2011 ISHRS Meeting Review, Part 1 – Hair Tools
The annual meeting of hair surgeons was in held in Alaska this past week. The meeting was very well organized, but because of the location, many physicians chose not to travel the long distance. The weather was ideal, as good as California in its best season. About 15% of the 260 doctors who registered were new to the field and used this meeting as an educational opportunity to enter the world of hair restoration.
The following review is very selective and is biased by the things that were interesting to me (Dr. Rassman) and what I thought could be interesting to some of the readers. Since there’s so much to cover, I’ll break this up into multiple posts to make things easier. Stay tuned for more.
There were many innovations in surgical tools that may be too technical for most, so I won’t discuss them too much here. That said, I did write a little about some tools that might have some interest, so let’s begin with those…
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Tool for measuring scalp laxity
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A new instrument for assessing the safety of strip excision as it correlates to the size of a donor strip was introduced by Dr. Parsa Mohebi. He presented the second version of his Laxometer, which should be used to measure the limits of the width of a donor strip.
Using HairCheck for bulk measurement
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The HairCheck hair bulk analysis system, which we have been using for a year or so, was reported by many doctors as a positive tool for measuring the hair mass of scalp hair. Readers of this site probably know how much we’ve mentioned hair bulk analysis, and it’s good to see it finally gaining some traction in the physician community.
The reason we like it is because it enables doctors to compare results over time with real numerical values, which shows the value of drugs like finasteride, and allows physicians to make the diagnosis of genetic hair loss in young men now more certain. Many young men with hair loss in the family who are concerned that they will also inherit the hair loss gene can now be evaluated for the presence of hair loss in its earliest stage. Proper diagnosis should cut down on unnecessary use of hair loss drugs.
Keep checking back for much more.
A question about the hair bulk measurement tool – surely it’s dependent on the person measuring having exactly the same length hair every time a measurement is taken otherwise it’s going to produce inaccurate results?
I mean, great if you know your hairdresser can cut your hair the same length perfectly each time you want to do a measurement but realistically that’s not going to happen unless you use clippers which most of us don’t want to do.
Or does it not work this way? Am I missing something?
If not, then I’d think that a camera would be a better way of judging hair loss.
Also, assuming it is an accurate way of checking for balding – where is it available and what is the cost?