Vertical or horizontal scalp mobility: What to assess.

Background: Scalp is comprised of five layers namely skin, connective tissue, aponeurosis, loose areolar tissue, and periosteum, each having distinct characteristics. The scalp mobility plays an important role in scalp wound closure. Thus, the estimation of scalp mobility is necessary to obtain a tension-free closure and fine scar in hair restoration surgery.

Aims: To know the difference of available number of FUs while using two different scalp mobility methods, that is, horizontal vs vertical methods.

Patients/methods: The study was conducted in a private hair restoration clinic in the patients undergoing surgery after taking informed consent from all the patients. Any patient with a previous scalp surgery was excluded. The horizontal mobility was calculated using Mayer's method, and the vertical mobility was calculated using Mohmand 7 Ahmad's method on the same areas. All the data were recorded and analyzed statistically using Mann-Whitney test.

Results: A total of 15 patients were included in the study. The average length of the strip was 24.7 cm (range; 20-29 cm) with hair density of 138.1 cm (range; 114-195.7 cm ). The average strip width was found to be 17.1 mm by using horizontal mobility scale and 19.6 mm by using vertical scalp mobility. The horizontal scale resulted in average strip area of 42.0 cm as compared to average area of 49.1 cm by using vertical scale. The average number of hair by horizontal scale was calculated to be 5792.8 hairs and 6762.5 hairs by using vertical mobility scale (P < .05). The average number of more hair to be available by using vertical scale was 969.7.

Conclusion: The vertical scale resulted in more number of hair from the donor strip in the same patient.