Hair follicle cultivation: a new method to quantitatively test different surgical procedures

When performing hair transplantation procedures, it is of the foremost importance to try to obtain the maximum survival rate possible of transplanted micrografts. The aim of our studies were: to evaluate the effects of preserving micrografts, for 5 hours, in an enriched storage medium in order to enhance the survival rate of hair micrografts; to test the benefits provided by cold-storing hair grafts; to quantify the survival and growth rates of "plucked" human hair follicles; to compare the growth rates of follicular units, conventional, and skeletonized micrografts maintained in culture for 10 days. According to our data, the described method is, in our opinion, an useful adjunct in order to quantitatively evaluate the effects of various procedures in the field of hair transplantation surgery.