvie1985]

I for one am blown away. Thanks doc.

[Gary Hitzig MD]

For Patiently Waiting

The results are what they are to date. It's still early but very promising. I have always felt that it's easier to save the hair than to grow it back and I do believe there is a point of no return when the miniaturazation is irreversible.
As I keep telling multiple patient inquiries, please prove me wrong.
I think time will tell us whether we need multiple injections or if not, how long between them. I look as the ACell/PRP injections like a flu shot--it may not work 100% but it certainly is helpful.
Sorry you haven't been blown away by the results, but the results are the results to date.
Hope to blow you away in time.
GH

[RichardDawkins]

I am glad you answered some questions. So to make it clear only for the record and for future discussions to refer to

1) Hairplucking with acell works as a hairtransplant but the downside is that it is very tedious. So we can say Expanded donor is possible right now but the technique to get plucking to perfection and make it less tedious needs some time.

Am i correct here or did i get it wrong?

[Gary Hitzig MD]

Sorry I Have Not Posted Recently

Yes as was pointed out and I had discussed on the Bald Truth Program several times, my initial pluckings in 5 patients did have an incredibly high yield. If you remember, I also stated that it was like walking into a casino and putting a dollar in the slot machine and winning-you generalize too quickly that it will always happen-it did not!
If that was universal I would never had sought out adjunct treatments (especially ACell) to improve my success rate. The results were preliminary yet exciting with the hope of future expansion on the technique to make it more viable. I have always had my limits on where I applied it and never intended to use it to replace traditional donor, but instead to help those with limited or no donor or for those with very small areas of hair loss.
ACell allowed us to start plucking scalp hair and develop a successful transference to other scalp areas-only beard hairs had worked in the past.
We are proceeding carefully so as not to generalize our early results-we hope to sustain them and have others reproduce or improve on the technique which is tedious. Let me say that despite what some have said, the plucked hairs DO grow back.

As far as the donor picture with ACell, this was a medical student who had a large transplant and agreed to have his donor area closed with ACell plus simple loose sutures on the left, and simple sutures alone loosely applied on the right. He was of course rewarded for his volunteering (reduced fee) but also knew he would never be shaving his head. He also knew, as a Student Doctor the point of the trial. If you magnify the pictures you will see the whitish remnant of the scar on the left although hairs grow through it. The right side speaks for itself. This was a case who came for re-evaluation very recently and it was exciting to see the result. Will this be every result-I hope so but can't and won't predict but if you look at the slide show from my talk, you will see it to be very dependable.
Sorry not to have posted in a bit but I have been quite busy with my paper and with some exciting new stuff.
Best to all of you
GH

[PatientlyWaiting]

Dr. Hitzig offers acell+prp injections as a stand alone treatment. He has two sets of photos on his website. When I contacted his office about it the price seemed a bit high for something that is still in its experimental stage.

Can you tell me the price of this injection? I live in New York and I see he has an office in NY. I saw the before and after pictures on his page from the link you posted. It's nothing that made me jump around in my seat, but it's pretty good for something that's still just in it's baby stages.

[PatientlyWaiting]

Okay, thanks to montrose and Spanish Dude for their input on my questions.

[Spanish Dude]

What or who is a "cheap believer"?

posters who are total newbies but consider themselves entitled to insult any hint of scepticism that comes from experienced forum members.

[mlao]

Not at all. I am not a health professional, and furthermore, hair transplants are not my main interest, but I like to use logic and find inconsistencies.
Of course, I can fail and make mistakes, but in hairloss forums cheap believers are usually the ones who end up wrong.

What or who is a "cheap believer"?

[RichardDawkins]

Efficacy, well if it comes to that terms i would pay attention to this one user here who posted a picture of his scar and said something about "its better after a few weeks" then his other scars has been.

@SpanishDude : There is gossip talk that a lot of other surgeons are experimenting with Acell right now, someone mentioned H&W and Dr A answered some things aswell.

I dont know if a lot of docs rushed to experiment with Acell. Ok well i know i will regret it but PLEASE PUNCH MY FACE FOR THIS

Even Dr Gho did say something about this in a paper a few years ago. But as you i only wanna see one thing fully documented

"A guy with lets say a NW5 pattern who get his frontal area fully restored with high density only by using plucked hairs"

Thats in my books the only thing i wanna see, if this is gonna work, i will book my flight. Or are you disagree with such an "Proof"

[Spanish Dude]

Yes, Acell was FDA approved for human use, 2 or 3 years ago, and it was then when the HT doctors rushed to try it.
This would clear the safety concerns. But not the efficacy.

I am talking about FDA trials for efficacy on hair surgery and hair multiplication. Strip healing, autoplucking HM, FUE+Acell HM, PRP+Acell HM, etc.
These would require separate trials, in the same way that Proscar and Propecia required separate trials.

I was under the impression that Acell is FDA approved but maybe iam misinterpreting this

http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf2/k021637.pdf

http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf9/K092926.pdf

http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf6/K060888.pdf

http://acell.com/about_med.php

[mlao]

I saw a video of how PRP injections are done by Dr Greco on this forum. And that's kinda like what i'm asking. Is there going to be a procedure like that with PRP+ACell?

Because Acell is new to the application of hair restoration there is no one correct way to apply it yet. You need to follow the doctors who are working with it and wait for them to release their findings.

the only doctor who is doing anything like you suggested is Dr. Hitzig
he is doing a combination of PRP/Acell injections into the scalp.
Here are two examples of the results.

http://nyhairloss.com/portfolio/acell-prp-case-studies/

I for one am going to wait until more information is released from the doctors as opposed to the guys on this forum who keep criticizing and pestering the doctors about their studies.
no one will know until at least the end of this year if Acell might become the next "Big Thing" in hair restoration.

[RichardDawkins]

I was under the impression that Acell is FDA approved but maybe iam misinterpreting this

http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf2/k021637.pdf

http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf9/K092926.pdf

http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf6/K060888.pdf

http://acell.com/about_med.php

[Spanish Dude]

@Patiently Waiting:
there is a bit of chaos right now with the Acell stuff. In the beginning, it was meant to be plucking+Acell, but now it seems that the doctors point towards improved strips, improved fues, or improved PRP. The "improvement" is debatable because little convincing evidence has been presented, and no long-term results are known. But hey, I am a sceptic.

@montrose: IMO, Acell should provide the powder FREE of charge. (instead, they are charging large amounts of money to the doctors).
Furthermore, Acell should pay the doctors for their job, and the trialists for the bother. Also, results should be professionally evaluated, and presented to the FDA. If the product works, FDA approval would mean immense benefits for Acell.
But Acell prefered to go the "underground trials" route, charging money to the trialists, and getting poor, unreliable documentation of the results. Strange.

[montrose]

Dr. Hitzig offers acell+prp injections as a stand alone treatment. He has two sets of photos on his website. When I contacted his office about it the price seemed a bit high for something that is still in its experimental stage.

[PatientlyWaiting]

I saw a video of how PRP injections are done by Dr Greco on this forum. And that's kinda like what i'm asking. Is there going to be a procedure like that with PRP+ACell?