Azim J. Khan, MD, FAAD, FAACS

Dr. Khalil Khatri has demonstrated the safety of laser hair removal in patients who were taking Roaccutane in his study few years ago. He used diode laser for hair removal and we share our vast experience with long pulsed Nd:YAG laser in patients using Roaccutane. While invasive procedures causing wound formation are considered contraindicated, laser hair removal needs to be looked at differently - based on evidence. Since burns are now rarely encountered with conservative parameters used for laser hair removal, Roaccutane should be safe.

Accutane does NOT prevent you from getting pregnant. In fact Accutane should only be started after ensuring that the patient is neither pregnant nor has a plan to become pregnant while on Roaccutane therapy and upto one month after discontinuing Roaccuate. Two forms of contraception should be used to ensure that the patient does not get pregnant accidentally as Roaccutane use can cause fetal malformations. Certain forms developed by the manufacturer of Roaccutane need to be signed by the patient to comply with these recommendations.

With the advent of commercialization of hair transplant at a ridiculously large scale, almost any physician seems to be ready to venture in the field of Hair Transplant. "Dermatologists" are the specialists of the "Skin, Hair and Nail" and one of the Dermatologist invented the technique of hair transplant.

But just being a Dermatologist is not sufficient. After one gets Board Certification in the field of Dermatology, one has to perform a fellowship specialized training in the field of cosmetic dermatologic surgery that includes the training in hair transplant as an integral component. Furthermore many of us go even an extra mile to super-refine our skills in the area of subspecialty and concentrate more on hair transplant if we wish to do so. So in a nutshell a "specialist in the are of hair i.e., Dermatologist" who has a surgical training and then a specific training in Hair Transplant" may be the "The Most Qualified" Hair Transplant Surgeon.

It does not mean that other physicians can not or should not peform these surgeries as any doctor interested to learn and refine this surgery can do that. Unfortunately in less organized socities like Pakistan - even nurses have started to open clinics and perform hair transplant surgeries and many doctors who have no idea of the diseases of the hair that do not require hair transplant and in fact hair transplant can aggravate the disease - are performing the surgeries without basic knowledge of the diseases of the hair. 

Liposuction is a procedure in which extra fat is removed from any part of the body and usually the loose skin snaps back as it has a lot of recoil in most cases. Your cosmetic surgeon may assess the possibility of the loose skin after liposuction by a simple test of pinching your skin and letting it snap back. If skin is too loose prior to liposuction then one may need another surgery called "Tummy Tuck" to tighten the skin and muscle of the abdominal wall or just the skin itself.

Sometimes if just the skin has to be removed in a more conservative way, it is called "Mini Tummy Tuck" as it is a relatively smaller surgery. Many liposuction surgeons have started to believe that first performing a liposuction and let the skin contract as much as it can naturally and then removing any left-over extra skin is a comparatively safer approach than performing liposuction and "tummy Tuck" both at the same time. This is exactly what our experience has been after doing a large number of cases of liposuction in Pakistan.