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  • Hair Transplant Methods: What Is the FUE Technique the Best?
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Dr. Anastasios Vekris: The FUE technique is the most modern way for hair restoration nowadays. It was developed in 2002 and it's still developing as an answer to older techniques and the problems they can cause. Mainly, the significant post operative pain and scarring after a hair restoration procedure. So the answer was the development of a new technique called Follicular Unit Extration, FUE. Meaning, that we'll provoke hair restoration by extracting single hair follicles with special instruments, one by one, taking advantage of the whole donor area and not just a specific part of it.

With the older techniques, mainly punch grafting and strip technique, which is largely still used worldwide. It was that in order to extract the needed follicles for the hair restoration, they would take advantage of a small part of the donor area, by excising stripped skin containing the hair follicles. This would require stitching after the procedure and as you understand, it would produce no matter how good or experienced the doctor was, a large and sometimes painful scar in the back of our scalp. So, we had to develop a new technique, in order to harvest the hair follicles needed for hair restoration with a more, let's say, patient friendly and less invasive [inaudible 01:37]. That's why the [inaudible 01:39] was developed.

The main difference between the strip and FUE technique, is that FUE is much less invasive as a procedure, it does not have a painful post operative cause, it does not produce the permanent scar, which is the case with the strip technique, and most people it does not destroy the donor area. The donor area with the FUE can be used again and again for future sessions, if needed. While, in the strip technique, you have a permanent scar at the back of the donor area. It is very difficult to conduct a second or third procedure on top of the scar. This would destroy the donor area and would cause the existence of permanent scars all over the place.

You see, in FUE we extract single hair follicles with the use of a tiny instrument measuring 0.8, 0.9 millimeters in diameter under magnifying glasses, this is the only way to do it, and we extract from all over the donor area. This means that we take better advantage of our donor area, and we can still use it again in the future if needed.

FUE is not painful, and the reason is as I've described earlier, is that it is minimally invasive, we don't need to cut any skin or put any stitches, so there is no tension in the back of the scalp. And, believe it or not, most patients after FUE sessions, don't require a single pain killer. So, the post operative course is largely uneventful and painless.

Hair Transplant Methods: What Is the FUE Technique the Best?

Dr. Anastasios Vekris explains what Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) means and how it came to be the preferred method of hair transplantation.