The night before surgery I arrived late in Cincinnati after a hectic travel schedule. There is a curious meteorological oddity here in Cincinnati called humidity. I'm used to the dry air of Salt Lake City so this will take some getting used to.

After a brief stop at Dr Wolf's office where I met Ivan Bakhurin, the Executive Director, I arrived at my hotel and got some well needed sleep.

The next morning I arrived early at the office to meet Dr Brad Wolf where he explained to me how he only schedules one patient per day to allow him to focus his complete attention on the patient. He can also work late into the evening if necessary depending on the number of grafts planted. And, according to Ivan, this happens quite a bit. They often end up feeling like they live at the office.

Dr. Bogan, who assists Dr Wolf, began the procedure by anesthetizing the patient's donor area and recipient sites with nerve blocks. Dr. Wolf then carefully dissected the strip and gave it to the technicians for slivering and follicular unit dissection. Dr. Wolf began pre-punching a few recipient sites with his lateral slit blades. He kept a tally on a white marker board on the back wall to keep track of how many slits he'd created with each blade size.

While we were waiting for the graft technicians to provide the first batch of grafts, we took a short lunch break to allow the first slit blade recipient sites to begin coagulation. I enjoyed a heaping burrito that kept me full for a good six hours. It was only about four dollars for this mega meal. What a deal! I conversed with the patient during lunch about his occupation and the hair transplant research he had done before coming to Dr. Wolf.

Around 1:00 PM a two-week post-op follow up patient came in for suture removal. Dr. Wolf inspected the sutures and determined they needed to be left in for a few more days to ensure a pencil line scar would be created. Dr. Wolf showed me how well the donor area had healed already, but he wasn't willing to take any chances. Dr. Wolf has discovered a few years ago that sutures left in longer result in better scar healing. The patient agreed to return a week later.

Another follow up patient, an older gentleman with gray hair, arrived to discuss his future treatment options with Dr. Wolf. Dr.Wolf showed me the incredible hairline work that had been done with sagital slits on this patient. In the hair transplant world there has been a significant amount of discussion on different placement techniques. Dr. Wolf showed me that the artistry of the hair transplant surgeon is the most important element. Superior results can be achieved with saggital slits, lateral slits, or needles as long as the surgeon has superior artistry in his placement. Dr. Wolf and the patient discussed adding more grafts and how many donor area grafts would be available for the patient in the future. They decided to continue monitoring growth for the time being and the patient agreed to consider his options at a later date.

Next, we returned to surgery where the technicians had been able to analyze most of the grafts to give us a fairly precise estimate of the number of 1, 2, and 3 hair follicular unit grafts. Dr. Wolf then planned the rest of the graft placement according to this follicular unit analysis and finished creating the recipient sties with his Cutting Edge custom cut lateral slit blades.

I watched the technicians finish the strip slivering and graft dissection and watched Dr. Wolf and his staff complete the graft placement.

With only one new surgical patient per day the Dr. and surgical team are completely committed to the patient. They doctor uses any breaks in surgery while waiting for grafts to be dissected to conduct short follow up visits with previous surgical patients. I was very impressed with Dr. Wolf and his staff and their complete commitment to the patient and their work. I knew they were committed to stay as late into the evening as needed to ensure their patient was properly taken care of.