What is a FUE Hair Transplant?
In FUE-based hair restoration, the hair transplantation specialist extracts individual hair follicles from a donor site and transplants them to the treatment site. Extracting follicular units, which are naturally composed of 1-4 hairs, enables the hair transplant specialist to achieve natural-looking results. The small size of the follicular unit also reduces the visibility of scarring in the donor area, making it nearly imperceptible.
There are primarily two hair transplant techniques, FUE and Follicular Unit Transplantation (FUT), also known as the “strip method”. The FUT method requires extracting a strip of skin from the donor site, usually the back of the head. The strip is then carefully separated into follicular unit grafts, and then each is inserted into the scalp in the treatment site. This method typically results in a small linear scar on the back of the head, which can be made less noticeable depending on the technique used by the plastic surgeon.
FUE minimizes the visibility of donor site scarring by extracting just the follicular unit. This also reduces post-operative discomfort and reduces the risk of complications.
The Carney Center hair restoration team manually extracts each follicular unit; however, the Center also utilizes the ARTAS Hair Restoration system to automate and enhance the survivability of transplanted hair. The ARTAS uses a robot to carefully extract and then randomly place the unit within the treatment area, improving the natural look by avoiding repetitive patterns. Read more about ARTAS Hair Restoration in Virginia Beach.