Some People Look For a Follicular Unit Extraction Expert, Others for a Hair Loss Doc
Not everyone in the Bay Area speaks in highly educated terms. Not everyone searches for “Follicular Unit Extraction specialist”. Some are a little, well, folksy. So, they look for a “doc” that deals with “hair loss.” Pretty much the same thing really.
However, some people looking for a hair loss doctor in the Bay Area will find a hair transplant surgeon (another term!) who transplants hair by hand. Others will find one who uses a robot instead. Yes, today you can have a hair transplant carried out by a robot instead of manually!
Now, a hair transplant that is carried out manually is an FUT surgery. That is Follicular Unit Transplant. The one carried out by a robot is an FUE surgery – Follicular Unit Extraction. Not every hair loss doctor in the Bay Area has a robot and, therefore, cannot carry out an FUE transplant, but only an FUT transplant.
When a hair loss doctor in the Bay Area carries out an FUT transplant he takes a strip of hair from the back of the head and divides it up into units of between one and four hair follicles. Each of these is then transplanted manually into the recipient site. Unfortunately, this leaves a scar on the back of the head where the strip of hair was removed. This is not an issue if you wear your hair long, but if you want to cut it short, the scar will be visible.
A FUE Transplant Is Different
An FUE transplant is different because the robot itself removes tiny follicular units of between one and four hairs and transplants those individually. The robot’s algorithm lets it decide from where to remove each hair follicular unit which means that it selects them from around the scalp. Each one that is removed leaves no visible scarring whatsoever, so you can wear your hair in any way that you wish.
Furthermore, the ARTAS robot, as it is called, transplants each hair follicle so that the hairs match exactly the direction, angle, and elevation of any existing hairs in the recipient site, thus providing a totally natural appearance.
As we said, not every hair loss doctor in the Bay Area has one of these intelligent pieces of equipment, but it is available at Silicon Valley Hair Institute in Foster City. The reason that it is available here is that our director, Dr. Miguel Canales, is the man who led the team at Restoration Robotics that invented the ARTAS robot.
Dr Canales is happy to provide all patients with a completely free consultation when he can answer all your questions. Click on the Contact Us link at the top of the page to book yours.
