Dr. Dan McGrath

Post FUE picture showing that FUE's are not necessarily "scarless" and that there can be considerable disruption to the donor area growth pattern.

There have been many wonderful innovations in the field of hair transplantation in the past twenty years, and some not so wonderful.

In recent years there has been a tremendous amount of buzz in the hair transplant industry about a procedure known as Follicular Unit Extraction. Commonly referred to as FUE, this is the process of removal of the donor hair that is to be used for the transplant process, literally one graft at a time. The process has gained popularity for several reasons, not the least being the fear that many patients have of the strip excision for harvesting donor hair. Despite the fact that strip excision is the gold standard for the procedure many patients are fearful of potential scarring.

It is very important for the purpose of this article to understand exactly what the difference is between the two procedures. With any hair transplant procedure you must harvest hair from the donor area in the back of the scalp. How you harvest this hair is the only difference between an FUE vs Strip Excision procedure. The rest of the transplant process is exactly the same. In the FUE process a very specialized tool is used to extract the grafts and the tool that is used is completely up to the surgeon and his or her personal preference. There are several devises on the market that work very well, I for one use a device called the Safescribe Motorized FUE Extractor.

Now why does any of this matter? Why am I going on about boring details of types of surgical instruments and different types of harvest methods for hair transplantation?

Well enter Neograft which is a machine that is used to perform the extraction process for an FUE procedure, but surprise, surprise if you were to perform an internet search on Neograft you would be led to believe that it is a evolutionary new automated procedure for hair transplant surgery. Read the Story

How successful are hair transplants in women? – Wanda
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In short the answer is Very successful female hair transplantation presents its own set of distinct challenges and the surgeon needs to be aware of the specific differences in the transplantation process between men and women, but there is no reason to believe that hair transplantation is less successful in women vs men.
The main challenge we face in dealing with the female patient is making sure we have the right diagnosis prior to moving forward with a surgical solution.

The most common cause of hair loss in women is still androgenetic alopecia or in women referred to as female pattern hair loss but there are many more potential problems that can cause hair loss or thinning in our female patients. As a rule a number of different medical problems should be ruled out first prior to resorting to a surgical solution. The real issue in creating a nice result in my female patients is to have a realistic approach to what their goals are. Read the Story

I am a female age 64 and had an 800 graft hair replacement done about 5 years ago. Since the thinning on the front and crown has become very noticeable, I wonder if there is any way to tell if these grafts actually worked? I really don’t see any difference. I have received HRT since I was 26 and it had both male and female hormones in the pill. I wrote and asked the drug maker if their pill could cause hair loss and they assured me that it could not. I now find out that it can and does along with facial hair. Would minoxidil work for me or not? And if so, what is the difference between the generic and the brand name if any. Thank you for any information that you can give me.
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Thank you for your question and I will do my best to give you the best information that I can to assist you. I am going to assume that the 800 grafts you had done five years ago were placed in the front and the crown as these are the areas that you are concerned about. Read the Story