What Is the Difference Between Motorized and Manual Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) Hair Transplant Punches?

This below response from our [tag]Hair Loss[/tag] Social Community and Discussion Forums was written by recommended hair restoration surgeon Dr. Ali Emre Karadeniz.

I would like to make a comment about a topic that I see is repeated in many online [tag]hair transplant[/tag] discussions.

I see that the preference of a “motorized or manual punch” in [tag]follicular unit extraction[/tag] ([tag]FUE[/tag]) [tag]hair transplantation[/tag] is mentioned as “motorized or manual work”. I don’t agree with the latter phrasing, as in reality both methods are manual. This means that in both techniques the [tag]hair restoration[/tag] surgeon uses his own hand movements to extract the [tag]follicular unit[/tag] grafts. The only difference is that the rotation force is created by the motor in motorized FUE. All other variables are controlled with the hand. In fact, as a result of not having to use hand force to rotate the punch, the surgeon using the motorized punch has the luxury to use his strength and fine tuning on other variables such as depth control, angle and speed, which is more difficult when using significant force to penetrate the skin.

Whether these gains I mentioned give an advantage to the motorized punch or not could be discussed for a long time, but my point is not to claim an advantage over one method. It is to clarify the misconception of the motorized punch FUE being perceived as motorized work, which should be used to define robotic FUE like [tag]ARTAS[/tag] instead.

Dr. Ali Emre Karadeniz

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David (TakingThePlunge)
Editorial Assistant and Forum Co-Moderator for the Hair Transplant Network, the Coalition Hair Loss Learning Center, and the Hair Loss Q & A Blog.
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