What is the Megasession?

I found this story in my local news [from November 2005], Patients Thrilled with Hair Transplants. In referring to Dr xxx, it says “He’s pioneered a painstaking process using one-to-two-thousand grafts at a time.” I thought you pioneered this with the megasession. I’m just curious if the ABC news was wrong or this doctor is doing something unique.

There is certainly some misrepresentation or failure to do adequate research here. I published information about the megasession in in early 1990s, and discussed the 1000, 1500, 2000, 3000 and 4000 graft sessions over a period of two years before anyone was doing this type of large session. In 1995, I presented 23 completed hair restoration patients at a medical convention in Las Vegas who had megasessions when most doctors were just starting to consider doing them. Why is this important, you may ask?

1. If the doctor was the source of this mininformation, then his integrity is reflected in the statement. My publications on this subject in the various journals in the industry (see: Follicular Unit Transplantation Megasessions from 1995 as an example)
2. The ability to do them reflects the focus that I pushed early in the development of this technology, which is to try to get the patient finished with as few surgeries as possible. I had coined the term ‘FastTrack’ for the ability to accelerate the time-line for a hair transplants into as few as one or two surgical sessions. That means that there was much to innovate as the technology that was available at the time I started this process was ackward for getting many grafts done at once. Take a look at the NHI Timeline, which will show when we announced what we did and when we did it. I would challenge others to produce such documentation, because it just is not there.

In the case of the article you are referring to, I am going to just assume that it was poor wording / research by the article’s writer. Be sure to be a perceptive shopper, always keeping in mind the “let the buyer beware” adage in your buying process.