FUE hair transplants (follicular unit extraction) have rapidly replaced the older FUT strip method. For men, the advanced technique of single hair graft removal is typically the preferred choice. At a slightly higher price point, the meticulous procedure results in very minimal scarring (if any) and rapid recovery times. Lastly, people can transfer living hair follicles from a dense area of growth to the thinner scalp zones without leaving tell-tale signs like a long scar at the back of the head. The FUT hair transplant method requires the excision of a strip of scalp that is then dissected under a microscope to create individual grafts.

Because of the characteristic pattern of male hair loss, men often have significant, dense, and DHT-resistant hair follicles at the back and sides of the head. This abundance of donor hairs placed closely together makes for an excellent FUE harvest site because a high number of grafts can be extracted without leaving visible spaces.

The situation is a little different for females, which is why you may read that they don’t make good transplant candidates. However, that’s not the whole story. Sometimes, FUE is not the best choice for a female patient. Because her thinning will tend to be spread out evenly over the entire head, there isn’t a dense hair growth region to extract sufficient hairs from. Any area where you remove more than 500 grafts may begin to show what’s known as donor depletion.

Two contemporary solutions that work well for women

1. A slow, meticulous approach to FUE harvesting can be done. The hair transplant team will take extra care to diffuse the graft extractions artfully throughout the scalp so as to leave no apparent depletion. This is a time-consuming technique, and the volume of grafts to transfer will remain relatively low. Some improved density, especially at the natural hair part, can be achieved to help create the illusion of thicker hair.
2. The other method that works well for women is the traditional FUT option. Females who wear their hair long can have the strip of scalp removed to create grafts and not leave any area of the head depleted. She’ll acquire a long, thin scar, but this is not easy to see unless one is very close and looking for it. A higher number of grafts can be created this way, seemingly adding to the number of hairs on her head.

Myth #2. Hair transplants are not permanent

A known term in the hair restoration industry is “donor dominance”. Coined in the 1950s, it describes the ability of transplanted hairs to live and thrive in their new location. For the vast majority of patients, especially males, the hairs they have transferred to the top of the head and hairline will stay there and continue to grow throughout the natural lifetime of a follicle. The reason for this is that familiar horseshoe pattern of balding that men are known to have. Even when the hair at the crown has completely disappeared, many men will keep significant hair density at the back and sides, forming a horseshoe shape or an “M” shape. These hairs are believed to be resistant to DHT, the hormone responsible for androgenic alopecia. They carry that resilient character with them when they’re moved to another location.

A few critical factors that your surgeon will review with you include your family history of hair loss. Depending on what your grandparents’ and parents’ baldness looks like, you can get an idea of what to expect in your future. The rate of your balding is a factor too. Most surgeons will advise you to wait until your progression has slowed down somewhat and become predictable. When young men begin to lose hair, there is often no way of knowing how much or how fast it will fall out.

If a technician performing your hair transplant doesn’t have in-depth knowledge of the condition and progression, they may bring the hairline too far forward or make it too dense to achieve long-term natural results.

While the grafted hairs stay firmly in place, native hair at the top of the head can continue to shed. You could develop spaces behind your new hairline. The apparent incongruous effect may send you back to undergo another “fill-in” procedure. It’s always a possibility that you’ll require maintenance transplantation a decade or so down the road, but selecting a skilled and knowledgeable hair transplant surgeon will mean receiving a result that wears well and has practical as well as aesthetic longevity.

Myth #3: The results of hair restoration are instant

Your hairs grow in follicles that are individual units functioning in natural cycles. Toronto hair transplant methods like FUE with NeoGraft technology remove these follicles in groups of 1 to 4 hairs. This isn’t just a “hair” transplant. It is technically the transplant of living tissue, with each follicular unit functioning like a little biological machine that manufactures hair.

When the follicle has been gently grafted into its new home, the body will supply follicular tissue with blood and healing factors to lock it in place and keep it growing. Unfortunately, the process can come as a bit of a shock to hair follicles, and the hairs that are in place at the time of transfer will often fall out a couple of weeks later. Don’t worry! This “shock loss” is temporary. It’s the health of viable follicles that matters the most. They will begin growing their new replacement hairs within 3 to 4 months. What happened to “1-week recovery”, you ask?

The hair transplant timeline for recovery can be cited as “1-week” sometimes, and this leads to understandable confusion.