Darling Buds Hair Transplants

Z-plasty (w-plasty) is an accepted technique for better scars commonly used by plastic surgeons in their daily practice. This has been now routinely assimilated in our practice for producing better strip surgery scars in Indian patients due to their peculiar skin characteristics.

The conventional “ledge” trichophytic closure entails excision of the epidermal overhang of one edge of the donor incision. This is done keeping the bulge area of the follicular unit intact. The hairs so transected grow through the final scar, camouflaging the stigmata of strip surgery.

Linear scars carry the risk of higher visibility especially in pigmented skins. Traditional “ledge” trichophytic closure has addressed this problem to a great extent in non- pigmented skin types. However, traditional trichophytic closure has not been successful in India patients in our practice. Therefore the need to seeking solutions within the ambit of accepted plastic surgical techniques.

The advantages of this new technique of trichophytic closure are manifold-

1. Closure along relaxed skin tension lines leads to a better scar.
2. Z-plasty distributes the tension of the wound preventing scar creep (stretch).
3. Transected hair grow through the scar camouflaging its short limbs.
4. A wider strip upto 20 mm in size can be obtained in some cases thereby maximizing harvested grafts.
5. The patient can wear his hair shorter than in the traditional trichophytic closure due to absence of a straight line scar.
6. Since there is no excision of epidermis there is a decreased incidence of- erythema, cyst formation and crust formation.

This center has been performing trichophytic closures using this technique for the past 2 years with very encouraging results. The trichophytic closure is routinely done in all cases done using the strip technique area.  Unlike in the traditional “ledge” trichophytic closure, this technique gives better results in all cases.