FUE Extractions
When I was at Carolina Dermatology Hair Center in Charlotte, NC to film my documentary about Dr. Cooley I was excited to know that I’d get to watch him perform FUE extractions on at least one patient. What I was not aware of was that the FUE extractions would be performed in order to repair a previous FUE procedure performed at another clinic. This was an opportunity I had not had before. I have seen plug repair using FUE extractions but not a modern FUE that had been performed in the past few years. The difference with the previous FUE compared to the one that was being performed to repair the previous work was that the extractions were far smaller for the repair. This obviously only makes sense but what I was really curious to see was how Dr. Cooley was going to deal with the existing scarring.
The patient has a large area of FUE scarring from his previous procedure and my concern was how Dr. Cooley was going to perform his own extractions without creating a visible reduction in donor density. That is already a challenge on virgin, untouched donor scalps but since this scalp looked to already have been thinned from the previous FUE extractions it appeared as if it was going to be a challenge. As you’ll see in this video, which is part 3 of the documentary series I created about Dr. Cooley, the spacing was performed quite well as the FUE extractions do not appear to be very close to together. During normal FUE extractions it is best to utilize the entire donor area even for smaller procedures so having the FUE extractions so close together is not really necessary but when you have existing scarring getting in the way it can become more of a challenge.
We also get to see more of Dr. Cooley’s auto derived plasma protocol where his assistant Brandi shows how she mixes the plasma and ACell extracellular matrix powder. This is used with many of the procedures performed at Haircenter because Dr. Cooley believes it helps with healing and can lead to faster recovery from the FUE extractions and it can lead to faster growth of the newly transplanted grafts. Dr. Cooley has been a leader in this research for the past ten years and he’s started showing some impressive auto derived plasma treatment results on his website, with more to come.
This particular video shown above shows almost all of the FUE extractions that were performed on the day of the surgery and when editing the video I included a time lapse that I shot to speed you through the process. The way the FUE extractions progress throughout the time lapse is fun to watch and shows you how Dr. Cooley distributed the FUE extractions.