FUE Hair Transplants

Minimally invasive Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) hair transplant is actually becoming the more popular option for hair transplantation, thanks to results that look very natural with very little downtime, no scars and no discomfort. Here is an article about what the latest developments in FUE hair transplant procedures are all about and how are they done, along with the benefits and the issues or risks associated with this method, along with the outlook for the future of hair restoration.

What is FUE Hair Transplant?
It’s called Follicular Unit Extraction, or FUE, and rather than sides of your skull a your own scalp ( or FUT), the in all these hairs one by one, literally picking them up and transferring them to parts of your head where it is thinning and/or balding. One of the big selling points of FUE is that it doesn’t create big sutures and so a person will have minimal to no scarring – this is actually one of the big reasons that the procedure is becoming so popular, with recovery times noticeably shorter than the old-school incisions-based approaches to putting a new head of hair on a man.

How FUE Works
The FUE procedure is carried out in several steps:

Shaving the donor area: The patient’s donor area was shaved before surgery to give the surgeon more access to the hair follicles. These are typically untouched by the hair-loss hormones so the hair transplanted in that area will continue to grow naturally following its relocation.

Follicle Extraction: With a single-hair follicle punch instrument, the physician excises individual hair follicles from the donor area. Often, the physician removes each follicle singularly. In this fashion, the extraction of hair follicles through the scalp is accomplished with the least amount of tissue trauma.

Recipient Area Preparation: After the donor follicles are harvested through either a strip excision or FUE (as mentioned in step 2 or 5 above), the recipient area must be prepared by making a scattergrid of incisions into the bald or thinning areas where the follicles will be implanted.

The next process is follicle transplantation: follicles after being removed should be transferred to the recipient area, keep the correct hair angles, hair transfer depth and direction as well as the hair growth texture of the patient, control density of hair.

Patients offer precise instructions for a process of self-care: Many patients don’t know what to do when they get home and they say it [the prep] made them want to do something. They want to know what they can do if they have itching or bleeding and it makes them more comfortable,’ said Dr Shapiro. Recovery: The patient’s instructions for self-care foster the growth of his hair and improve blood flow to the implanted grafts, thereby ensuring the success of the doctor’s surgery. Initially, the transplanted hairs are fine but within three months they are long and pretty.

Advances in FUE Hair Transplant Technology
The popularity of FUE hair transplant has been rise dramatically in last 10 years and there are plenty of new trendy surgical procedure available , since the FUE is the most modern technique. Here is some of the newest technique of modern FUE hair transplant surgeries :

Micromotor FUE
But micromotor-assisted FUE has even further refined the technique, so that the surgeon can harvest multiple follicles at a time, rather than have to remove them one after another using a miniature punch too. Using a micromotor unit that cuts a slit in the follicle from a variety of angles encouraging the follicle’s release, the surgeon need only move the punch tool over the entire follicular unit. He then evicts the follicle through the slit and can next cut the root of the follicle on the other side for easy removal. This technique is especially useful when thousands of grafts need to be harvested, and simultaneously placed along an entire hairline.

Benefits:

• Reduced procedure time.
• Enhanced precision.
• Less damage to surrounding tissue.
• Faster healing and recovery.

Sapphire FUE
The Sapphire FUE is another relatively recent development on the donor site. Here, donor-site incisions are created using man-made, diamond-edged sapphire blades rather than the older incisions created by steel transaction blades. The sapphire blades have sharper edges with enhanced precision and produce thinner incisions much less likely to injure both the cuticular plate’s blood supply and the vascularity of the scalp tissue.

Benefits:

• Faster healing.
• Less scarring.
• Higher graft survival rate.
• More natural-looking hairlines.

Unshaven FUE
Secondly, shaving the side and back of the head – which serves as the donor area – is the most common issue among FUE patients. Shaving is often a cosmetic problem. With unshaven FUE, patients can walk out of the surgery with their hair uncut. Because the donor follicles are taken from the scalp without having to shave, the procedure is almost invisible to the naked eye once surgery is over.

Benefits:

• No need for shaving.
• Discreet recovery process.
• Ideal for individuals with longer hair.

Stem Cell FUE
Presently, the progression of hair transplanting is in stem cells. During stem cell FUE, some examples are taken of the scalp hair follicles altogether and after that duplicated in the lab before being transplanted to the balding spot, which could enable guys with negligible donor hair to cover more region.

Benefits:

• Ability to treat larger areas with fewer donor follicles.
• Potential for multiple treatments from a single extraction.
• Promising results in early studies.

The Benefits of FUE Hair Transplantation
Thus FUE has come to be taken as the baby of the family because of all the things it has going for it over linear strip techniques.

• Minimally Invasive: Because it has to take its material from that long thin strip of scalp (and that strip has to be removed), it cannot hope to compete with FUE, where the risks are minimal, the pain less and the recovery even quicker.
• No Linear Scarring: And because it doesn’t leave an obvious (linear) scar on the back of the head — the one bit of your anatomy on which widespread hair loss really looks bad — FUE is particularly attractive to the sorts of people who don’t have the cajones to make it all the way through puberty with their hair long enough to cover the scar. It heals fast and clean: the exit holes are so small (1mm in diameter) you can hardly see them.
• Natural-Looking Results: Since the surgeon transplants each hair follicle, FUE will also be more natural. The surgeon can make the patient’s hairline more natural and plant each hair to resemble what the head looked like in his youth.
• Quick Recovery: The number of patients can safely return to their normal activities is almost at 100 per cent, in just a few days. On average it takes about 7-10 days for the patient to fully recover. The new hair will start to grow after about three months.
• Permanent Solution: The transplanted follicles act similarly; they resist the hormones that could cause the hair loss, which means that the results of an FUE transplant are permanent. Your hair transplant – two reasons why you can exhale. The hair that grows in when you have your transplant will grow for the rest of your life.

Risks and Considerations
Although FUE is a safe procedure, there are known risks and side effects.

• Shock Loss: Nearly all are associated with some degree of temporary shock loss of hair in the donor or recipient site, to be regrown in a few weeks or months at most.
• Infection or Scarring: As with any surgery, an infection can occur though this is exceptionally rare with FUE, especially if the surgeon is qualified and experienced. Very rarely, scarring or cysts can form.
• Graft Failure: Not all the follicles, for instance, will survive and take. A good transplant will resolve this by extracting more than the hair you’ll need, and trimming the number back to make it look more natural. Similarly, a very small percentage of the grafts – well below the level that is noticeable – will fail to grow hair, like a small bare patch in a hair transplant. Still, the real challenge goes beyond what a little extra hair can achieve. ‘If the proportions are not just right between the transplants and the untouched original hair… or the thinning is unevenly distributed, any hairline will still end up looking patchy and unreal, something not even the most skilled surgeon can fix,’ adds Ingar Bækken. This risk can partly be mitigated if you find a good surgeon and follow aftercare instructions.
• Cost: Because it requires a great deal of precision – and a lot of time – FUE is four to six times more expensive than other methods of hair transplantation. But in a world where image is so important, many would say that patients are buying a lifetime of permanent results for a price that is a mere drop in the ocean on the spending scales of most successful people.

Who is a Good Candidate for FUE?
It’s also a good option for those who are balding or have lost their hair through androgenetic alopecia (male/female pattern baldness), scarring alopecia or other cause. Good candidates for FUE:

• Sufficient donor hair (typically at the back or sides of the scalp).
• Good overall health.
• Realistic expectations about the results.

Severe baldness patients ( facial profile),(example above of severe baldness: grade 6 of the Norwood-Hamilton scale),or patients with small donor hair stocks will likely get a limited output from the FUE technique and require complimenting hair transplant procedure with a FUE+Rhino Comb procedure, or Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) therapy.

The Future of FUE Hair Transplantation
This technology can only improve, I’m happy to say. And here’s a taste of what, if current trends continue, can be expected of the future of FUE:

Now other scientists are exploring ways in which gene therapy might slow, and even halt, the progressive effects of hairloss by altering the genes that trigger it – or at least, reverse it.

Hair Cloning takes one or two hair follicles and creates an infinite amount of donor hair by cloning against the lab. This can be a huge breakthrough for men and women who have a uniquely shared condition of donor hair scarcity. baldness is the leading cause of death by suicide worldwide.

Combination Therapies: Developed specifically so that in coming years the improvements made in FUE can also be augmented when delivered in conjunction with stem cell therapy, platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy or laser therapy to provide a more natural looking hair restoration.