FUE vs Strip Harvest in Hair Transplants

Follicular Unit Extraction Procedure

Versus

Strip Harvest Procedure

In the past few years we’ve been hearing a lot about Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) hair transplant procedures.  This technique has been promoted as “scarless” surgery.  For those who have taken a big gulp of the Koolaid, this is the only way to do hair transplant procedures, and the strip harvest technique is dead.  They say the FUE procedures are more natural, less painful and quicker to heal.

Not so fast…

 

There are major limitations to FUE procedures.  Typically, even in the most skilled hands, patients have a 15-20% loss of grafts, grafts that don’t survive the transplant process.  A person pays for 1000 grafts and only 800 end up growing.  In addition, the FUE sessions are typically smaller, so doctors can’t do a 3000 graft FUE case.  If the patient needs that many grafts, it might 2 – 3 sessions.  People with very curly hair and those with a lot of hair loss are not generally candidates for the procedure.

Most importantly, FUE procedures, like all hair transplant procedures result in scars.  As you can see below...

The main difference from the strip technique which produces a linear scar, is that FUE procedures result in hundreds of tiny scars instead of one long scar.  Since many patients heal with a very fine scar line with the standard strip harvest technique, there’s no advantage in that case to doing an FUE procedure.  And, FUE procedures cost three times as much.