I was in about a week ago to see Dr Reese about some areas of my donor scar which were not healing and that I had removed 3-4 sutures myself that were missed. After looking at the problem areas he assured me they were absorbing sutures and would go away. It has been about a month now and I was in to see my Dr yesterday who was kind enough to lance yet two more bloody blisters from my donor scar to remove two more suture loops confirming with me they were in fact non-absorbing sutures. He said he witnesses this a lot when patients attempt to remove their own sutures.

It was very awkward listening to Dr. Reese's explanation in ethics of why he will not prescribe finasteride for alopecia in other marketed\generic forms rather than the costly Propecia telling me they are not the same thing... Other than the candy coating, they without doubt both contain the same active ingredient which is in fact finasteride. Any other Dr or even a sales rep from Merck will tell you the same thing.

I would expect a surgeon who tells me he has ethical issues prescribing a generic form of finasteride over Propecia would have the integrity to tell me sorry; it looks as though my assistant missed a few sutures during the removal. Let me get those out??¦

I received dissolvable sutures for the length of the donor along with standard sutures as tension stitches. The tension sutures were removed 5 days later and of course the dissolvable sutures remained. For a long time afterwords (some months), I could feel lumps where the dissolvable sutures were tied, I was also concerned about these but they did go after a while.

Is it possible they were dissolvable sutures but due to the issues you had with blisters forming the doctor thought it best to remove them?

No. They were the black heavy threaded sutures. The worst was like a never ending bloody scab that would not go away. Dr Reese looked at it as did his staff. His staff said she saw nothing. Reese with his magnifying glasses said he could see some of the "absorbable" suture poking through. My Dr pulled out a knotted loop he guess the assistant just pulled deeper into the wound when she was removing the rest. I feel like there are a couple of more. I've had a few surgeries and I am all too familiar with disolvable sutures. These were not. It was just frustrating having Reese tell me otherwise to cover his own ass or whatever the reason. He's far from incompetant.

This is my first surgery having graphs this small. It's been about a month now and a bunch are already growing in. It's like some of the previous hair never shocked out, it just continued growing. I've had about 6-7 smaller surgeries over the past 15 years with David Kelsey and this is pretty different. 1600+ is a hell of a lot more itchy!

Finasteride and Propecia are the same, hes just trying to rip you off by the sound of it.

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I have had the pleasure of working with Dr. Reese now for nearly a decade and have heard him explain thousands of times why he will not write a prescription for finasteride. As the creater of this thread points out finasteride and Propecia are the same thing. While this is true, the issue here is that propecia is prescribed for the treatment of hair loss which is generally considered cosmetic and not covered by insurance plans. Additionally, Propecia is still under patent protection. For years finasteride has been prescribed in the 5mg dosage for the treatment of the prostate(aka Proscar). Proscar is typically covered by insurance since treating the prostate is medically necessary. Dr. Reese does not perform a prostate exam and does not treat these types of problems in his clinic. He performs hair transplant surgery. I want be absolutely clear about the reasons Dr. Reese will not prescribe finasteride. The risk is too great that patients will end up using their insurance benefits to purchase finasteride or Proscar thus leaving Dr. Reese vulnerable to insurance fraud. I which watch this thread and if I can provide any additional information, just ask.

Thanks,

Dan Leach

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I am currently the Vice President of Client Services for Reese Hair Restoration and act as a consultant on occassion.

So more to do with protecting himself against insurance fraud than ethics.

Thats fine and understandable, but nothing to do with ethics, lets just get that straight.

We dont have infinate pockets, the sooner HT docs understand that the better.

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I want to make sure that I understand your logic. Merck is a giant corporation that makes millions, maybe even billions of dollars each year. So what you are saying is that it is ok and ethical for physicians to write prescriptions that infringe upon Mercks patent protection and may joepardize that physicians livelyhood if patients fraudulently use their insurance benefits. It's ok because Merck makes enough money? Right? Let's turn that around however, and say Dan Leach (who is not rich by any means) has a patent on a product and a big company arbitrarily decides to use my patented product without paying me for it. We would all be up in arms. Right? It has as much to do with ethics as it does with protecting himself. I don't like the cost of Propecia either....but your argument is with Merck not Dr. Reese.

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I am currently the Vice President of Client Services for Reese Hair Restoration and act as a consultant on occassion.

I still dont think ethics come into it.

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Ethics would be not prescribing it because it causes side effects.

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Is it illegal for Dr Reese to prescribe the non rip off version of Propecia? if so thats a different matter and still nothing to do with ethics.

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