The FUE Hair Transplant Option

One of the most serious concerns of both men and women who are advancing in age is the cosmetic symptoms it entails. Growing old is a part of life but there are aspects of it that we humans just have a hard time accepting. Getting skin wrinkles and other age-related skin imperfections, graying hair and last but not the least, thinning hair.

There is nothing like losing hair to put the fear of aging to any person. But some are more unfortunate than others in that there are those that experience hair loss earlier than expected. It may be due to genetic predisposition, due to an existing medical condition, due to the environment, but whatever the cause may be, it is something that we detest and wish we could reverse.

The good news is that we have actually come up with ways to do that and one of such ways is through FUE hair transplants. FUE, which stands for Follicular Unit Extraction, is a method whereby individual hair and its follicle is extracted from a donor site or a site of your head with abundant hair and transplanted to the recipient site.

Individual hair and its hair follicle obtained by creating a 0.75 to 1 mm punch on the skin around a hair follicle. It is then extracted and transferred to an incised recipient site. This is done one at a time until satisfied with the results.

This is method is different from a method known as the Follicular Unit Transplantation or FUT (sometimes also referred to as Ultra Refined Follicular Unit Transplantation or URFUT) in that the latter involves extraction of not just one hair follicles but groups of around 4 to 5 hair follicles. This method results in bigger incision and may show more obvious scarring but it can be a more efficient way of doing things because more hair are harvested and transplanted at any given time. Also known as the “strip method”, this method is preferred by patients who wish to get back that normal-looking hairline with normal-looking hair spacing and distribution. This procedure requires less time to complete mainly due to the fact that you could harvest more hair at any given time compared to FUE.

The FUE hair transplant option leaves a smaller skin breakage and heals much faster than FUT. However, the transplanted hair will be farther apart so it will not get back that normal distribution that normal hair has. However, if you are planning on keeping your hair short, this option might be the best because there will be no or minimal scarring. This method, however, is much more expensive than the traditional strip method.

Before undergoing this procedure, be sure to consult a qualified doctor first as there are some tests that must be run first, one of which is to determine whether your scalp can easily undergo such procedure. There are scalps that are hard to extract from and you will need to determine that first along with other diagnostics.

The FUE hair transplant method is a cutting edge hair restoration method that must be performed by professionals. As always consult one before anything else.

Image Credit: http://www.hair-transplant.org.uk