PRIME PEOPLE | BESSAM FARJO |
FARJO HAIR INSTITUTE BESSAM FARJO
Balraj Juttla talks to Founding Director of the Farjo Hair Institute about the state of the science and how hair transplant techniques have developed over the years
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AIR LOSS CAN BE AN emotional and stressful experience for both men and women. It can lead to increased levels of anxiety, and adversely
affect an individual's confidence and self- esteem. For many years there have been treatments designed to halt or restore hair loss but with varying degrees of success. However, recent developments in the techniques and technology used for these procedures have improved the quality of results dramatically and hair restoration procedures are now more popular than ever. There are few people better qualified
to talk to regarding hair restoration procedures than Bessam Farjo,
a
specialist in hair restoration surgery and Co-Founder of the British Association of Hair Restoration Surgeons. In 1993, he co- founded the Farjo Medical Centre with his wife, Dr Nilofer Farjo, exclusively practicing hair restoration surgery and
medicine in Manchester and London. They currently perform over 300 hair restoration surgical procedures a year. He is also Past President and Fellow of the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery (ISHRS). I was lucky enough to speak to him about how the techniques have changed over the 22 years he has been performing hair transplant surgery and the results that can now be achieved.
Punch grafting 'Before I started practice, the common technique was punch grafting. Where large cylindrical grafts of up to 20 hairs were transferred to the top of the head. While this did work, it resulted in the infamous ‘doll's hair’ appearance,' explains Bessam. Along with leaving large grafts (or
plugs as they were known) in the scalp, giving the 'doll's hair' effect, punch grafts often left large scar areas on the back of the head. Hair transplant techniques
July/August 2014 |
prime-journal.com
were still in their infancy and not a great deal of thought was given on how further hair loss would look against the new grafts; this led to islands of grafted hair exposed as hair loss continued with age.
Follicular unit transplantation 'When I started training over 20 years ago we were removing strips of skin from the back of the head of about 1 cm high and of variable lengths depending how many hairs you needed. We would then take it out and dissect it into grafts of between one to eight hairs each. That was the first stage. We then moved on to identifying that we want these pieces in their natural states — their follicular units. The only way to achieve this was use a microscope to divide the strip into these individual follicular units for transplantation back into the donor, and this is what is known as follicular unit transplantation.' Follicular unit transplantation (FUT) was a giant leap forward from the earlier
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