Robot helping with hair transplant procedures

In the day and age of intimate Zoom calls and superficial social media, many people are making medical appointments instead of just accepting the genetic cards they've been dealt. Now, there's a robot turning "hair" dreams into reality. By Mike Dardis on March 24, 2023. https://www.wlwt.com/article/cincinnati-robot-helping-with-hair-transplant-procedures/43391852# It's no different than farming for the scalp. Only this is no tractor harvesting crops. It's a state-of-the-art hair robot and it grows confidence. Forty-two-year-old Josh Blalock's hair started thinning in his early 20s. His hair game has always been an uphill battle and for a guy who works in the beauty industry. Blalock said the bald spots have left him bare in more ways than one! "Six months ago staring in the mirror I saw an older version of myself," Blalock said. After combing through other hair growth options that haven't worked for him,Josh was offered an opportunity to be a test subject at his place of work, Advanced Cosmetic Surgery and Laser. It's the latest and greatest technology available. A hair robot that's revolutionizing the hair transplant industry. The technology has been used for more than a decade, but Hyde Park plastic surgeon Dr. Jon Mendelson says the recent update makes the old robots look like scrap metal. "It's really in the past year or so where the software upgrades, the algorithms, can measure the length of the hair, the depth of the hair, the orientation, and the angle of the hair and can harvest it, extract it and even implant it," Mendelson said. So here's how it works. After a patient gets prepped and properly numbed up, it's time to take hair from an area where it is growing and move it to the spots, where it's not. A small grid is placed on the spot where good hair will be taken. The grid is put down, the robot goes to work finding the good hairs and sucking them out of the scalp. The individual strands are put in a petri dish and cleaned. And then they are implanted in the part of the scalp where the patient has had trouble growing hair. Then it's watch and wait. For the recipient spots where the robot did the planting, Mendelsohn said it just takes patience. "Around three or four months, it's going to sprout and usually between six and eight months we really start to see results," Mendelsohn said. "Hair will grow at 1/4 to a half inch a month. You can style it, cut it, color it. Whatever you want to do." That's how long it'll be before a dream comes true for Josh. "I can't wait. Eight months from now I'll be looking in the mirror. I'll be smiling back at myself looking at my beautiful hair," Blalock said with a laugh. As for pain, Blalock said on a scale of 1 to 10, this was only a 2. The cost can creep up on you. The procedure can range from $6,000-$9,000.