Differences Between FUE vs FUT Hair Transplant

In the area of your scalp where you have thinning hair, small incisions will be made. Both techniques involve creating these incisions and placing the hair grafts into the incision. This is a careful process, as the surgeon is working hard to create a natural looking head of hair that blends perfectly with your existing hair pattern. There is a team working with the surgeon, and a micro-punch tool, fine forceps, and other implant tools are used to work through the procedure. All follicles must be carefully stored and handled so that they are not damaged before they are grafted to the area of need. 

There are areas of the scalp where it is known that hair from that area will grow forever. In both techniques, the source of the hair follicles comes from an area of hair that is genetically known to grow throughout your life.

In the FUE hair transplantation process, follicles are extracted from donor areas at the back of the head and on the sides. The surgeon will remove each graft of follicle using a small punch tool. Any scarring you might see is small and circular, only as large as a millimeter in diameter. Depending on how many hair follicles are removed, you could have thousands of scars left behind from the punch tool. Once these extracted follicles have healed, little white dots will remain behind. Each scar is responsible for one to four hairs.

During this process, areas where hair is thinning begin to receive the donated hair through tiny incisions. This whole process takes a long time, and you can have the process done a few times in a series. The best results occur when you have the process repeated a few times in a spam of two to three months. The recovery time after the procedure is minimal, and no stitches are required during the process. Your surgeon will handle the FUE process with local anesthesia on an outpatient basis.

There are both benefits and drawbacks to each type of hair transplant process. Both are going to give you the results you want to restore your hair, although FUT is a more painful process. You will talk over each option with your surgeon to determine which process is best for you.

• Minimal to no scarring post-recovery.
• The recovery period is short, up to a week long.
• It's a great process if you want to keep your hair short.

• It's a tedious process and takes a long time.
• FUE is more expensive than FUT.

• FUT is best for patients who need a lot of hair grafting done. If the goal is to restore the hair to maximum fullness and the area is large, FUT is the better choice.
• It's possible to hide the scar of FUT with hair that remains.
• The process is shorter than with FUE, with similar results.
• It's less expensive than FUE.
• The process is painless for both types of hair restoration.

• It takes longer than FUE to recover, up to two weeks.
• The linear scar is usually visible from the donor area, and you will need to keep it covered.

In general, the amount of scarring you have from your hair transplant process depends a lot on the skill and experience of your surgeon. If the FUE is done, your scarring appears as tiny white dots. If the FUT is done, you'll have a linear scar at the base and back of your skull. Scap micropigmentation helps to reduce or eliminate the appearance of your scar.

Scalp micropigementation is a cosmetic solution to scalp scarring that will work to cover up scars using a patterned tattoo process. It is similar to the process of microblading done for those looking to augment their existing eyebrows.

The Scalp Micropigmentation Process

You will have several sessions of micropigmentation to address areas where you have a scar from your FUT or FUE procedure. You should notice a difference in the area that is treated with micropigmentation after the first session. For the camouflage to work best, a second session is used to provide additional pigmentation to the scarred area. Any scar tissue that has been treated with micropigmentation will eventually match the skin that surrounds the area that isn't scarred.

No surgeon can avoid scarring from either hair translation process, and it is us to you to decide if scalp micropigmentation is right for you. Many patients choose to add in micropigmentation to cover their scars from a hair transplant procedure in order to maximize the look of their new head of hair.

Understand that hair transplantation is both a science and somewhat of an art. You want a surgeon who has the technical skills to deal with your hair loss, but also one that understands how to create a natural, full head of hair. Your surgeon will take a careful look at how each follicle is grafted, the density of existing hair, and the angle in which the hair is implanted. When your hair transplant is done well, you can have a great looking head of hair that manages male pattern baldness and other forms of hair loss.