Dr. Nigam Donor Doubling Hair Restoration

technique that could potentially multiply the amount of donor hair follicles in the hair transplantation process?

Dr. Nigam's Donor Doubling Hair Restoration procedure is unproven with a lot of unknowns, this is for information purpose only in order for us to learn more about the legitimacy of his technique and is not an endorsement of the procedure by HairSite. Below is a reprint from Dr. Nigam's website and is not endorsed or approved by HairSite by any means. Readers are invited to raise questions concerning the validity of this new unproven technique with very limited patient results. Do not proceed with a procedure until you have learned of all the facts and potential side effects associated with the procedure.  
 

Republished with permission from Dr. Nigam

<QUOTE>

Donor doubling technique - This was started by Dr.Gho few years back based on certain scientific research papers of other scientist whose references can be found on his scientific published papers for the same. Dear Blake, donor doubling technique has nothing to do with stem cell hair multiplication or stem cell hair activation because unless stem cells are isolated with biological markers, magnetic beading system and special reagents in a GMP certified lab which Dr.Gho does not have in Amsterdam, stem cell just cannot be activated. What Dr.Gho is doing is cutting the follicular unit vertically due his triple wave punch and needle and cutting the follicle unit blindly wherein the major part of the follicle unit is still in the dermis of the patients scalp. So one follicular unit becomes 2 follicular unit and the other follicular unit is transplanted into the recipients site. The reason why the cut hair follicular unit grows in the recipients scalp is because it contains the stem cells and surrounding tissues in sufficient quantity and quality to regrow the broken hair follicular unit. In my donor doubling technique, I use combination of two techniques, A) I just remove the three-fourth of hair follicle from the donor's scalp and one-fourth of the hair follicle is still in the donor's scalp. B) I remove the donor hair follicle unit with surrounding tissue by FUE or mini FUT and separate distal one-fourth hair root with dermal papilla and surrounding tissue and remove proximal three-fourth hair follicle with bulge plus outer root sheath plus surrounding tissue and implant the two separately on the recipient area. Both myself and Dr.Gho use special preservation media, so that we can nourish the grafts and try to activate by whatever source we have on to these bisected follicular units before we implant them on different recipient sites. You can refer two research papers on my site on donor doubling on which is based my doubling. Do not confuse donor doubling with stem cell hair multiplication. we have mentis, compound microscopes, inverted microscopes and shortly getting a Polaroid microscope at the clinic, since i am, bisecting the graft in vitro under magnification, it is not such a tough job like Dr. Gho, who has to dissect in vivo. Cost for the DDHT is RS 100 per extracted graft for doubling, with this technique in 12 hrs session we can implant 1500 grafts i.e. 3000 doubled grafts per day. I have recently started documenting my results, should publish DDHT results in next 6 months. At present with my experience a yield of 90% for the root with dermal papilla implanted and approx. 70% with the proximal half of hair implanted. The growth is thicker with proximal hair implanted after dissection than dermal papilla root distal part of hair follicle implantation. Even in DDHT i prefer if patient agrees to have a shot of stem cells to improve results, especially for thin ned out hair follicles and with poor donor area or patients with diabetes, hypothyroid, pcod etc. We stain the hair follicle unit with eosin and haemotoxylin to visualize mid follicle bulge and then cut it, with very fine blade and specially designed ultra fine wires.

The most important part in our donor doubling is when we cut 1/4th root of the hair follicle, this part of the partially cut hair follicle is missing the other partial cut parts of follicular stem cell bulge. We take the help of hair isolation and activation process of our lab from the few grafts of these extracted partial follicles. So now we have stem cells isolated and activate from follicular bulge, dermal papilla, outer root sheath and matrix. As it is quite obvious that both the partial follicles of follicular units are missing certain stem cells, accordingly isolated and activated stem cells are injected into the recipient and/or donor area with the partial follicles or follicular areas which make our process much better than Dr. Gho’s technique of donor doubling. And the cost of our donor doubling is not even 1/10th of that of Dr. Gho’s.