A hair transplant is the only way to achieve lasting hair regrowth in areas of hair loss like receding hairline, thinning crown/vertex or other areas where hair follicles are severely depleted or gone. We offer surgical hair restoration to our patients in Virginia including McLean, Falls Church, Tysons, Arlington plus the Washington DC area. The procedures are performed by Dr. Vartan Mardirossian at Mardirossian Facial Aesthetics in Jupiter, FL.
When hair loss occurs it can make you look older, less vital and less healthy. For many, these issues impact us socially and professionally too. Restoring your hair can dramatically improve self-image and self-confidence by helping you look on the outside as good as you feel on the inside. Hair regrowth in the transplant zone means that you will be looking good and feeling great about your hair in no time! Obviously, hair cannot be created but only rearranged. With some techniques results may be visible earlier than with others. During the process of evaluation, Dr. Mardirossian will determine which technique will be the most appropriate for you, what to expect and how to take care of the donor and recipient site. Also, the placement and the shape of the hairline and the strategy for hair restoration in other areas will be discussed along with the size and the position of the donor site.
What is Follicular Unit – Strip Technique (FUT)?
This traditional technique involves taking a full thickness ellipse of skin and hair, and the small grafts are individually dissected using a microscope. Hair within the donor area (generally less than 1/2 inch wide and 5-10 inches long) is initially clipped to a length of about 2mm. Once the patient’s donor region is completely numb, a narrow “strip” of hair-bearing scalp is removed (any previous scar is also taken out at this stage). A single suture is used to repair the donor area and, with surrounding hair falling over the stitch, the area is immediately and effectively concealed. The wound is closed with stitches, and this leaves a linear scar, that can be very thin and confined to one area rather then diffusely distributed like the FUE. This technique has been successfully used by hair transplant surgeons for decades.
What is Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE)?
Hair grafting is the redistribution of permanent, living and growing hair follicles from the Safe Donor Area into a scalp area with hair loss. There are several advantages to the FUE technique over the strip technique:
- FUE is a harvesting technique which is less invasive than traditional strip or linear harvesting which requires no scalpel or stitches.
- Recovery from FUE procedures is more comfortable and less restrictive than with linear or strip harvesting. The vast majority of patients require no narcotic pain medications during their recovery and can return to their everyday activity in just several days.
- Additionally the risk of long term nerve damage, leading to chronic numbness and/or pain in the donor area, is significantly reduced with FUE vs the strip (FUT) procedure
- FUE provides an alternative to FUT when the scalp is too tight for a strip excision and enables a hair transplant surgeon to harvest finer hair from the nape of the neck to be used at the hairline or for eyebrows
- Last but not least, the FUE method does not result in a linear scar at the back of the head, that is a telltale sign of having had hair grafting, especially in patients who like to keep their hair short.
Like in any procedure, there are also some shortcomings that have to be considered before embarking into this technique:
- With FUE, the follicles are harvested from a much greater area of the donor zone compared to FUT, estimated to be eight times greater than that of traditional strip excision so requires patients to have hairs trimmed in a much larger donor area.
- Follicles harvested from borderline areas of the donor region may not be truly “permanent,” so that over time, the transplanted hair may be lost.
- In some cases, due to the scarring and distortion of the donor scalp from FUE it makes subsequent sessions more difficult, and grafts are more fragile and subject to trauma during placing, since in some cases they can lack the protective dermis and fat of microscopically dissected grafts.
The actual transplantation process is the same for both donor harvesting techniques, as the grafts are inserted using micro instruments into recipient sites, in the areas of hair loss.
If you have been considering effectively treating your hair loss, speak with us to discuss your options regarding surgical hair restoration today. Call us at 561-642-0900 for a consultation for hair restoration at our Jupiter, FL office.
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