Follicular Unit Excision: A Hair Transplant Technique

    April 2020 in “ Facial Plastic Surgery Clinics of North America ”
    Gorana Kuka Epstein, John H. Epstein, Jelena Nikolić
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    TLDR Follicular Unit Excision (FUE) is a popular, safe hair transplant method that avoids scars and has a quick recovery, but requires precise surgical skill.
    Follicular Unit Excision (FUE) is a hair transplant technique that has gained popularity over the past 15 years due to its efficacy and safety in harvesting grafts with a low complication rate. The technique involves the individual extraction of follicular units from the donor area using a small punch, which has evolved from larger sizes used in the past to the current 0.7 to 1.0 mm diameter. FUE has become more favored than Follicular Unit Transplantation (FUT) because it avoids a linear donor site scar and allows for easier recovery. Despite its advantages, FUE is considered surgically challenging due to the precision required to minimize transection of follicular units and to promote good healing of the donor area. The first FUE article was published in 2002, and since then, advancements in technology and devices, along with increasing patient demand, have led to more physicians adopting this method, resulting in faster procedures and better quality grafts. Initially, a manual punch was used for extraction, but this method was slow and caused greater tissue trauma, leading to the development of various devices that can be manual, motorized, automated, or robotic, giving surgeons options to choose the best-suited tool for their technique and skills.
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