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Dr.
Gho's New Hair Transplant Technique Featured in Dutch Newspaper
Dagblad De Limburger, April 2002
Dr. Gho's new hair transplant technique was featured in Dutch
newspaper Dagblad De. Limburger in April 2002. The following news
was brought to us by Scooter in the Hair Multiplication Forum - http://www.hairsite6.com/m555hm53/_disc555/000001c6.htm
Thanks to Andy and other Dutch speaking posters in our forum, we
have the whole article translated into English as follows:
<QUOTE>
To grow an unlimited amount of hair out of one hair in the battle
against baldness. That is what Coen Gho from Maastricht promised
this newspaper four years ago. Thousands from all over the world
called him. How are things right now? And there is news: the
follicle transplant.
HAIR TRANSPLANTED (Dutch title included an untranslatable word
joke here) Will Gerritsen
"Dear everyone, this morning I phoned the Gho-clinic,
somebody answered in Dutch, I asked him if he spoke English and he
did. I asked him if it was true that the rumors about Gho giving up
his HM-research were true. He answered that this is not the case,
and that Gho is still going on. I was asked to call back.
So I did, and I got another voice on the phone. I asked if I was
speaking with Gho, and he said that I was. I thought: it's him or
it's somebody pretending to be him. I told him I was a HairSite
visitor and that we were all concerned that he gave up on HM. He
said that that is not the case, and that he is still working on it.
I thanked him and said that he was looking forward to the day that
all of us would have access to HM. The conversation gave me good
hope, whether it was Gho or not. I am satisfied and I need to be
patient."
This shortened note, signed by 'synthetic head', can be found at
HairSite.com, just like a lot of other reactions and the often
blazing discussions and bizarre thoughts that have risen out of the
baldness fearing community by Gho's finding.
On April 15th, 1998, the technique that Coen Gho had developed
hit this newspaper. The article was translated to English by a
reader, and posted on the Internet. What happened: the phones
wouldn't stop ringing. Gho: "The first two weeks we were not
accessible. All we had to do was press the button to answer the next
caller in line. We still get phone calls, mails, and letters every
day. People send me videotapes or psychiatric reports that show how
bad they feel about going bald. Once in a while, somebody will even
say he has suicide-plans.". Nodding his head: "There's
more to life than hair, isn't there?".
The technique that he is developing, is all about isolating hair
cells from plucked hairs. Those hair cells are multiplied in the
lab. They are being re-injected with a very thin needle into the
head. After a while new hairs will begin to appear. This method is a
great leap ahead, because in traditional transplants there needs to
be enough donor hair. This is not always the case. On top of that:
in HM your entire donor region is kept intact. In theory you can
grow a complete head of hair out of just one. This is not the case
in HT, where about a thousand to fifteen hundred hairs are being cut
out of the back of his head.
Unfortunately, Gho could not make his promise, that HM would be
here within a year, true. Right now the time is still not ripe for a
HM-introduction at a worldwide scale, which was the original
intention. This caused a lot of commotion, rumors and
misunderstanding in the fanatic HairSite.com-community. "There
were even rumors that I didn't exist going on.", Gho laughs.
According to him the delay is caused by the lacking of a 100%
stable result: HM must work always, everywhere, in every patient,
but that is not yet the case. "The question is: why does it
work on Bob, and not in on Alice?", says Gho. In the last few
years maybe four or five protocols have been created, and rejected.
Furthermore Gho seeks to simplify the complex procedure to lower the
treatment cost. "Every time you test something new, but in the
study to hairgrowth you need to wait nine to twelve months in order
to be sure if something actually works.". How long until HM
sees the light of day? Gho has told HairSite.com in an interview
that he is aiming for a period of five years.
At this moment the researcher from Maastricht has developed a new
hair transplant method, the follicle transplant. Gho has found out
from his own research that very useful cells stick to a plucked
hair. These cells are responsible for growing new hair. Gho has also
seen that in the core of the hair, the miniscule little follicle at
the end of a hair, surprisingly has none of these haircells.
Conclusion: transplanted hair also grows without the follicle.
"If you do not take the surrounding tissue with a hair, the
transplant won't grow. We don't know why this is.".
This formed the base for the follicle transplant: next to the
plucked hairs, also a part of it's surrounding tissue is taken away.
After a painless anesthetic without a needle, the donor hairs are
plucked with a special needle. If the "hair core" is
missing, then there is no problem at all: the clumps of cells that
stick to the hair ensure it's growth. With the same needle those
hairs are planted onto the balding head.
It is a 'clean' and patient friendly technique compared to the
hair transplant. In HT some tissue is cut out of the back of
someone's head. What remains is an ugly wound, that needs to be sewn
together by the doctor, and which turns into a scar for life. With
the follicle method there are no knives used. Also there is less
loss of donor skin, so it won't have to be sewn together, and it
will heal faster. Also the implanting of the follicle with a very
fine needle gives a cleaner result than the traditional HT, in which
small pieces of skin with hair in it are being placed in little
wounds in the head. Gho: "With our method it is possible to
transplant just about 600 - 900 hairs at one time. After two months
the hairs will start to grow again. For the frontal region about
three to four treatments are necessary.". The costs are high:
2250 Euro per treatment.
The transplant is already being used in the Gho-clinic. The
clinic is looking for staff, who are trained to do this job. In the
baldness fearing Internet-community the rumor-stream about this new
technique has caused a lot of commotion. The reactions in the
discussion group of HairSite.com vary from "a momentous step
forward" to "who believes this is a breakthrough, is a
complete moron."
<END QUOTE>
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