The absolute best advancement in hair implant surgery has been the follicular unit extraction method which allows for direct hair inplants instead of the old two step process. It uses to be common when a person was having hair transplants that a strip of scalp would be removed from an area that still had good hair growth. For men, this was usually the posterior area of the head. The symptoms of male pattern baldness generally give localized hair loss at the hair line, crown or vertex of the head, and the top area between these two. This means there is usually still good hair growth at the back of the head and on the side. Most commonly the back of the head was used for a donor area because it was so easy to cover up any scarring that was a result of the removal of the donor strip.
The process originally involved removing plugs or strips of scalp from this donor area and then implanting them into balding part of the scalp. As you can imagine this did not give a very natural look. In fact, most people claimed the results were worse looking than if the man would have just stayed bald. Think of a cheap doll and how the hair sticks up in patches from the scalp and you will get an idea of how it looked.
The next evolution of the hair implants procedure still involved removing a strip of scalp but now there was an added step. A team of medical assistants would take the strips and remove the individual follicular units along with the associated supportive structure including the adventitial sheath, the adjoining sebaceous glands and of course the necessary nervous system connections and blood supply tissues. By removing this individual follicular units the team was able to keep the follicles as physiological units that were self contained.
The next step was to insert these follicular units into the balding area of the scalp. Of course, this required an incision that was large enough to lay the entire roots of the hair out in the necessary splayed positions. So although this gave better results there still was a time factor and pain factor that was less than satisfactory. This also tended to increase the hair implants surgery costs because it took a lot of time for the assistants to individual remove, clean, and prepared each follicular unit under microscopic magnification. There was a need for reducing both the disruption of the scalp and the time necessary for [hair implants] in order to make the procedure more palatable to more people.
This is where the direct hair inplantation method of follicular unit extraction came in. The hair follicles and all associated support structures are still removed as a unit but now it is done directly from the scalp with a special medical instrument that makes a small hole less than one millimeter across. This allows the donor area to completely heal up within 2-4 days, and the would only looks like a pinprick anyway, instead of the week to two weeks required before. There also is much less chance of infection with the hair removed directly instead of an entire strip of scalp being incised from the donor area.
It is also much easier to place the hair transplant units closer together because the insertion area is much smaller due to the makeup of the extraction and insertion tool. This means the doctor can place the hair much closer together to better simulate natural hair growth. This gives a very natural look that is almost impossible to spot except under very close observation.
Direct hair implantation is obviously the best choice for someone who desires to have hair growing in the scalp once again. Don’t waste any more of your money on remedies to grow hair that aren’t going to do anything other than remove money from your pocket. Hair inplants are the most highly recommended procedure for a baldness treatment because they actually deal with the root problem. The hair follicles have stopped production of keratin the hair shaft material so it is necessary to replace them with follicles that are actually producing.
I admire you for looking into this process and recommend you continue to pursue your full head of hair because you deserve it.