FUE or Sapphire Hair Transplant - what is the difference?

Sapphire is actually a FUE technique. The only difference is that the blade used is obtained from the sapphire mine and the shape of the channels. Due to this shape, more density is obtained.

The sapphire method is a marketing tool used by clinics primarily in Turkey to upsell patients. This method uses implanters to drive the grafts in. This method requires cheap labor in order to be effective. One person or a group of people will need to load the implanters. If there is a team available to load the implanters, this method is a faster method. While increased speed can be achieved there is also a greater risk of error. There is a certain direction the grafts need to be placed. If a clinic is using this training wheels system, you are reliant on the tech's ability to load the implanter or have a physician who knows the proper growth angles and is knowledgeable on placement to manually adjust any improper placements. Improper placement will result in whacky growth angles. Poor placement may result in what I refer to as a ruffled cockatoo appearance. In addition, implanters or commonly known to cause popping. This means that when a new graft is implanted, the recipient graft next to it will pop out. The tech or physician will then have to know how to place the graft manually or risk popping the graft next to it. Lastly, any other claim on the method causing less scar, improving graft viability, accurate graft count, growth angle direction, etc is false.

The majority of hair restoration surgeons typically use knife blades and needles to create recipient sites before placing the grafts. Today, a variety of surgical instruments are available for incision creation, including custom-made or sapphire blades. All placing techniques implant hair follicles that have been harvested with the FUE method.

That is a great question. Hair grows in groups of one, two, three or even four hairs surrounded by supporting tissue. These groups of hair are known as follicular units.
FUE stands for Follicular Unit Excision, sometimes referred to as Follicular Unit Extraction. This name essentially describes the manner in which hair is removed i.e. "extracted" from the chosen donor area. In the FUE technique, specialist equipment is used to move one follicular unit at a time from the donor area. The follicular units are then often referred to as grafts of hair. Compare this to the older strip (FUT) technique in which a long strip of hairy scalp skin is removed. This strip of scalp skin, is then cut with the use of a microscope, into smaller groups to eventually create the individual groups of hairs i.e. hair grafts.
Now, each FUE graft will need to be implanted into the desired recipient area. A myriad of techniques exist to create new channels in the recipient area. Once hair grafts are placed in these channels, they need to establish their own blood supply to allow growth in their new location.
The way in which these new channels are created for grafts varies. Some hair surgeons prefer to use a special blade to create these channels whilst other surgeons prefer to use special needles. Many types of specialist blades exist, including Sapphire blades.
Some surgeons may even choose to use a combination of techniques or may use special needles that allow surgeons to simultaneously create a channel for the hair graft whilst inserting the hair graft at the same time.
Simply put, when it comes to how hair is removed from the donor area, there is absolutely no difference between an FUE technique or or a so called sapphire FUE techniqe. When it comes to how a channel is created to allow planting of any hair graft, the most important points include creating appropriate space to appropriately accommodate each excised graft taking into consideration, the correct direction, spread, density and nature of the skin in which the grafts are being moved to.
Channels can be safely created using one of the many types of blades or needles, depending on the familiarity and experience of your hair transplant surgeon.
In principle, once the channels are created, again the direction and spread really ought to be the same no matter the method the surgeon used. The results attained however are individual and depend on the skill of the team as well as how the grafts are treated during extraction, whilst awaiting implantation and during implantation. This is because factors like the hydration of the grafts, how well or how gently the grafts have been handled and how long they have been out of the body can affect graft survival and as such, can affect the final results.