Comparison of Postoperative Pain According to the Harvesting Method Used in Hair Restorative Surgery

May 2019 in “ Archives of Plastic Surgery ”

Yang Seok Kim, Young Cheon Na, Jae Hyun Park

hair transplantation surgery follicular unit transplantation FUT follicular unit extraction FUE postoperative pain scalp laxity donor harvest hair transplant

TLDR Follicular unit extraction (FUE) causes less postoperative pain than follicular unit transplantation (FUT), but pain from both methods decreases significantly within two days.

In 2019, three studies were conducted to compare postoperative pain in hair transplantation surgery based on the harvesting method used: follicular unit transplantation (FUT) or follicular unit extraction (FUE). The first study involved 120 patients, the second 241 patients, and the third did not specify the number of participants. All studies found that patients who underwent FUE experienced significantly less severe postoperative pain than those who underwent FUT. The average pain scores for the FUT group were higher than the FUE group in the first four days postoperatively in the third study. However, the pain in both groups subsided to less than 1.0 by the second day post-surgery. The studies concluded that while FUT surgery induced more pain, it was not excruciating and subsided within 2 days. They also found that postoperative pain was very subjective and not closely related to scalp laxity or the amount of donor harvest.

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