Today’s hair transplant surgeries differ greatly than the previous decades. Patients no longer end up with results that appear as an artificial ‘doll like’ look as in the era micro-grafts and plugs thanks to the modern Follicular Unit Transplantation (FUT) methods. In the Follicular Unit Transplant, hair grafts are harvested with different techniques; Strip and FUE. The difference in these procedures is the manner in which the donor hair is harvested from the donor area of scalp as described below:
- Strip method in which a strip of scalp is removed from the back of the head and the surgical wound sutured or stapled. This strip then has the follicular grafts removed from it or “harvested” for donor hair to be transplanted. Strip method is the most often performed hair restoration procedure at this time.
- FUE (Follicular Unit Extraction) method is the other type of hair transplant procedure. FUE hair transplant involves the removal of the individual follicular units from the permanent zone one at a time. FUE does not require removal of a strip and these grafts are selectively taken throughout the permanent zone.
Both FUE and strip methods have their own advantages and disadvantages. If the patient selection is done right both procedures could be successful to achieve the patient’s goals. The chart below provides a comparison between FUE hair transplant surgery versus Strip hair transplant.
* FUE Research Committee of the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery has been established in 2012 to perform several studies to find the answer for these and many other questions. We will update this information when the results of those studies are available.
** Patients who are qualified for large number of grafts (gigasession) should have high density and good laxity of scalp.