Follicular Unit Extraction - FUE

Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) is the method of obtaining hair grafts directly and individually from the patient donor area. This process of collecting hair units was first introduced by Dr. Woods in Australia. It was further standardized by other hair transplant doctors such as Dr. Rassman and Dr. Bernstein in 2002.

Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) is also called Follicular Isolation Technique (FIT). The advantage of FUE is that patients will not have a linear scar on the back of their head.

The disadvantage of FUE is that a patient’s hair in donor area needs to be clipped very short prior to the procedure. The spots where hair units are removed appear as small red dots for a few days, but generally heal fast within the first week after surgery. The other disadvantage of hair transplant surgery using FUE technique is that some patients may not be good candidates for this method; therefore, testing needs to be done prior to hair transplant procedure.

In FUE or FIT, we do not remove the strip of skin from the donor area. Patients will not have donor complications seen with the strip technique such as discomfort in donor area after surgery, the need for staple or suture removal and presence of linear scar.



FUE Recepient and donor area, immediately after a FUE hair transplant with 1500 grafts.

FUE is the procedure of choice for people who want style their hair short in the back. It is also first choice for those who have previous healing problems with any scalp procedure. Not every patient is a good candidate for FUE procedure. We strongly advise testing every patients before planning to do an FUE procedure. This is done by using a FOX test.

FUE - 11 days after surgery, Donor area eleven days after a FUE hair transplant surgery. There is no obvious sign of hair transplant surgery and scars are not detactable.

What is FOX test?

Using different FUE techniques, we perform a few biopsies under local anesthesia and try to extract few follicular units with special biopsy devices. We examin the harvested grafts microscopically to make sure they are intact before proceding with a larger FUE or FIT session. The text is positive if we can remove intact follicular units without transecting them.