Spencer Kobren Speaks with IAHRS accepted member, Dr. Baubac Hayatdavoudi concerning his philosophy on why graft dissection and extraction plays a much more vital role in the final result of hair transplant surgery than many physicians and hair transplant device makers want you to believe.

Spencer Kobren: I know that you are one of the physicians performing FUE, who thinks its important to extract the grafts himself. You are the guy that's extracting the grafts, am I correct?

Dr. Baubac Hayatdavoudi: Absolutely. Yeah, that's sort of what I was alluding to.

Spencer Kobren:  Yeah.

Dr. Baubac Hayatdavoudi: Like I don't understand how it can be done any other way because, when you're making your incisions. You know the case we had this morning, for example. It was a younger gentleman with bi-temporal loss and it was zone 1 reinforcement and anterior bi-temporal zone 2 reinforcement. And when I'm making my incisions, I'm thinking this is where I want triples to go, this is where I want the doubles to go, this is where I want the weak doubles to go. And then, when you're harvesting, you can actually target those percentages. And, if you're just working ... like I've heard of some clinics where there's no division of the graft. It's basically just one's two's and three's placed all over.

Like, if you are making an incision as an artist or as a surgeon, you should have a certain ... je ne sais quoi ... you should have a certain idea or image in your mind that you are driving towards. Harvesting allows you one of the tools to achieve that goal. So, if you're not able to harvest your own grafts, you would then have to tell whoever's doing it, "I need 75% doubles, triples. Of that I need 800 triples here, I need 600 doubles there." And, if you're not doing the harvest yourself, I think, I'm not sure how ... you're missing a step.

Recently, we had a company try to solicit us on one of their tools. Without mentioning who they are, I asked and inquired about you know, "What is the process that you undergo? Where do the singles, and doubles, and triples go?" And he's like, "Oh, we just kind of collect it in a container and then we just kind of implant it."

Spencer Kobren: Right.

Dr. Baubac Hayatdavoudi: This procedure is so detailed driven. Every follicle matters. Every single follicle matters because it's closing the gap for the next follicle. And, if one doesn't come through, the results are less than what you should be delivered.

Spencer Kobren: And, again, you know whatever machine that is, and that's how these machines work, if the practitioner was utilizing that machine and said, okay, I'm going for twos now, those twos will be collected into that container and then they could be utilized where the physician thinks they need to be utilized.

Dr. Baubac Hayatdavoudi: Right.

Spencer Kobren: But you have to have that knowledge. And that's why, no matter what the device is, no matter how its being promoted, a consumer has to understand that it's not a ... whatever, an artist's procedure, it's not a Neograft procedure, it's an FUE procedure utilizing either an artist or a Neograft.

Dr. Baubac Hayatdavoudi: Right.

Spencer Kobren: And the team that is utilizing this device has to know what the "F" they're doing, cause if they don't, you're going to get the same ... the outcome is going to be like the responses you got from the salesman, just going to be haphazard.

Dr. Baubac Hayatdavoudi: I wish we could just record and loop the last 15 seconds of what you said because it is so important. You know, with the marketing that's out there, patients don't know. They think there's so many different methods to do the transplant. So it's like, "What method do you guys use? Do you use ARTAS, do you use Neograft? That's how I want my hair done." And it's critical to know that there are multiple phases to this procedure, all of which need to be carried out well for the entire to work synergistically, and that harvesting is only one component in the FUE procedures, so not even flux procedures.

Spencer Kobren: Right.

Dr. Baubac Hayatdavoudi: These devices are tools for extraction, and that only gets you to one part of the process. Second part obviously being incisions and implanting, and following thereafter. So, I could not stress that enough, and said it better than I could myself.