tatasabaya

35 minutes ago, SkyeBelcher said:

The hope is that it can be, though none of the trials are testing this specifically. 

That's not correct, Dr Bloxham has made a incisions over old FUT scars and injected them with Verteporfin in his trial.

Dr Bloxham just posted his first update:

Looking at the mice test pic... on day 30, the hair around the saline injected wound is much shorter than in the pic with Verteporfin, isn't it? Full size here

...maybe the patient should have a say in this? It's his surgery after all.

Looks like I'm not the only one anxiously waiting for Verteporfin news haha

I would like to add a couple of questions for Dr. Longaker

1) Does he already have an approval (if needed) to use Verteporfin in his next cleft lip scar revision
surgery? When would that surgery take place?

2) If Verteporfin use is successful and the demand grows very fast, how long would it take for the suppliers to catch up and the prices to become reasonable?

My question would be regarding preexisting scars.

If we apply Verteporfin in a wound created as a result of scar excision, would the skin theoretically heal just the same as if the excision was made in healthy skin? (basically using Vert on FUE scars)

I know Dr. Bloxham already made an FUT scar revision using Verteporfin, but I'd like to know if Dr. Longaker is optimistic about that, too.

I don't know if this question is appropriate, but I'd like to know why he thinks Verteporfin research hasn't gained enough traction yet, given the scientific evidence.

Thanks Melvin!

Dr. Bloxham just dropped this video:

I've been wondering, if Verteporfin is proven to work successfully in humans and the demand grows exponentially, how long would it take for the suppliers to catch up? Is it hard to scale things up?

1 hour ago, Nikoni said:

Maybe guys like Elon Musk, Joe Rogan can support this ? They have visible HT scars. Can anyone somehow reach to them ? @Melvin- Moderator

Good idea! Rogan would probably be interested since his scar is evident and also has a huge audience. It should be interesting for lots of people, given the potential of verteporfin in all cases of scar formation, so focusing only on a niche audience such as HT patients might not be the optimal approach to push it forward as quickly as possible.

Thanks @Melvin- Moderator for all you do! I hope Dr. Longaker accepts to be a guest in your podcast, I sent him an email too.

1 hour ago, Gatchpt said:

From Dr Bloxham Discord:

”Alright, so I think I've finally caught up after the verteporfin trial and wanted to sort of unpack and just share my initial thoughts -- which I thought may be useful/interesting. So, just to recap, I did 3 separate patients, removing 1cm x 2.5cm mini-strips and directly treated (direct dermal injection with the wound open) the areas with 0.4mg/cm^2 up to 0.8mg/cm^2 verteporfin. First, I must say that the trial was a blast! It was stressful and exhausting (I recalculated and realized I was actually at the office for 16 hours straight, and not 19, but you get the point!), but truly exciting. Second, having the 4 hour window to use the reconstituted verteporfin is a bit stressful when you are dealing with multiple patients. It seems like a long time, but I was down to the wire. I had it quite well coordinated too - where I basically had it lined up so I could do all three of the excisions portions back-to-back (opposed to taking tissue and then making incisions and then placing the dissected tissue like in normal FUT) - but I still used pretty much the full 4 hours. Do I think it still would have been good after 4 hours?  Yes. But I was trying to reduce variables. Reconstituing the verteporfin and preparing it in the dark room wasn't as difficult as I anticipated. So that was good. However, injecting it was challenging -- which did not surprise me too much. First, the suspension is VERY dark. Thankfully it's still translucent so you can see through it a bit, but very different from saline, lidocaine, etc -- which are all clear. This is compounded by the fact that you need to inject very small and very precise amounts. Which brings me to the actual injecting: I think injecting the first section on the first patient is something I will always remember. Again, just one of those very exciting moments for those who love science. Continued in the next post ...

 

It's challenging to get the needle right into the dermis where you want. Very easy to go a little too far towards the deeper tissue and end up in the hypodermis or be too superficial and just get a lot of leaking of the verteporfin. Injecting is hard too because you need to pay attention to both where the needle is located and the volume at which you are injecting. So you're sort of looking back and forth rapidly -- checking the volume you are injecting and making sure the needle is in the right spot. In the future, I will probably have a spotter watch the volume for me and tell me when to stop. It would also be possible to have the correct volume in separate syringes, but then you would have dozens and dozes of these. Next, injecting the solution itself is physically hard. It's very thick and takes some real pressure to get through the needle. This is also compounded by a very fine needle (30 gauge) and a dermal injection -- the dermis is hard and injecting into it is always a little more challenging. I did try different gauge needles (27 gauge to be specific), but I'm not sure how much difference it made. I also found it variable between different patients; some had harder dermis tissue compared to others. And compound all of this with no surgical light too -- but I'll get more into that in a moment. I also found varying degrees of extravasation -- verteporfin leaking out of the injection sites. I had one patient who was bleeding more than average and had thinner blood, and he, understandably, had a bit more extravasation. I had others where the injections were super smooth: clearly in the right area, the right volumes, with very little leaking. It's also extremely cool watching the verteporfin sort of collect in the tissues because it has a very characteristic dark green color. I think we did very well with the light. I didn't use the surgical light for any aspect of the removal, injection, or closure. Continued in next post ...

 

"I found that using  magnification (7x, which I use when making recipient incisions) made up for this and I was able to visualize everything well. All of the patients responded well to the medication. No allergic reactions, no irritation reactions (apparently a pretty common one when verteporfin injection sites are exposed to intense light too soon), or anything like that. We kept everything covered well and there were no issues with the donor areas the entire day. Surgeries were unremarkable otherwise. The verteporfin treated sites looked really good at the end of the day. Even a little cleaner compared to the non-treated areas. No other real observations that early. I had them all stay pretty well covered and out of the light for 5 days. I followed up with them closely and saw them back at the office multiple times since the test and everything is great without any issues. So I feel very good about the safely profile of the verteporfin (which was pretty well established regardless). There also did not seem to be any problem going up to nearly double the dose used in tests thus far (0.8mg/cm^2). I spoke about this with several knowledgeable colleagues (including Dr Barghouthi) and felt good about it -- and it seems like that hunch was correct. We will see if it makes a difference with regard to healing. So, altogether, I felt quite good with the first trial and I want to do more regardless of outcome. I think I can definitely do better on subsequent rounds (the first time at anything is obviously always never quite as smooth!). I also want to test the other aspects of verteporfin as well. Next tests will probably be a bigger punch left open to see how it heals/check for regeneration, and then I would love to do some wounding with dermarolling or something like that in the recipient area and then treat with verteporfin to see how it does. Last post below ...

 

I wanted to, again, thank everyone on the server. You guys have been great! I also would love to be included on any other sites, forums, apps, etc where you share future treatment information. I'm always impressed on how quickly you guys find this new stuff! Any other thoughts on where else I should share this? I know there have been some threads on hair restoraiton network. It looks like it's kind of the last forum standing? Hair Loss Talk previously had all the "future" treatment discussion, but I think that one is gone now! I'm going to document everything through YouTube as well. I'll make the announcement video this week and then update with 48 hour pictures, staple removal pictures, etc. And, of course, I will keep this server the most updated and share everything here first."

Thank you! Is that an open discord server? And is this the youtube channel he's referring to? https://www.youtube.com/@fellerandbloxham

54 minutes ago, Gatchpt said:

“Dr. Bloxham did the procedure, three dosages were used:

0.05 mL/5 mm

0.075 mL/5 mm

0.1 mL/5 mm

at the concentration of 2 mg/mL” 

3 different patients. This is what I received from a guy in some group for scars.seems the focus in this forum is more on  Dr Barghouti’s trial but I think Dr Blocham FUT trial will give a definitive answer of whether this thing work or not 🤞🏽 

Thanks for the update!

How does that translate to Dr Barghouti's dosages? It's a bit confusing for me.

1 hour ago, DrTBarghouthi said:

Hi guys. Hope all is well and apologies for the uncertainty with dates but I needed to make sure we have both the patient and the medication. Our full FUE trial is now scheduled and booked for 23rd of July. 🙏🏻🙏🏻

Thank you. If I'm not mistaken, 0.4mg is going to be the lowest concentration used in this trial. What will be the maximum?

I'm glad I'm not the only one who can't wait to get updates on this. I don't want to get my hopes up but this could immensely impact my quality of life... I just want to get rid of my scars and be bald.

5 hours ago, Nikoni said:

Why wounds need to be bigger ?

Just my guess, so that no scarred skin is missed

2 hours ago, MrFox said:

@tatasabaya I wanted to post over here so we don't clog the other Verteporfin thread. In regard to what direction the hair would grow, all of the evidence from the animal testing shows it grows along natural growth patterns. I remember in the first mouse study that they had difficulty telling where the skin was injured, which I would infer means the hair was not growing in any unnatural way. I think using some sort of computer imaging and tracking software is the next step here. It's just too hard to tell with the naked eye if a follicle is growing back in the exact location, with same direction, color, number of hairs, etc. 

It sounds so good it seems like science fiction... yet so few people seem to care about it.

I really hope this will work for those of us who went the HT route and regret it. In theory they should be able to make a wound slightly bigger than donor scars and apply Verteporfin there to promote healthy skin growth... even if it doesn't regrow hair in place of old scars for some reason, getting rid of hypopigmentation would be a blessing.

Do you know which concentration they used for animal testing? I know the highest concentration in the human trial was 0.4, and they will work up from there in the next test.

Thanks!

A question just popped up in my mind... how would the new skin "remember" in which direction the new hairs should grow? That's crazy. Does the wound know what type of skin to form from the skin that runs deeper than the FUE punch or from the skin around the scar?

Damn I was hoping for an update, this is just what to address.

On 3/23/2023 at 2:19 AM, Gatsby said:

You know if you are a year post op you could actually shave your head and see how you feel about a buzzed look. You can always grow it back and if it still bothers you then as @Melvin- Moderator said you could SMP the donor scars. The most important thing is not to make an impulse decision if you want to laser the grafts off. Looking back if I didn't have my hairline plugs surgically removed via several strip procedures, they could have been used and not wasted years later. All the best and just take your time.

Thanks man I appreciate it, I just saw your interview with Baldcafe and wanted to thank you for sharing your story. I was thinking that maybe if I shaved with a razor / had laser removal, my scars wouldn't stand out since the surrounding hairs wouldn't be visible, not even stubbles. Maybe even soften their appearance further by doing other laser / microneedling therapies. But that's probably wishful thinking since I've never seen it being suggested by others... I will have to build up the courage to shave first and see it for myself.

On 3/23/2023 at 10:48 AM, cheesy1986 said:

I am having very much the same thoughts as you, so can fully sympathise. I stupidly got a 4k graft hair transplant as a norwood 5 and am unhappy with my hairline and have a bald crown, with I don't think too many donor hairs left. I feel I look ridiculous and have been googling laser hair removal this week. I just wish I could turn back the clock to before the transplant, it's massively impacting my mental health too

Hang in there bud, we're going to find a way out this bad mental headspace somehow and learn something from this. Best wishes on your journey. If you find any interesting information please share it with us.

I'm sorry I thought file names were visible. First 3 pics are post op, 4th is a close up of what I dislike, 5th is pre HT.

Hello everyone,

I'm 27 and I've filled my temples with 1700 grafts a year ago (NW2). Although the result wasn't bad according to others (even a different, more reputable clinic confirmed this and advised against any touch up) I'm not satisfied with the result (density, hairline, overall appearance) and it's been affecting my mental health. I'm paranoid about other people noticing it, the way the sun hits, wind, etc. so I can't relax and enjoy things around others. I've even stopped using finasteride because I felt it was affecting my erections/orgasms and feared my gyno would come back.

With that said, do you think getting rid of ALL my hair via laser removal would be a good idea or will scarring be evident? I just want to stop caring about hair forever and move on 🙁.

I suppose shaving with a razor would show me what to expect from it?

Has any of you done tried shaving with a razor or laser removal? If so, how did it look like, both the donor and recipient area? I wasn't able to find any testimonies in this forum, if you know of any please send me links.

For example, I know Joe Rogan had a hair transplant he regrets, and has been shaving since. At least I would never tell from watching his videos.

Thank you very much.