By Daniel A. Danyo, M.D.

Last month, I had the privilege of meeting Dr. Mauricio Morato at the ISHRS meeting in Chicago. Being new to the hair restoration field and one of the first hair restoration surgeons in Bolivia, Dr. Morato was eager to learn as much as he could at the meeting. I met him on the first day of the meeting, since we sat next to each other by chance.

We spent a lot of time together between lectures and workshops discussing current trends and techniques. He was particularly interested in our specialized techniques for Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) and asked to shadow me for a couple of days to experience it himself. On the last day of the meeting, he asked if he could change his return flight to Bolivia to Wednesday instead of Sunday which was the last day of the meeting. He requested flying to Atlanta to spend Two days with me instead of traveling back home – I was honored to have him.

Dr. Morato spent two days at North Atlanta Hair Restoration – he was amazed that we were successfully extracting our follicles to be grafted using small punches including 0.8mm and 0.75mm in diameter (which saves the donor area and reduces post operative pain/swelling), the “Shaveless FUE” which no one else at the meeting was even discussing (over 50% of my FUE patients now request a Shaveless technique) and the use of Hans Pen Implanters which allows the hair restoration surgeon to place each hair individually (not a team of technicians).

He was able to experience two cases in my office. I exposed him to a new way of thinking about hair transplantation, which he plans to bring to Bolivia. He requested doing a thank you video for our patients. We plan to continue to communicate in the future and build our professional connection and friendship. Thank You Dr. Morato!!