The Evolution of Natural-Looking Hair Transplants: A Deep Dive into Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE)
Let’s examine follicular unit extraction (FUE) and its role in hair transplantation. As many of you may know, hair transplantation has advanced significantly over the last several decades, and techniques have improved significantly.
Gone are the days of macro transplants which were those unnatural “pluggy” transplants that lined up multiple hairs at once, creating an artificial look. Today, we focus on follicular unit extraction (FUE hair transplants) where we extract individual follicular units from the scalp.
If you were to magnify a person’s scalp under a microscope, you would see that there are tiny openings in the head and each of those holes contain one to four hairs. So what we do is we carefully take these exact follicular units and transplant them to thinning areas, creating a very natural appearance. When done meticulously, FUE can be nearly undetectable, making it extremely challenging to recognize someone who has had it done. It’s been known to be incredibly effective.
At the Wise Institute for Hair Restoration, we have upgraded our tool for follicular unit extraction and use an exceptional device because the size of the extraction punch is very critically important. While many facilities use larger punches (up to 1.4 mm), we use much smaller ones, just 0.5 to 0.6 mm, almost the diameter of a needle. This results in virtually no scarring on the back of the head, so even with short haircuts, it’s nearly impossible to detect if someone has had a hair transplant.
Also at our facility, we almost universally use platelet rich plasma or PRP as part of the transplant process. Many of you know what platelet rich plasma is but for those of you that don’t, we take a small blood sample, we spin it in a special machine that extracts all the platelets from the blood, and it contains growth factors that promote healing. We also use it to nourish the scalp and fertilize the head before transplanting grafts.
PRP acts as a holding or bathing solution for the grafts themselves to give them nourishment while they’re outside the body. In addition, we always store the grafts during transplantation in something called hypothermosol, which is a special holding solution that’s similar in composition to what they use to store organ transplants. This ensures maximum viability out of our grafts and makes them nice and strong when we’re ready to implant them into the scalp. Overall, FUE has come a long way, and we’re thrilled to offer this advanced technique at our facility.