Hair transplantation is a surgical modality for treatment of baldness where the bald area is covered with hair, along with its roots, taken from other sites such as back of scalp.
Once transplanted, the hair will continue to grow for a person’s lifetime. At M A Skin and Hair Superspeciality Clinic we perform the two most effective types of hair restoration procedures, Follicular Unit Transplantation (FUT) and Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE).
The answer will depend on the cause of your hair loss, your age, the stability of your donor supply, how extensive your hair loss is, your expectations and a number of other important factors that will be taken into account.
Criteria to have surgical hair restoration:
Follicular Unit Transplantation (FUT) is a hair restoration procedure in which naturally-occurring groups of one to four hairs, called follicular units, are transplanted from the donor area to the recipient area.
In FUT, after the patient’s scalp is numbed, the doctor removes a thin strip of tissue from the back and/or sides of the scalp. The donor strip is then separated into hundreds to thousands of individual follicular units using precise stereo-microscopic dissection techniques. As the follicular unit grafts are being prepared, the doctor makes tiny slits in the scalp (recipient sites), into which the grafts are placed.
If well executed, the use of follicular units ensures that the transplant results will look completely natural and be undetectable.
Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) is a method of extracting, or “harvesting,” follicular units one-by-one directly from the scalp. In FUE, an instrument is used to make small, circular incisions in the skin around follicular units, separating them from the surrounding tissue. The follicular unit is then extracted (pulled) directly from the scalp, leaving a small open hole that heals with a small white mark.
This method of donor harvesting is what differentiates the FUE procedure from Follicular Unit Transplantation (FUT), in which the donor hair is removed in a long strip that is dissected into individual follicular units under a stereo-microscope. The creation of recipient sites and the placing of follicular unit grafts are essentially the same in FUE and FUT procedures.
Smaller sessions of FUT (less than 800 grafts) can take about 4 hours, while larger ones (2500 grafts or more) can take all day. Sometimes large sessions of FUE are split over two days. The main determinant of the length of the session depends on the number of grafts being transplanted.
There is some redness and crusting after the procedure. Some patients experience swelling during the first week after surgery. Hair transplants are usually undetectable after 10 days. Follicular unit grafts are permanent in the scalp after 10 days.