Who Invented the Strip Method?

Did you invent/discover the strip method for hair transplants??

No, I did not invent the strip method in hair transplantation. I do not believe there was an official inventor of it. The surgical crowd moved somewhat together in the evolution of the strip, which was a neat solution to harvesting that became obvious.

When I was learning about the state-of-the-art donor harvesting, I saw some doctors use a large drill and attached from end to end the holes that were used to harvest the plugs. This caused an irregular wound of connected holes that were sewn together. Any reasonably good surgeon could have figured out that an irregular, sloppy wound would be better created by a controlled strip, and that is what the surgeons were evolving towards. So you see, there isn’t always an inventor.

I remember that there were few doing strips when I started doing hair transplants in 1991. Dr. Paul Straub demonstrated the method to me back then. I immediately went to the strip for harvesting, having never used a large drill as others were doing. A few doctors were already using this method, but the art at that time was still about establishing large grafts, not small ones. When I started doing the surgery, I began with small grafts… and made them smaller and smaller, which required more and more of them to get the amount of hair that would make a difference. This refined the look of the hair transplant as we know it today.