•Specializes in Follicular Unit Transplantation

•Specializes in Hair Transplant Repair and Reconstruction

•Accepted member of The International Alliance of Hair Restoration Surgeons

•One of less than 50 hair transplant surgeons throughout North America recommended by The American Hair Loss Association

Website: http://www.wolfhair.com
Email: wolf@wolfhair.com

Dr. Wolf has practiced exclusively as a hair transplant surgeon since 1990. He received his Doctor of Medicine degree from Indiana University School of Medicine in 1980, and did his internship in General Surgery at Eastern Virginia Graduate School of Medicine in Norfolk, Virginia, from 1980-1981. He then did his residency in General Surgery there from 1981-1982.

Dr. Wolf is an active member of a number of professional associations, and has lectured extensively on hair transplantation surgery at medical conferences in the U.S., Europe and Russia. He has also trained physicians from Russia, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Ireland, as well as from the United States and has also presented live surgery workshops at medical conferences in the U.S., Europe, and Russia.

Dr. Wolf, who performs microscopically dissected Follicular Unit transplantation surgery, has earned a reputation of being honest, ethical, and dedicated to creating the best results possible for his patients. He is regarded as an expert in, among other topics, the aesthetic aspects of hair restoration surgery. In his lectures he has compared hair transplantation to Impressionistic Painting and Architecture.

Dr. Wolf personally performs all consultations and personally answers all email inquiries. He performs only one surgery per day taking the time to provide custom results based on the patient’s age, hair loss pattern, and expectations. He is one of the few physicians who places most of the grafts himself which allows him to create the best results possible. His surgeries take all day to perform due to his attention to detail and complete involvement in all aspects of the surgery. Up to one third of his practice involves updating and repairing patients who have had outdated procedures performed. He also has extensive experience in transplants of the moustache, eyebrows, and beard.

He is a member of the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery and the European Society of Hair Restoration Surgery and regularly lectures and the annual meetings of both societies. Dr. Wolf was one of the first surgeons worldwide to become Board Certified by the American Board of Hair Restoration Surgery. He publishes in the Journal of the European Society of Hair Restoration and Hair Transplant Forum International. He was honored as “Surgeon of the Month” and recently featured in “Life Outside of Medicine” in Hair Transplant Forum International. Dr. Wolf’s articles are available on his website at www.wolfhair.com. Dr. Wolf recently authored the chapter “Anesthesia” in the definitive text of hair transplantation surgery.

Dr. Wolf performs surgery in Cincinnati, Ohio and Aspen, Colorado where he is associated with the Aspen Institute of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

Hair repairs are not always necessary. Sometimes patients can learn to use a variety of camouflaging agents, such as makeup to color their scalp the same color as their hair so that the color contrast is minimized, or spray micro-fibers to temporarily fill in the spaces between the plugs. Another trick is perming the hair to give it curl so that the plugs underneath the curls are less evident. Sometimes coloring or actually not coloring the hair can help. By decreasing the color contrast between the hair and the scalp, the plugs will be less noticeable. Jet-black hair on a white scalp shows the worst. By bleaching the hair blonde, there will be much less color contrast against a white scalp. In the opposite manner, letting hair go gray rather than coloring it greatly decreases the contrast. Some patients simply give up and go to hairpieces. Recently, some have tried removing the hair permanently with laser hair removal. Unfortunately, it usually requires numerous treatments, is not necessarily permanent, and it leaves small, round, punch scars behind.

Exposed old-fashioned plugs are the primary reason patients present for repairs. These are my favorite cases. These patients all tell me the same thing. They are tired of watching acquaintances’ eyes dart back and forth between looking them in the eyes and at their hair. It is almost impossible to speak face to face with someone who has had a bad hair transplant without glancing up repeatedly to look at it. Jokes are made in private. For them it is embarrassing. For me it is bad advertising. Nobody notices a good hair transplant, only the bad ones. After seeing a few bad ones, people mistakenly believe that must just be the way hair transplants look. Hollywood certainly capitalizes on bad hair transplants frequently using them as comic relief. My happiest patients, without question, are my hair repair patients.

Hair repairs are not always necessary. Sometimes patients can learn to use a variety of camouflaging agents, such as makeup to color their scalp the same color as their hair so that the color contrast is minimized, or spray micro-fibers to
temporarily fill in the spaces between the plugs. Another trick is perming the hair to give it curl so that the plugs underneath the curls are less evident. Sometimes coloring or actually not coloring the hair can help. By decreasing the color contrast between the hair and the scalp, the plugs will be less noticeable. Jet-black hair on a white scalp shows the worst. By bleaching the hair blonde, there will be much less color contrast against a white scalp. In the opposite manner, letting hair go gray rather than coloring it greatly decreases the contrast. Some patients simply give up and go to hairpieces. Recently, some have tried removing the hair permanently with laser hair removal. Unfortunately, it usually requires numerous treatments, is not necessarily permanent, and it leaves small, round, punch scars behind.

For those patients willing to undergo hair repair surgery, the results can be dramatic. If the “plugginess” is not too great and good donor hair remains, the simplest maneuver is to pack follicular units tightly between the old plugs so that when the when the new transplant grows, the plugs will be less noticeable. Depending on the case and the quality of the hair, this could take one to three sessions to fully hide the old plugs.

If this is not an option, things become a little trickier. In these situations, the plugs must be entirely or at least partially removed and then recycled into new follicular units. In this way, I am simultaneously decreasing “plugginess” and creating new follicular units. To remove the hair from the plugs, various sized small, circular, cookie-cutter type instruments called punches are used. The original plugs were probably implanted in punch holes. These punches range in size from 1 to 4 mm in diameter and can be used to remove a core of the plug. The entire plug can be removed, but often I just remove the majority of the plug. By removing the majority but leaving behind small strands of hair, one can recreate the look of normal follicular units at the margins of the punch removal. After the punch is removed from the plug, the resulting small hole may be closed with suture. This does change the scar from the previous small circle to a small line, but after healing this is hardly noticeable.

In most cases, after the new transplant grows in, the small scars are not evident at all. The hole left from the punch does not have to be sutured shut, however. In tight scalps, there is not enough laxity to close many small punch holes simultaneously. If these are left open to heal, it takes approximately a month for the hole to fill in, but the results are usually good this way also. The final scar will be a small, whitish circle the same size as the punch used to create it. If the plan is to punch remove the unattractive plugs , the patient must be warned that, over the short term, his scalp will look worse than before surgery since I am removing hair that will not regrow for three to five months and leaving behind sutured or open punch holes which take time to heal. Patients must think about the long term payoff. Having said this, actually a fair number of patients think they look better immediately after surgery because the “plugginess” is gone. Each hair repair case is different and patients are warned that it may take multiple sessions to obtain a natural appearance. In some particularly bad cases, completenaturalness may not be obtainable, but significant improvement should be.

-Content Provided By Blaine Lehr, MD
Web: http://www.norwood-lehr.com
Email: lehr@norwood-lehr.com
IAHRS Recommended Hair Transplant Surgeon