Follicular Unit Extraction

This is a technique of harvesting that doesn’t affect the way the hairs are implanted which involves removing the follicular units one at a time at the back of the head with a manual or motorized circular scalpel. This technique is recommended if one wishes to avoid a linear scar at the back of the head. But it’s important to note that it often leaves circular or patterned scars which are undesirable if someone wishes to save their hair.

This approach makes it possible to obtain grafts of 1 to 3 hairs with an average of 2.1 hairs per follicular unit. Since the important part of the viable follicular bulb is far below the skin and thus impossible to see, the harvesting is done arbitrarily. This can result in transections – damaged follicular units – and up to 30% loss due to defective samples.

Furthermore, in order to meet the volume needs – the main reason for hair transplants – we must implant a significant amount of hair. It’s therefore necessary to take a large number of samples per FUE, which often means having to harvest in non-permanent hair zones. When in this situation, we cannot guarantee the permanence of the result, unlike the FUT graft where the removal is always done in a zone of hair programmed to remain for the patient’s lifetime.

It goes without saying that this is particularly relevant when the area to be replenished, or transplanted, is of significant size.

Another important point is that the duration of the surgery is considerably increased, which leads to additional costs, as much as double. It should also be noted that unlike the FUT method, the patient must be completely shaved for the FUE approach. The selection of patients is therefore crucial because its unjustified and inappropriate use could cause great dissatisfaction in terms of the hair volume obtained versus the amount invested.

However, the FUE sampling technique offers certain advantages. First, the healing of the donor area where the hair is collected is considerably faster and very often less painful than with the FUT. It is ideally suited to treat small areas of baldness in patients who have no or little history of hereditary baldness or to correct scars of any kind, even those caused by the FUT approach.