HAIR TRANSPLANT FORUM

Below is a patient who had 4 follicular unit transplant (strip) sessions performed before coming to our clinic in Jan 08'. The patients goals went from totally restoring the hair loss via strip to repairing strip scarring and thicken the crown via CIT.

When a patient has a strip performed, the overall surface area of the donor area is decreased. The advantage to strip method is that you will receive more individual hairs in a session. With strip, grafts are often times fractionated during the procedure. This means that you may end up paying the FUE price per graft in the end. A disadvantage with strip is the inability to wear a short hair style.

FUE maximizes the entire donor area for harvesting, allows you to wear a short hair style, but initially costs more per graft at most clinics. The harvested grafts are extracted based on the demand of the recipient area and placed intact. Also remember that CIT, our form of FUE, is a harvesting technology whereby follicular groups can be “cherry-picked” by the physician to yield consistent quality results.

Many individuals can benefit from a combination of FUE & FUT if the advantages and disadvantages of each procedure are considered beforehand. There is no such thing as a guarantee of a totally scarless hair transplant procedure. Some patients heal better than others. The benefits of each procedure must be weighed in consideration of specific goals in hair restoration.

I still can see myself doing a strip even if it could be grafted later. I'm not 70 just yet. You would think that this guy would have stopped strip long ago with this previous result. It is horrible. CIT/FUE has my vote!