Prosthetic Follicles?
Do you have any knowledge or opinion about prosthetic follicles? I was imagining a tiny hypo- or non-allergenic device of plastic, silicone, etc that could even eject broken hairs and be reloaded. If they can replace heart valves and if they can make silicon wafers with microscopic transistors, artificial follicles hardly seems unfeasible. I googled my idea and actually found something:
This sounds wonderful for balding or bald rabbits. There’s still a lot that needs to be done before it is shown to be safe for humans.
There is reasonable experience in artificial hairs and the history is not pretty, with infections that really mess up the scalp. I have personally seen the results of artificial hair over the years and have removed them in patients I’ve seen, but the problems never seem to clear. They look good when they are initially done, but hopefully people will live long enough to regret the decision to do this.
That abstract talks about implanted hair looking ok after 1 year – doc can you please tell us how long it usually takes before current implant techniques last for before things start to look ugly…
Cheers,
Dan
Tee Hee.. Dr Rassman answred my first querstshun. Just couldn’t find anything applicable on this great blog. My life is complete. Good answer too, I wouldn’t have actually DONE it but the fact that he’s seen similar things tried with bad results tempers my enthusiasm. Still if they were itsy bitsy teeny tiny microminiaturized macromolecule-sized follicles I don’t see how they couldn’t make a happy home on the scalp, theoretically. Just another avenue of research that neatly sidesteps the intricacies of cloning and pharmacokinetics.