Hair replacement: Surgical and medical

Hair replacement: Surgical and medicalDow S. Stough, MD, and Robert S. Haber, MD, editors, St. Louis, 1996, Mosby. 448 pages. $189.00.Whether a veteran hair restoration surgeon or a novice interested in learning about hair replacement surgery, this text is a must for anyone interested in this endeavor. Any multiauthored text is fraught with the risk of presenting different writing styles and a wide range of content quality, rendering the book a collection of articles or essays rather than a coherent text. However, Hair Replacement: Surgical and Medical has successfully transcended these concerns. Drs. Stough and Haber have assembled numerous contributors who, for the most part, have presented expert and authoritative information on their respective topics. Although controversy abounds in the world of hair restoration surgery, most of the contributors have produced chapters that are lucid and objective in the specific topics of information that they convey.In the past few years much of the hair replacement surgical literature has been devoted to grafting of large numbers of small hair-bearing grafts. All aspects of this subject are extensively covered by different authors in great detail; this includes techniques and instrumentation used in every aspect of donor site harvesting and recipient site insertion. The theoretical aspects underlying these techniques are explored along with practical technical information on the performance of these procedures.Concomitantly, the rise in interest and popularity of transplanting large numbers of small grafts, in one or several sessions, has been associated with many recommending the abandonment of the excision of large areas of alopecia, followed by advancement or rotation flaps (i.e., alopecia reductions). In fact, many of the same advocates who propound the merits of large-scale transplanting of small grafts have been at the forefront of putting those surgeons, who successfully perform alopecia reductions, on the defensive. To this book's credit, there is thorough discussion of various alopecia reduction techniques, which are extremely valuable when properly executed. These chapters go into detail on all aspects of these techniques.The book also provides a thorough and excellent discussion on all of the basic, but important, aspects of performing a surgical procedure (e.g., anesthesia, instrumentation, donor site harvesting, recipient site planning, antibiotic prophylaxis, pain management, and photographic documentation). I was especially impressed by the discussion on the psychologic aspects of hair loss for men and women and the sobering look at the progressive nature of androgenetic alopecia. This latter phenomenon, although intuitively obvious, has been ignored by many hair replacement surgeons. The discussion by Drs. Marritt and Dzubow, although addressed in other publications, has been appropriately included in this book. Careful patient selection and attainable restoration goals are incumbent on the physician, as this important chapter stresses.To any physician practicing hair replacement surgery, this text is a valuable resource with a wealth of current information. Hair replacement: Surgical and medical Dow S. Stough, MD, and Robert S. Haber, MD, editors, St. Louis, 1996, Mosby. 448 pages. $189.00. Whether a veteran hair restoration surgeon or a novice interested in learning about hair replacement surgery, this text is a must for anyone interested in this endeavor. Any multiauthored text is fraught with the risk of presenting different writing styles and a wide range of content quality, rendering the book a collection of articles or essays rather than a coherent text. However, Hair Replacement: Surgical and Medical has successfully transcended these concerns. Drs. Stough and Haber have assembled numerous contributors who, for the most part, have presented expert and authoritative information on their respective topics. Although controversy abounds in the world of hair restoration surgery, most of the contributors have produced chapters that are lucid and objective in the specific topics of information that they convey. In the past few years much of the hair replacement surgical literature has been devoted to grafting of large numbers of small hair-bearing grafts. All aspects of this subject are extensively covered by different authors in great detail; this includes techniques and instrumentation used in every aspect of donor site harvesting and recipient site insertion. The theoretical aspects underlying these techniques are explored along with practical technical information on the performance of these procedures. Concomitantly, the rise in interest and popularity of transplanting large numbers of small grafts, in one or several sessions, has been associated with many recommending the abandonment of the excision of large areas of alopecia, followed by advancement or rotation flaps (i.e., alopecia reductions). In fact, many of the same advocates who propound the merits of large-scale transplanting of small grafts have been at the forefront of putting those surgeons, who successfully perform alopecia reductions, on the defensive. To this book's credit, there is thorough discussion of various alopecia reduction techniques, which are extremely valuable when properly executed. These chapters go into detail on all aspects of these techniques. The book also provides a thorough and excellent discussion on all of the basic, but important, aspects of performing a surgical procedure (e.g., anesthesia, instrumentation, donor site harvesting, recipient site planning, antibiotic prophylaxis, pain management, and photographic documentation). I was especially impressed by the discussion on the psychologic aspects of hair loss for men and women and the sobering look at the progressive nature of androgenetic alopecia. This latter phenomenon, although intuitively obvious, has been ignored by many hair replacement surgeons. The discussion by Drs. Marritt and Dzubow, although addressed in other publications, has been appropriately included in this book. Careful patient selection and attainable restoration goals are incumbent on the physician, as this important chapter stresses. To any physician practicing hair replacement surgery, this text is a valuable resource with a wealth of current information.