Are ARTAS hair transplants painful?

The only discomfort associated with an ARTAS robotic procedure is with the initial anesthesia, which is performed using a tiny needle to numb the nerves leading up from your neck to the scalp.  The numbness is deep once attained, but the nerve blocking drugs (like lidocaine, which is very commonly used) cause a chemical reaction in your skin when administered.  They cause the nerves of pain to be stimulated, causing some pain, and then the nerve goes numb.  There is a very steep exponential curve between the rate of injection and the pain experienced; for example, if the physician (or, as is sadly often the case, some technician) injects twice as fast, it's not twice as painful, it's about 40 times as painful.As a result, in clinics where multiple procedures are performed by one physician per day, and there is a need to be fast, then the discomfort can tend to be higher.  In clinics where one procedure per day is performed by the surgeon, such as at our center, the is no rush to complete the surgery, and the entire procedure is next-to-painless.  I have had dozens and dozens of patients tell me it's not even as intense as having your teeth cleaned by a dental hygienist.  My patient last Friday told me that the entire experiences "hurt less than a haircut."  I asked him to elaborate, because as much of a compliment as that was, I told him I didn't think that was possible.  He was insistent, and said, "you know when they shave under your chin there?  That hurts more than this procedure." 

The ARTAS robotic hair restoration procedure utilizes a robot to extract individual hair follicles that are used for the transplant.  Prior to the actual procedure the entire scalp is anesthetized with an injection of a local anesthetic.  Therefore the harvesting of the follicles by the robot is painless.  When a local anesthetic is administered there is a "burning" sensation associated with it.  This can be minimized with the use of mechanical vibration and by injecting the anesthetic slowly.  The quicker it is injected, the more painful it is.  
A strip procedure (FUT) obtains the hairs for the transplant by removing a strip of skin/hair from the back of the scalp.  The area is then sewn back together with stitches.  Prior to this the area is also anesthetized with a local anesthetic and will therefore not hurt.  The only discomfort from either procedure is the actual injection of the anesthetic.
Afterwards, the strip procedure tends to have more discomfort associated with it than the ARTAS robotic procedure.  With the strip procedure there is a linear incision which has to heal.  With the ARTAS procedure there is no incision to heal, just the tiny defects made by the robot when the follicles are removed.  These heal on their own and tend to be pretty painless.

Hello, ARTAS hair transplants are not painful because local anesthesia is injected into the donor area. It should be the equivalent of going to the dentist office for a procedure. Best, Anil Shaw