Various techniques have tried to restore an aesthetically pleasing appearance of male’s pattern baldness in the past. Unfortunately any of these outdated methods (micro-grafting, mini-grafting, plug-style) have failed since a natural apperance has never been achieved and great emotional distress was inevitable. Bigger grafts / tissues of the scalp have been removed with larger punches to be placed into balding areas lately. After finishing the restoration process the patient was left with unnatural “islands” of dense hair behind being embarrassingly surrounded by balding areas. At particular areas such as the frontal hairline inappropriately placed grafts consisting of multiple follicles have caused an unnatural appearance known as “doll´s hair”.
After hair transplant methods have evolved over the years it has become possible to isolate human hair follicles since it was evident that hair grows in groupings of about 1 to 4 hair follicle each¹. Naming these groupings “follicular units” (grafts) a new method was comprehensively revolutionizing the method of harvesting and relocating grafts to the balding areas. Eventually known as “FUT” the Follicular Unit Transplant ( or Strip Harvesting) was a big step to solely place single grafts into the recipient site by deliberatly dissecting them from a wedge of tissue being carefully excised from the horseshoe-shaped wreath of the donor via scalpel. Harvesting grafts with the Strip-Method is still being practiced by hair surgeons worldwide. After the strip has been excised to prepare the grafts under stereoscopic magnification the physician starts to sew the wound eventually leaving a scar at the patient´s head behind.² As the final lenght and width of the scar is unpredictable many patients undergo great embarrassment years after the procedure as often a bigger-than-expected scar will be detectable on the fringe of the patient´s head. Every connecting procedure will even worsen the patient´s situation as further scars are to be expected and inevitably will be exposed to the public. This reduces the prospects of follow-up surgeries.
Unless scarring occured to be a drawback within strip-harvesting the methods to insert single grafts at the recipient site have constantly been improved. Pioneers of the Lateral-Slit Technique such as Hasson & Wong continued to ensure accuracy and consistency for surgical procedures to finally achieve an aesthetically pleasing outcome. Little incisions delicatley made at the balding area with finest instruments to be filled with the follicular units later are actually encouraging numerous patients to opt for a hair transplant as it has given them a chance to get their hair back in a natural appearing way.
With the surgical redistribution of permanent hair follicles evolving to a promising method of getting natural hair back on the scalp it was up to pioneers like Dr. John P. Cole to start with new technologies after being inspired by Dr. Inaba´s method to extract single grafts in the 1980ies. After the emotional distress and the great embarrassment a linear tell-tale scar at the donor area has caused to a lot of patients a new and less invasive method for the extraction process established a fundamental advancement in hair transplant procedures: FUE – Follicular Unit Extraction has continued to steadily evolve the process of hair transplant targeting an improvement to safely harvest follicles from the permanent zone without any scarring.
FUE allows to individually extract follicles (grafts) from the donor area being genetically insensitive to inherited balding by utilizing modern and highly developed instruments. A single punch, the FUE-extractor, which is precisely applied on the donor area, allows to isolate hair follicles being deliberately chosen by the hair surgeon. As no sutures are needed and no sewing is necessary the patient will not detect any scars on his scalp lately. This method also allows to diminish the healing time post procedure and helps patients to migrate back to their daily life earlier. FUE has consistently achieved excellent results on patients and is now being regarded as the latest state-of-the-art technology for hair transplant. Conventional strip surgeries still being performed by many clinics worldwide have thus turned to be a less expensive but methodically outdated alternative for hair transplant.
Summarizing the advantages of FUE over FUT will help to convince the patients to opt for the new technology which helps them to professionally treat hair loss:
FUE pros are
minimal invasive character
shorten recovery time
no tell-tale scar at the back
allows for follow-up procedures
allows to harvest a wider range of follicles at the donor area and “cherry-pick” grafts
high yield of natural growing hair
As FUE – Follicular Unit Extraction³ – being more labour-intensive the rates per graft have regularly been higher than for FUT. As recently invented motorized instruments for the extraction process of FUE allow to harvest with a much higher speed these prizes have gradually started to decrease. Cole Instruments feature an improvement in accuracy and precision since they have been developed by the world´s most famous hair surgeon for FUE Doctor John P. Cole himself. High-quality and advanced equipment for the medical procedure are displaying the efforts and the talent of noted hair loss physicians. This is why skills and professional treatment are no longer limited to a selected group of hair surgeons.
If you are interested in improving your techniques and want to use advanced surgery tools such as the PCID we kindly invite you to follow our next sites for the presentation of a highly developed instrument revolutionizing the procedure of modern hair transplant!
References
1 Article from Hairforlife about Hair Transplantation