Pilofocus - snakeskin?

[Kiwi]

Oh man. He's probably right

http://www.baldingblog.com/2014/02/04/pilofocus/

[fred970]

Dr. Wesley is one of his competitor, of course he will not praise his new procedure and risk losing clients and make them want to wait for pilofocus.

That said, he might be right. I'm not sure if we should all be that enthusiastic for this new technique.

[James7]

Rassman Quote:

We have no pictures or scientific material to base the claims that this is a valid procedure and I would imagine it would be very difficult and time consuming.

But conversely, there is also no evidence to the contrary either.
So really he is just making empty baseless statements, with no scientific evidence to prove otherwise.
There was a video explaining pretty clearly how it worked, maybe he missed it.
It's pretty easy for anyone to be a naysayer, before the thing is actually released. But why do that?
Maybe they just want to stick with selling FUT/FUE.

All you have to do is wait and see what comes of the clinical study trials
Then we will have a clearer picture of how it really is.
The results of the first trials will probably be around Summer of 2014.

[baldymcgee]

It's possible that Piloscopy won't work out but I'd be very surprised if it was a "scam".

We know that Dr. Wesley (and team) are working on new tooling and instrumentation and they acknowledge that it's "three steps forward, one step back" -- that's how engineering projects go.

Finally, Dr. Wesley does say that initially the technique will only be applied to small cases and then, as the process improves, ramp up to be able to do large sessions.

In this sense, I suppose, Piloscopy doesn't sound like a miracle, it sounds like a product of science and engineering that will get better/cheaper over time. Just like FUE, just like knee surgery, just like cataract surgery, just like...

[bigentries]

Rassman Quote:


But conversely, there is also no evidence to the contrary either.
So really he is just making empty baseless statements, with no scientific evidence to prove otherwise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence

[fred970]

Good point bigentries. There's also no evidence that dog poop doesn't work to regrow your hair.

[bigentries]

Good point bigentries. There's also no evidence that dog poop doesn't work to regrow your hair.

Not to be a jerk, but people on hair loss forums use that logical fallacy way too much

And just to voice my opinion, Rassman can be an ass sometimes, and yes, he antagonizes with the competition, but his point is completely valid, at least at the moment

[534623]

There was a video explaining pretty clearly how it worked ...

Fine, so I wonder why you guys are still interested in pilofocus.

"Pretty clearly" showing something - it seems it doesn't mean understanding something "pretty clearly". If the whole exitement is just based on the usage of ACell, and ACell is able to grow back even fingers or at least fingertips, why the hell doesn't guys like Hasson & Wong cut their 4000-6000 small FUT grafts (very small in comparison to big regrown fingers or at least fingertips) simply into at least 2 parts (just 1 cut more on their chopping board - it doesn't matter anymore) to get 8000-12000 grafts for the recipient with the help of ACell??

A legit question - isn't it?

[Arashi]

Oh man. He's probably right
http://www.baldingblog.com/2014/02/04/pilofocus/

That pilofocus can regrow hair, that I highly doubt. But Dr Wesley even doubts that it is scarless and he does so with bad arguments: "There is no such thing as scar-less surgery in the real world."

First of all, HASCI is scarless (well ok, there ARE scars of course but they're so small that they're really hard to notice with the naked eye). Secondly, the theory is to pull the graft from beneath so why would there be a scar if the skin is never even penetrated ?

Of course it still needs to be proven in practice, but I don't see any problems with the theory.

[James7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence

I'm suggesting we wait for the results and then we will know.
Some results may arrive later this year.
We've seen the video on Spencer's show, so that gives us some big clues as to how it works.

In Dr Rassman's article he says there is an absense of evidence available to him personally (pictures,material etc), not evidence of absense.
(so 'evidence of absense: not to be confused with absense of evidence' as the wikipedia article says. I'm not sure what point you were making?).

But this is simply because Dr Wesley hasn't shared all the details of his findings yet, and is still conducting the trials.

When Dr Rassman says 'I would imagine it works like...' he is simply making a guess (not basing it on any studies that he has done). He hasn't ever used the Pilofocus tools and says the presentation was 'short on details'. Guesses based on sparse details - so why worry about that?

There has been mention of anecdotal evidence already, and when the trials are done we should have more results.
Let's wait and see
The debate will probably continue after the results, maybe even when doctors start using the procedure, just like with FUE.