Removing Only Part of the Follicle
Hello Doctor
There is a dutch clinic that advertizes the following method
“The most significant difference between the HST method and traditional hair tr*nspl*nt techniques is that with HST, only a tiny part of the hair follicle is removed, leaving the majority of it in the donor area where it will produce a new hair. This preserves the donor area for future treatments, which is why this technique should actually be referred to as hair multiplication, rather than tr*nspl*ntation.”
A very famous dutch soccer player ( Snejder ) supposedly undergone this procedure . Anyone who saw the Bayern Munich – Inter Milan game this week definately noticed the difference on his head
I’m not sure why “transplant” is censored on that clinic’s site…
I know who you’re referring to and I have heard this doctor speak on the subject of partial unit extraction. One of the problems — there was never any physicians actually looking at what he was doing, and as such, there is no peer review or comments by other qualified academic doctors that could back up the claims that he actually has growth of full healthy hairs from fragments of hairs. This very subject has been extensively studied by other physicians and the ability to grow full, healthy normal hairs is clearly not possible. I do not believe that what this doctor is reporting is real.
This isn’t possible is it? It’s basically transection of the follicle which we all know causes no growth.
Unless A-Cell is used maybe
There is a peer reviewed publication on this: “Donor hair follicle preservation by partial follicular unit extraction.
A method to optimize hair transplantation”
Journal of Dermatological Treatment. 2010; Early Online, 1–13
Sorry doc, it is real and it has been proven by Gho over and over again. If you like I can email you a copy of the journal.
Dr. Rassman, has it occurred to you that Dr. Gho was being deliberately vague and sketchy about the details of his procedure because he wants to keep it proprietary and filed a patent on it? (He now has been granted that patent.) I think he agreed to give this presentation more in order to establish that he put the “prior art†out there in public so no one else could attempt to steal his intellectual property.
I also know that while it is still legal to obtain a US patent for a medical procedure, the US joined most other industrialized Western countries in 1997 in prohibiting holders of patents on medical procedures from obtaining injuctions or damage awards against infringers.
That means that Gho would probably not be successful in enforcing his patent either in Europe or in the US, against other doctors who tried to offer this or a similar procedure.
That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t try to sue them, though. I think Dr. Gho is very protective of his discovery.
I am sure that the US-based HT industry bloc is working behind the scenes to either try to get a handle on what he’s doing, and duplicate it here in the US, or barring that, to put up a firewall against knowledge of this discovery from spreading to North America, because it would destroy most HT surgeons’ businesses if potential US patients knew about it.
Personally I think that Gho probably couldn’t enforce his patent in North America, because if the patent was granted in Europe, most countries there have similar laws to 1997 US statute. So even if a WIPO objection came up, the law on this issue is clear on both sides of the Atlantic.
But I still think that most US hair transplant surgeons will tread cautiously on this matter so as not to invite litigation from Gho, while at the same time, many will experiment behind-the-scenes to see if they can replicate Gho’s idea.
Another comment: Dr. Gho recently won a lawsuit (or regulatory complaint) brought by a group of European hair transplant clinics, who objected to some claims Gho made about his Hair Stem Cell (“hair mulitiplication”) procedure in advertising and on his website. The Dutch authorities who decided the case found his claims to be TRUE. Gho’s competitors lost the case and were publicly humiliated.
Perhaps Gho’s HSI clinic is erring on the side of an abundance of caution, though, and partially censored the word “transplantation” because it is easier to avoid liability under European law by making oblique statements like this (deleting letters, etc.) Maybe they are still concerned about provoking more lawsuits from competitors, despite having prevailed in the one I mentioned.
I know that under US standards, if a finding of false advertising was made (or a false claim against a competitor), that alone wouldn’t be enough to escape liability, but they might be conforming to a European or Dutch standard.