ACell, a Current Review of Applications in Hair Transplant Surgery

[RichardDawkins]

SO i think that i speak for a lot of people here.

I think we need really to see more pictures to grasp the potential of both Acell/Plucking and Acell/PRP treatments.

There was also a question about some patient who underwent 4000 plucked hairs or something related to this, for this case also more input would be appreciated.

WHat does the community think.

PS: No iam not a naysayer, iam just really really interested in a promising solution, thats all.

[Jerry Cooley, MD]

"i will refresh you. Dr. Cooley presented two examples of what he called plucked hairs. One was a scalp hair and one was a beard hair. In reality, these were not plucked hairs. They were closer to an intact graft than a plucked hair."

No, Dr.. In reality, these WERE plucked hairs. Because they were plucked out of the scalp using tweezers. Period.

Sometimes when I pluck my hair, it comes out with what you consider to be a 'nearly fully intact follicle'. Sometimes I don't. Either way, that hair has been plucked, and plucked hairs grow back. You are telling us that if you pluck a hair in a certain way, it will not grow back. I am saying this is wrong. When Dr. Cooley says he has gotten better at plucking, I understand that to mean that he has a) gotten better at plucking the hair so that the cells come out with the follicle every time, rather than say 50% of the time b) gotten better at recognizing how much material is required at the end of the hair in order to achieve regrowth in the recipient.

What I'm saying is, it is well established that plucking a hair with a pair of tweezers by grabbing on to the hair and pulling - no matter what angle, strength or speed you pull - that hair will grow back. You are simply hypothesizing that this is not the case - and it's not enough to show images of a Cooley plucked hair and say "based on my knowledge and experience, too much of the follicle has been pulled out - it won't grow back in the donor". That flies in the face of all the other evidence we have that prove that plucked hairs grow back no matter how much material was pulled out with it.

We would have known by now that if you plucked a hair, maybe 10% of the time it won't come back because 'a nearly fully intact follicle came out with it'. Never heard that. Girls who groom their eyebrows don't hear "hang in there, cause 9 times out of ten, the eyebrow hair will grow back, but you can get lucky 1 times out of 10 and it won't'.

I have had handfuls of hair pulled out of my scalp at one time during wrestling matches. Guess what, out of all those handfuls, you would think that some of them would have had 'nearly intact follicles' pulled out. And yet all the hair grew back. So, I do understand what you're saying, Dr.. I just think your own claim is far more unfounded than the science you are attempting to discredit.

I agree with you completely. Hair grows back after plucking. I have no special, secret, magical plucking technique. I got better at plucking hairs with adequate epithelial cells attached to the shaft. No one has seen any thinning or lack of regrowth in the areas I've plucked. Nor would I expect them to, because I am not extracting complete follicles.

I've attached a photo of two single hair grafts from the same patient. The one on the right is plucked, and the one on the left is dissected from a strip. Both are single hairs from the same patient, so we're making a valid comparison. I chose the meatiest pluck I could get for this example. It even has the dermal papilla attached, which is quite rare for plucks. The difference is that the intact follicle on the left has the dermal sheath, which is quite apparent when you compare the width of these grafts. Also attached is a histologic stain of a plucked graft.....there is no dermal sheath on it. Hair will regrow at the plucking site because mesenchymal stem cells in the dermal sheath will regenerate a papilla, and epithelial stem cells in the isthmus will interact with this papilla to form a new hair fiber. Fifty years of basic hair research support this statement.

Someone on this Forum mentioned how frustratingly slow hair growth studies can be, and I echo this. I am accumulating more clinical experience with this technique, and time will tell what role it will play. There are many very good questions and it will unfortunately take time to answer them. Later this year, I will provide an update on my results. In the meantime, I recommend patients seek out standard medical treatments and if they are a candidate, do FUT or FUE.

Dr Cooley

[RichardDawkins]

You absolutely speak my language. So what does the rest of the community think?

[KeepHoping]

Also...

I did volunteer to be a guinea pig but no matter who they use to try and prove their technique I think Hitzig, Cooley and Cole should do one procedure with everyone present at one of their offices to learn from each other and try to get the best results. Of course that is hard to arrange but at least some type of contact during the procedure would be valuable.

For example, maybe Dr. Cole could offer his expertise on his form of FUE to the other doctors and how maybe the way he extracts from the donor would allow for regeneration with the use of Acell or Dr. Hitzig could explain what he is doing with Acell/PRP injections to stop hair loss and add growth. This would be the type of cooperation that would help hair loss sufferers move toward the final goal of finding a treatment to stop this and get hair back on our heads.

That's just my two cents.

-KH

[KeepHoping]

Dr. Cole

Are you going to be doing a similar procedure to Dr. Hitzig with just injections or injections throughout the entire recipient and donor with your transplants. He has gotten some regrowth in patients and it seems to stop their hair loss at least for a certain period of time (http://nyhairloss.com/portfolio/acell-prp-case-studies/). I think it would help yield better results as it would thicken the native hair along with the transplant, just wanted to know what you thought of it along with your CIT or FUE?

[RichardDawkins]

Well.....Dr Cole posted a pic which machine he uses to mix Acell. There are plenty of forms to use like powder or injection. This is not the problem (lucky for us)

[plopp]

Using Acell on the plucked donor is definitely an interesting concept and would probably ensure regrowth. The problem would be how to apply it I guess :/

[RichardDawkins]

Thats reasonable

On the homepage there is the average time it takes for hair to grow back eyebrow and scalp hair

Another question is, if this scaring will occur when you use Acell on the Donor pluck side ;-) so i highly doubt it

[plopp]

Hmmm iam always curious when 2 post poster are agressively try to downplay some new things.

And now it doesnt result in scaring, only if the hairs are plucked wrong. And if you would really really want infinite donor to be a real thing, you wouldnt come up with such stuff

And here you can see there is a girl who plcuked her hairs for 11 years and the hair grows back

http://web121.sun-15.de/wbb2/thread....0711#post10711

LOL, well, I'm always suspicious when people who have only been on here for less than a month makes outrageous claims of infinite donor without anything to back it up . But seriously, ask the people who suffer from trichotillomania or overplucked eyebrows, and you will know that plucked hair don't always regrow. As I said before, it might just be that scarring of the hair follicle occurs first after repeated plucking (cf. Cooley's statement of expanded donor, not infinite). It might be that different types of hair may be more suscpetible to this sort of trauma. It might be that different plucking techniques result in different outcomes in terms of regrowth. The bottom line is that we just don't know as of yet and that, currently, only anecdotal evidence of regrowth is present.

I do believe this to work, and I certainly wish it to more than anything in the world. That aside, I still think it's too early to make any grandiose claims of solving the riddle of hair loss.

[RichardDawkins]

Hmmm iam always curious when 2 post poster are agressively try to downplay some new things.

And now it doesnt result in scaring, only if the hairs are plucked wrong. And if you would really really want infinite donor to be a real thing, you wouldnt come up with such stuff

And here you can see there is a girl who plcuked her hairs for 11 years and the hair grows back

http://web121.sun-15.de/wbb2/thread.php?sid=1eebb84f94c99c535a3f2b9739718dd9&postid=10711#post10711

[rapunzal]

actually all i was suggesting is that a study of the donor might have already been done by Dr Hitzig himself

[plopp]

Guys, I want the donor to regrow more than anyone. Nevertheless, it is well known that hair plucking may result in scarring alopecia. Whether that is a long term effect from overplucking or more of a game of chance everytime you pluck, I don't think anyone can say for sure at this point. The same goes for the extra damage that might or might not be induced by Cooley's and Hitzig's plucking technique.

I think this is just one of those painful 'wait and see' cases. I do agree with Dr Cole that a scientific study would be of tremendous help and shouldn't be too costly to set up.

[RichardDawkins]

And to give a straight answer

Yes I do belive and know for sure that plucked hairs (intact) always grow back in thir plucked area. Period

My own experiments show that. Also another really obvious proof, girls who wax their bikini zone, their legs etc. The hair always come back to haunt them ALWAYS.

Also another fact is, that follicles even if they got damaged, can and will regenerate themselves. Why?

1) Damage on a smaller scale will always heal without leaving scars
2) The head is very energetic when it comes to blood vessels etc
3) Surrounding cells provide the help to recover

there is a very simple analogy for hairs, they are refered to as "weeds" or "pest plants"

If you hack a pest plant above the surface, its roots remain in the ground and will produce another fully plant.

If you pluck it out and just a little bit of root work sticks in the bottom, and you throw away the plucked plant, you can say sure fire that in the next year you will have two pest plants to take care of

And if you pluck this one "Patient Zero" pest plant all the time it will come back the next year every time.

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No we transsect the "Pest plant" (like FUE) without Acell

Now all we have is an empty hole in the ground with no rootwork and no live whatsoever BUT there are some minor remains left, some really small root works.

No our beloved gardener think, that is actually a brilliant idea to pour "fertilizer" in this hole because he wanna plant a coconut tree the next day.

WHat happens next in a time lapse is pretty obvious and simple. The remains in the ground will form, guess what, another pest plant.

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Only because hairloss is scary, we should think of it as something impossible to beat.

CONCLUSION (Please read carefully)

If there is the smallest of smallest of smallest molecule or "NEEDED" material left, it will regenerate PERIOD.

Thats btw another reason why with FUE progression, there are more and more cases where some grafts in the donor have regenerate themselves.

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And in the pest plan example, fertilizer is just a simple stupid solution for nice plants to grow shiny. But Acell on the other other hand is like "rehabilitation program, surgeon, nurse, aftercare and an extra life" all combined.

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My prognosis or prediction is pretty straight forward and i wanna share it :

1) Acell/PRP will halt and stop hairloss and reverse it to a certain point

Results : hairloss stopped but NOT a full head of hair only a few more grafts or so

2) Plucked hairs with Acell for creating a perfect dense hairline and induce some autocloning

3) FUE with Acell or Plucking with Acell as full hair restauration solution

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Thats the end of the story and please Dr Cole i really respect you effort, i really do and also your scepticism but at one thing you have to believe the hairloss suffering people, because they all speak because they witnessed it themselves

"Plucked hair fully regenerates itself"

[Spanish Dude]

Leeroy, it was you and Iron_Man who destroyed Hairsite, not me. In fact you were banned there (and logged in with a new name Stevie.Dee).
And now you are trying to derrail my post.
My post underscores that Hitzig claimed 80-85% yield in 2003. That was autocloning without even using Acell. Where are the wow results? 8 years after?

p.d. the lawsuit was mentioned in that 2003 post. It wasn't my comment.

[RichardDawkins]

Ok Guys lets stop right here before the fronts get harder and HairRobinHood will come up with some Gho talk.

KeepHoping has offered himself as a "guinea pig" at Dr Cole to test regrowing donor and also succesfull transplantation of ONLY plucked HAIRS (Hairs not Grafts)

This is what we should focus now and nothing less, and yes i know the answer the one question " Will plucked hairs regrow in Donor area", the answer is Yes but now it is time to put stupid internet arguments aside and communicate together and get something accomplished.

Believe me there were some ideas like "Lets work together" at hairsite but almost all of those ideas have been destroyed by Iron.Manīs endless insults or by other users there.

So lets do it like this, KeepHoping will get in touch with Dr Cole and the will test it as Dr Cole has given his opinion about how to test things. And also let Hitzig and Cooley do their stuff and give them time to redefine their findings and make plucking a "state of the art" technique.

Also i would like to be Dr Hitzig and Cooley a little bit more transparant at this point.

Also as Dr Cole stated, they should get in touch with Dr Rassman, Dr Bernstein and him.

OR

We could just keep arguing over and over again if hairs grow and where all those pictures are, and in 4 years we are still here with no results.

@ SpanishDude : Sorry you absolutely annoy me, now you bring up some Lawsuits against Dr Hitzig, only because you read about them here. Thats your SOP right, wait until something for your world of conspiracy theories come up and then annoy people at message boards with things not even connected to each other.

You and all you "Transform a NW7 to NW1" crap. Have you seen this repair patient with scar Tissue and Nw7? And now he is well everything but not a NW7 anymore.

You and Iron.Man (HairRobinHood) did as mentioned here before, destroy hairsite