I had an opportunity to chat with Dr. Wesley on October 1 and here are some of the highlights of the interview:
- best case scenario, piloscopy begins to roll out in 2 years. It will be a controlled release, meaning that Dr. Wesley will start training a couple of trusted doctors, get their feedback on the instrumentation and technique, make adjustments if required, then continue to add doctors to the training sessions until such a time that he feels that most of the current hurdles have been overcome.
- I can assume that these hurdles are primarily with the instrumentation. He is creating new instruments that will improve upon the technique. The engineering involved is complicated, there are many variables at play in doing piloscopy and each iteration of engineering the instruments overcome each variable.
- there is no guarantee of donor regeneration with this technique but given that existing studies show that when transecting a follicle, some growth from the donor site does occur, there is a reasonable assumption that, with this technique, there will be some regeneration. They quality of that regeneration was not discussed but again, given the existing studies, we can presume that the donor hairs will be thinner and finer than the original ones.
- piloscopy is likely a game-changer in the hair transplant field just like FUE was. Some doctors have already attempted taking grafts from underneath the scalp using endoscopic techniques but the method was too time consuming and too awkward. With new instrumentation, the technique should be viable for extracting large numbers of grafts in a single session. However, it will take time since it requires new instrumentation to pull it off. Both a significant amount of time and money has been expended towards creating these new instruments.
