How Top Hair Transplant Surgeons Produce Clean and Refined Surgical Results

This question, from a member of our hair loss forum and social community, was answered by Coalition hair transplant surgeon Dr. Vladimir Panine:

I’ve noticed with a couple of hair transplant surgeons that their post-op pics of patients’ recipient areas are very clean. In other words, there is no blood to be seen and the trauma looks to be much less than many other doctors. Dr. Panine’s patients look this way and I’m wondering why that is? Are his incisions smaller? Does he have some kind of wash/rinse after surgery to get his patients to look this way?

Also, I’m wondering if this could positively affect hair growth.

The cleaner appearance of my immediate post-op hair transplant photos is directly correlated to three factors that I work very hard to control during surgery.

The size of the grafts or follicular units and the size of the recipient sites have to closely match in order to minimize the “wobble” effect generated when a graft is too small for the recipient site in which it is placed. The size differential, when too large allows for extravasation of blood. When you see this you are witnessing the aftermath of the “wobble” of the graft in the recipient site. Reducing or eliminating the mismatch between the size of a graft and the site in which it is placed requires a high degree of skill, patience and experience. If any one of these items is missing, the result will be sub-prime and the patient will not get the best results possible.

The second item that minimizes the appearance of blood in the immediate post-op photos is the fact that I control bleeding during surgery with the help of tumescent techniques that I’ve perfected over the 20 years that I have been performing hair restoration.

Finally, larger amounts of bleeding can be caused by using dull instruments. I change blades frequently, as sharp instruments create less tissue trauma. I am very meticulous about the instruments that we use during surgery to ensure they are sharp. Dull instruments cause additional trauma, bleeding and subsequent crusting.

Excessive bleeding can lead to excessive crusting, which has been shown to delay and stunt the growth of grafts. I have found that when you take the additional time to institute several quality control measures you can reduce the immediate post-op bleeding. The measures tend to ensure graft survival and also have the effect of leaving the recipient area very clean to the great satisfaction of patient and doctor alike. Therefore, the cleaner photos are really a product of meticulous care, planning and quality control that we regularly pursue.

Dr. Vladimir Panine

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