Over the past two years, perhaps the single most popular subject that I have been asked to provide my opinion on and have not is with regards to Dr. Christophe Guillemat (of the CFS Barcelona clinic in Spain) and his Stem Cell Transfer (SCT) hair transplantation technique.
Till now, I have avoided discussing this man because there was similar excitement about Dr. Coen Gho and his donor hair regeneration technique some 5-10 years ago, and to this day I am not sure if Dr. Gho is really getting any significant level of hair regeneration consistently (assuming the partial hairs that he transplants to the frontal and crown regions of patient scalps all grow in the first place).
The biggest problem with such claims of donor hair regeneration is that patients can not really precisely tell what portion of their donor hair (if any at all) regenerated, so we are reliant on a surgeon’s word. Donor region pictures of the back of the scalp also never tell you for sure what portion of hair has regenerated.
Even with zero hair regeneration in regular hair transplants, donor regions typically never look like they are balding in spite of having much less density than prior to transplantation.
Dr. Gho has attracted a lot of skepticism over the years from other hair transplant surgeons. Moreover, I would have thought that by now he could have made a fortune if he were to have taught his potentially revolutionary technique to other surgeons for a very high fee, instead of still continuing to perform hair transplants himself. Nevertheless, I do not doubt his technique entirely, since there does seem some sound logic behind the idea that leaving some stem cells behind could lead to donor follicle regeneration.
Dr. Christophe Guillemat and Stem Cell Transfer (SCT) Hair Transplants
Going back to the subject matter, I finally decided to cover Dr. Guillemat because five days ago he published a groundbreaking (or fluff) blog post that is a must read. You will need to translate it into English via right clicking in your browser and selecting “Translate to English” or via using the Google Translate webpage. Dr. Guillemat wrote the post after seeing extremely positive results in three patients’ donor hair regeneration one year post stem cell transplantation.
The title of Dr. Guillemat’s blog post when translated reads “Resounding success in hair generation with stem cells“! Some of the other overly extravagant sentences in the translation that I have pasted below made me laugh with disbelief, but I do hope that they are all true and I prove to be very wrong in my skepticism:
“We’ve got an average of 82% of hair regeneration with stem cells in the donor area !!!”
“It is the first time in the history of hair transplants that such an important hair regeneration is achieved” — Note: I wonder if Dr. Gho agrees?
“In short, the process works and can say that we are at the beginning of a new era for the correction of baldness”
“To this day, there was no technique that allows hair implants recover such amount of follicles in the donor area!”
“The stem cell transfer is a reality”
“Revolutionary technique that allows patients to repopulate a bald area without losing their hair capital in the donor area.”
To be fair to Dr. Guillemat, despite the overly emotional language, he does mention some limitations and areas that need improvement:
- Only 50-60 percent growth in recipient areas and 82 percent hair regeneration in donor area (both numbers will need improving).
- Cell transfer is a much more delicate procedure in comparison to entire hair follicle transfer.
Dr. Guillemat is going to publish more patient information, photos and videos on his blog in the coming days. If you are really interested in this technique, you should also read his past blog posts, see some of his YouTube videos and follow him on Twitter.
