Be Careful of Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) Internet Hype

This insightful article was written by  Dr. Wiliam Rassman  of Los Angeles, CA who is a member of the Coalition of Independent Hair Restoration Physicians.

I wanted to call to the attention of the Hair Transplant Network  a recent announcement relating to Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE). As the ‘inventor’ of the procedure who published the first authoritative article in the Journal of Dermatologic Surgery (2002), I have taken a keen interest in the progress of the procedure throughout the world. Much of what I have been observing has been disturbing. Too many hair loss doctors with no experience whatsoever have entered the field with heavy marketing programs that offer Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) as the sole harvesting technique. My experience, however, has shown that a fair number of patients are not good candidates for this procedure and damage to the harvested grafts can be substantial if these patients get an FUE procedure.

I had the opportunity to view a well known hair restoration doctor perform approximately 20 FUE grafts under my observation while he was telling me that he had mastered the procedure’s yield. Right under my eye, the grafts suffered from substantial transection/amputation and his yield was substantially suboptimal. That doctor is prominently offering FUE today and has been offering it for some time.

The surgeon’s technical skills take years to acquire, and although there are now some very fine doctors who have mastered the technique, I believe that they are in the minority. It became apparent to me that many patients want to have FUE because it is minimally invasive, virtually painless during the post-operative period, the patient can return to full activities in a week (including all types of exercises), and has no linear scarring. But the problem for the patient is in selecting a hair transplant doctor where the FUE technique does not produce a ‘follicular holocaust’ with substantial loss of donor hair in the FUE grafting procedure. This insight seems to be hidden from most patients because patients believe in the marketing hype in the internet. In our FUE ² writing we have defined a way for patient to examine the various doctors offering this procedure, what questions to ask, what things to look for. There is no comparable site to the Hair Transplant Network that has screened doctors for refined work in FUE so the consumer must arm himself with the knowledge and skills to make the proper judgments themselves. Hopefully, our writings will appropriately arm the readers interested in this technique. If you develop many questions, please direct them to http://www.baldingblog.com.

Read more about Dr. Rassman’s FUE ²  technique.

Dr. Bill Rassman

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Bill
Associate Publisher

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