Hair Transplant Surgery Overview
The donor area which is naturally resistant to hair loss is usually at the back and sides of your head. Therefore, transplanted hair continues to grow naturally and is permanently implanted.
Human hair grows in little bundles and these are called “grafts”. Grafts contain one to four hairs and there are two ways to extract donor hair grafts. One is called Follicular Unit Extraction method (FUE) and the other is called Follicular Unit Transplant (FUT).
Understanding the difference between FUE and FUT is important. FUE is performed with a punch-like surgical device that extracts one graft at a time. FUE doesn’t leave a linear scar, but leaves tiny scar at each puncture point which is very hard to see. To extract the required number of grafts, thousands of punctures are performed over a wide range of area.
FUT is known as the “Strip Excision” technique. From the donor area a strip is removed which holds hundreds or thousands of hair grafts. Those grafts are further processed.
With the help of the microscope individual grafts are then separated in preparation for transplantation. A linear scar will be left where the strip was removed.
A proper planning of advanced technique which is called “trichophytic closure” contributes to a minimal scar.
With today’s technology FUE growth rates are as good as FUT or even better.