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Large FUE sessions require a large pool of assistants - background information

  • Thread starter Sabine-Prohairclinic
  • Start date
Sabine-Prohairclinic

Sabine-Prohairclinic

FUE hair transplantation - SMP
Bart posted this information on another hairloss forum. I found it an interesting topic and fine tuned his post a bit.
:)

An interesting question was asked by a user on another web forum. He had noticed that we can use up to 8 assistants during FUE megassion, whereas most  FUE  docs only have 1 or 2 assistants.

Regardless strip or  FUE, when it comes to megassesions there are literally thousands of actions that need to be performed : harvesting, counting, possibly splitting and preparing grafts under a microscope, implanting. As most of you know all these actions are performed manually.
In order to execute a safe large FUE session within a reasonable time frame for the patient and minimizing out of the body time of the grafts a lot of hands are needed.

In our institute we have basically a morning team and an afternoon team.

The morning team consists out of the dr. and 3 or 4 assistants.  
The assistants first job is to prepare the treatment room. Checking if all tools and other required materials are present. In our clinic the cleaning/sterilization process of the instruments is entirely in hands of our drs, no compromises are made . Preparing the patient for the treatment and shaving the donor/recipient area is one of the assistants tasks.

Our drs (dr. De Reys) performs all the scoring of the follicle units during large sessions. Obviously he also takes care of the numbing of the donor area before commencing the extractions.
During the extractions one of his assistants helps collecting the grafts from the skin.  
In some cases a second assistant will help to stabilize the patients donor skin. This is a crucial task because some patients skin will 'float' and the skin needs to be fixated in order to avoid 'normal' transections.  
A third and sometimes fourth assistant will be in charge of counting/sorting the grafts. Furthermore they will prepare single hair grafts under the microscope if this is required.


Afternoon team
The drs is responsible for the patient and as such he stays present throughout the procedure.

The afternoon team comes in around lunch time. After the extractions have finished they prepare the treatment room for implantation work. These assistants are all dedicated implanter. We plant using 2 or sometimes 3 technicians simultaneously. One assistant is devoted with our moisturizing protocol (crucial when doing FUE). All of these assistants are implanter and they can take over from one another when someone gets tired, or worse gets sick. A backup implanter is not a luxury in a world where the law of Murphy is lurking.

Please understand that some of these large sessions take up to 12 hours to complete. Fatigue is not acceptable, nor is fading concentration due to working with micro surgical precision.
Each graft is worth gold and should deserves to be handled with utmost respect. Therefore we go to extreme lengths in order to provide best possible conditions.


:):):):):):)
 
janna

janna

Valuable Member
Thanks Sabine for you and Barts detailed account of your procedure.

Does your doctor make all the incisions. I know some clinics have the techs making the incisions and planting the grafts - I didn't read the part of incisions so I thought I'd ask.
 
L

Leeson esq.

Valued member
I read they do at the Limmer clinic in their "stick and place" technique.
 
Prohairclinic

Prohairclinic

Prohairclinic FUE and SMP
Hi Janna,
The dr. is in charge of making the slits during his treatments, also in our institute.

Having said that, I have seen results of HT's where an entire strip procedure was executed by technicians ... and it looked just as if a dr. had done it.

Personally I would prefer to have an experienced tech making the slits than a dr. who does not have a clue.

Bart
 
janna

janna

Valuable Member
Bverotti wrote:
Personally I would prefer to have an experienced tech making the slits than a dr. who does not have a clue.

Bart

I guess that's where research comes in - to find a doctor that does have a clue...lol.

The question here is why are techs getting enough experience to do all aspect of strip surgery or fue surgery???? It might be tougher to open/run a strip surgery with just trained techs versus a fue surgery clinic because of the man power issue. Your clinic employees a great deal of technicians compared to other fue only clinics. A trained technician who has experience in fue may feel more empowered to open a clinic with a clueless doctor because fue is easier to do with less techs than you would with strip -- just my personal opinion.
 
janna

janna

Valuable Member
NWa5,

I spoke to Dr. Seager a year before he passed away and he said his technicans perform the stick and place method. I asked him how he's able to get the angles and depth just right with two different people making the incisions - he said he makes the initial hairline incisions, which consists of using singles. Then there are 1 cm2 grids marked out in the recipient area and he instructs the technicians how many incisions to make in each cm2. I've seen other clinics opt for this method as well.
 
Bigmac

Bigmac

Administrator
Staff member
Interesting post Sabine and a nice read on your clinics protocol.

Maybe this is something that should be discussed more re how many clinics have technicians making incisions and is the doctor present at all times monitoring the situation.

Thanks for posting.

 
P

Philb

Member
janna wrote:
NWa5,

I spoke to Dr. Seager a year before he passed away and he said his technicans perform the stick and place method. I asked him how he's able to get the angles and depth just right with two different people making the incisions - he said he makes the initial hairline incisions, which consists of using singles. Then there are 1 cm2 grids marked out in the recipient area and he instructs the technicians how many incisions to make in each cm2. I've seen other clinics opt for this method as well.

Hi Janna,

That is interesting because we treated a patient of Dr. Seager's his a while ago so you add light to his technique. I guess each doctor has his preferred method to make the slit placement. I guess it comes down to technique and artistry to a degree, knowing what is required in respect of angles and peripheral placement around any surrounding hair. But it does surprise me a little that a doctor does not make all the placement sites, I hope the tech that does their work is suitable compensated, assuming it grows and looks natural of course.
 
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the B spot

the B spot

Pick your Poison!
I just want to add that Dr. Seager is the only doctor that produced what I feel are excellent results using this method where the tech is making the incisions.

The direction, flow, and artistic result all start with the incision---to be made by the doctor.

Seeing patients who have undergone this procedure often have a "tufty" look and when the hair is cut shorter the grafts are obvious--often sticking straight up in what I affectionately call the "bristle brush" look.

It is the same as asking who I want placing the grafts, the doctor who only places a few grafts to tweak things, or the technician who does thousands each day---Its the tech every time.

Jason

Anyway,
 
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