Question:
I am a 67-year-old male with no hair on top of my head. I would like a hair transplant. Which method, Follicular Unit Grafting or Follicular Unit Extraction, would you recommend for me?
Answer:
I would definitely recommend Follicular Unit Grafting (FUG) because the typical 67-year-old is not going to cut his hair extremely short or get a crew cut. The primary benefit of having a Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) procedure is that one can wear extremely short haircuts with no visible scar—provided the number of grafts is fairly limited. Because you’re at an age where most men let their hair grow a little longer, the donor scars of an FUG procedure wouldn’t be visible anyhow. And with today’s tricophitic closure, an incision suturing technique that allows the hair to grow through the scar, the hair can still be cut fairly short even with FUG.
With FUG, we can harvest many more grafts than with FUE and within two surgeries we can cover the entire top of the scalp. With FUE, you are looking at numerous surgeries since most offices can only do no more than 1,500 follicular unit extractions per surgery. Therefore, if you were to opt for FUE, you would require many surgical sessions to achieve the kind of coverage you’ll get with just one or two sessions of FUG.
Thank you for your inquiry. Please call us at 480.500.7443 or send us an EMAIL if you have any further questions.
— Dr. Shelly Friedman, DO
Board Certified Hair Restoration Surgeon
Arizona’s Most Trusted Hair Loss Doctor
Named Phoenix Magazine’s Top Doc – Hair Transplant Surgeon
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