Hair restoration has come a long way since the days when the most advanced method thereof was strip farming a length of skin graft complete with follicles. Newer FUE (Follicular Unit Extraction) techniques allow for much more subtlety, a much greater chance of long term success and a greatly reduced chance of painful post operative complication.
The original strip farming method of hair restoration was classed as invasive surgery and carried a reasonably significant risk of post operative infection, pain and swelling. The patient was required to spend some time in a clinic to recover after the operation and, because the hair was really in skin grafts that by their shape made it obvious it hadnt originally grown there, was usually left with an unnatural looking result.
FUE aims to promote a completely natural growth of new hair, by implanting single units of hair that have been chosen for the direction in which they grow. Every person has a different growth pattern on his or her head. Some spiral out from the crown, some divide symmetrically on the two sides of the scalp. In order to perform a hair restoration that looks like it ought to be where it is; surgeons need to find single follicles that have the same natural growth direction as the hairs they are to supplant.
A transplanted follicle will always grow in the direction it was growing in before it got moved. FUE takes advantage of this in a way that the strip farming method of hair restoration never could. A strip of grafted skin and hair may contain some follicles that grow in a natural looking direction, but there is no chance that all, or even most, of the transplanted follicles will all serve this purpose.
FUE is less painful because the individual hairs are removed in a way that causes only mild swelling (taken care of with a post op prescription of anti inflammatory). The chances of infection are greatly diminished because the operation itself is not engaged in removing large areas of skin and hair at once.
On average a patient who has had a
hair restoration procedure done using the FUE technique will be back to normal within a couple of weeks whereas the old strip farming method could cause discomfort for much longer.
The follicles transplanted in the FUE method initially die falling out of their new site after anything between a few days and a couple of months. But they leave their roots behind. The roots then produce new hair growth in the same natural direction as the original donor hair. The result, when the new hair growth cycle is complete, should be a fully successful hair restoration.
Quicker, more natural looking and less painful,
FUE is one of the biggest single advances in hair transplant surgery. It has given hope of a new head of hair to thousands of potential candidates.
