A Comparison Between FUT and FUE

Hair transplant is one of the many hair loss treatments to which patients refer with admiration and hope. While hairpieces and medicines give you temporary hair, hair transplant regrows your hair permanently and no one could come to know your hair loss problem.

Hair restoration is an easy and simple procedure. Even a layman can understand the procedure. It involves two steps; taking out hair follicles and planting them. A surgeon can use FUT or FUE to take out hair follicles.

FUT: in follicular unit transplantation or strip harvesting surgeon takes out a strip of scalp tissue from the back of the scalp and extracts hair grafts from this strip. This method leaves a linear scar on the back of the head which people hide with their hairstyle or with FUE hair transplant on that scar.

FUE: in follicular unit extraction surgeon extracts individual hair follicles from the back and sides of the head. These hair grafts may contain 1-4 hair strands.

Extracted hair grafts are planted in the bald or thinning area. Once they settle down and develop blood supply in the recipient site they start developing hair. You can see new hair appearing within two to three months after hair restoration. However, it takes six months for results to become apparent.

FUT vs. FUE

	FUT	FUE
Need of stitches	Yes	No
Scar	Linear scar visible with a buzz cut	Small pinprick scars not visible even with a buzz cut
Cost	Low	High
Donor area complications	Pain, stretched feeling and infection	Practically no complications
Recovery period	Long	Very small
Hair styling limitations	Long hair becomes a must to hide scar	Can wear a short hair style.
Post-operative pain and bleeding from donor area	Yes	No
Numbness	May persist lifelong if any incision has made any damage to nerves	No numbness
Operative time	Less	More
Number of grafts that can be transferred in one day	Large	Small
Possibility of graft damage	Low	High
In case of white hair in donor area	Can damage a large number of hair follicles	Does not do any damage to hair follicles due to the color of hair
Can be performed for patients with poor donor area	No	Yes
Can be performed for patients with tight scalps	No	Yes

So, FUT is better or FUE

No one can make a generalized statement regarding the two methods because in actual both the methods have some pros and cons which are also visible from their comparison. There are some patients who are ideal candidates for FUT but not for FUE and vice versa.

Most often, FUT is used when you

· have good hair supply at the back of the scalp or

· want to have a hair transplant at a lesser cost

FUE hair transplant is preferred when you

· want to avoid linear scarring on scalp or

· want to avoid long recovery period and pain or

· do not have sufficient skin laxity for the excision of a strip or

· have poor quality donor hair follicles on the back of the scalp

· want to regrow hair on an area other than scalp like face etc or

· want to wear short hair styles after surgery

FUT and FUE are two amazing methods that are used for donor hair harvesting in a hair transplant. Your surgeon is the right person who decides which method is more suitable for you.