Hair Transplant Clinic Visit with Dr. McKenzie in Toronto

In late 2006 Dr. Mark McKenzie took over the management of the Seager Hair Transplant Centre as its medical director and operating surgeon. He inherited a clinic with a world renown reputation for innovation and quality that was cultivated by Dr. David Seager.

In December of 2006 Dr. David Seager passed away after battling cancer (to read a fuller account visit this page). But his legacy and his clinic have continued on with Dr. McKenzie now at the helm.

Prior to joining the Seager Hair Transplant Centre, Dr. McKenzie performed hair transplantation independently since 1994. He recently underwent a hair transplant procedure that was performed on him by the Seager staff.

Dr. McKenzie and his staff’s technique and procedure remain very similar to the “stick and place” procedure performed at the Seager Hair Transplant Centre under Dr. Seager’s tenure.

The “stick and place” technique describes the process in which the technicians make a recipient site incision and then immediately place the follicular unit graft into the incision. By placing grafts immediately into a fresh incision that have not had time to contract or coagulate incisions can potentially be smaller relative to the size of the typical graft.

The stick and place procedure is actually performed by the experienced technicians at the clinic who follow the design created by Dr. McKenzie. However, he often does the stick in the critical hairline areas.

Dr. McKenzie uses 19 and 20 gauge needles (which create incisions of approximately 1.1 mm and 0.9 mm) to create the incisions for the grafts. His staff trims the follicular units so they include the surrounding tissue. Dr. Mckenzie believes that these “chubby grafts” have a higher rate of survival and growth than grafts that are trimmed into skinny or tiny grafts.

Dr. McKenzie is reluctant to trim smaller grafts and place them into smaller and potentially denser packed incisions since he is confident in the results he and his staff now produce.

In my opinion, Dr. McKenzie and his staff do perform large high quality follicular unit grafting sessions with very good results. However, their adherence to trimming “chubby grafts” does limit their ability to dense pack grafts to achieve the highest densities possible.

Dr. McKenzie is also reluctant to use the trichophytic closure on patients who intend to do subsequent surgery. He believes that during subsequent procedures the follicles growing through the scar become harder to trim and thus can reduce the optimal yield.

He uses staples, which he feels produce better donor area closure and ultimately less scarring and or stretching. However, he will use sutures for those patients who request them.

I met with a patient of Dr. McKenzie’s who did a 3,000 graft surgery with him in January. At only eight months he had achieved an impressive and life changing transformation (see hair transplant photos in the album). With his wavy hair he had a fairly full look in his frontal half after only one session. His donor scar was so minimal that it was hard to find even with a comb. He was very pleased with his surgical experience and his results.

On the day of my visit Dr. McKenzie and his staff did surgery on two different patients in two separate surgical suites. Photo highlights of these two surgeries are presented in the article on our Hair Restoration forum.

The first case of approximately 3,000 grafts came from a strip of 30 cm length ranging from 9 mm to 15mm wide. The second case was a prior patient who returned to get extra density. His donor strip yielded approximately 2,000 grafts.

Given the transition in the management of the Seager Hair Transplant Centre, the current website is in the process of being updated.

The full article and photos from the visit are available on our Hair Restoration Forum.

Technorati Tags: Hair Transplant, hair transplantation, stick and place, follicular unit graft, follicular units, follicular unit grafting, dense pack grafts, trichophytic closure, follicles, Hair Restoration Forum