How Does Follicular Unit Extraction Differ from a Regular Hair Transplant?

You can grow hair on most areas of your body, but there’s a strong psychological link to what it looks like on your head and face. Your hair is part of how others see you, so when it starts falling out, it can change how you see yourself. 

It’s a big reason why hair regrowth is such a popular industry, and why there are so many treatments that promise you the best results, even if they don’t work.

Hair transplants are an increasingly common way to get your hair back and have been around in some fashion for a long time, but there are a few different ways to go about it. 

For hair transplants and other restoration methods in Los Angeles and Orange County, California, you can get help from Drs. Michael and Alister Meshkin and our team at Meshkin Medical.

To help you learn which method may be best for you, let’s look at the transplant process and what separates the traditional method from follicular unit extraction (FUE).

The traditional transplant method

Broadly speaking, the traditional process of moving hair from one area to areas of hair loss (often using hair from the side or back of the head) is also known as follicular unit transplantation (FUT).

With it, we remove a strip from the side or back of your head for transplantation. The size of that strip depends on how many follicles are necessary to replace the bald areas, but it’s not larger than 1.5 centimeters. We harvest the hair from the strips and put them in place. 

There are two ways to graft the hair in place:

• Slit grafts — an incision into the area receiving hair where we place 4-10 hairs at a time
• Micrografts — needle holes into the target site where we place a hair or two at a time

It can take between 4-8 hours to perform this procedure, during which you’re awake under a local anesthetic.

How the FUE process differs

Follicular unit extraction (FUE) works a little differently in that it uses micro-punches into the scalp to gather hair rather than harvested strips. This allows us to gather single hair follicles and transplant them without leaving any sign of extraction.

The procedure requires multiple sessions lasting 2-4 hours or a lengthy session lasting as long as 10 hours. It also allows for a more natural finish for the new hair to grow. 

The overall idea is the same — removing hair from one place to put it in an area that needs it — but how we do that changes both the time it takes and the appearance of the results.

Both are viable options for getting your hair back, but to find the method that best suits your specific needs, make an appointment with us at Meshkin Medical today. We serve the Orange County and Los Angeles area through our offices in Newport Beach and Glendale, California.