Any incision that cuts through the skin beyond a superficial depth, either by machine or by hand, causes a scar to form. There is no such thing as “scarless surgery” in hair transplants. There is also no machine capable of performing all aspects of hair restoration surgery. There is only technology that can assist an expertly trained surgeon performing hair restoration surgery.
We constantly hear of cases where hair transplant surgery patients were operated on and harmed by non-surgeons wearing medical scrubs. Do not let yourself be lured by false and exaggerated hair transplant advertising claims, such as “scarless surgery” or that hair restoration surgery can be completely performed by a machine.
I have been successfully performing natural-looking hair transplants since 1994, both the FUT strip excision technique and the FUE follicular unit extraction punch technique. It is vitally important that every patient is fully informed of the pros and cons of the different techniques (which affect hair survival, donor bank, scars, etc.) in order for him/her to make an educated decision.
The FUT strip excision technique removes hair from the sides and the back of the scalp in order to successfully transplant it to the balding area. The benefit of the FUT strip excision technique is that it minimizes the surface area of donor tissue being exposed to dissection, minimizes the amount of hair being transected, which in turn maximizes the survival of the transplanted grafts. This technique should leave a very fine line of a scar in the donor area that even a short haircut should easily hide.
The nature of the scar also depends upon the surgical technique of the physician. The wider the strip taken, the more likely there will be tension on the suture line, creating a spread scar. Many of the mega-session clinics remove very wide strips, which create the “bad donor scars” easily seen. The width of the donor strip should be very thin in order to create a fine line of a scar, barely visible to the eye.
Follicular unit extraction (FUE) punches out a 1mm plug, and then the hole in the donor area heals on its own. The advantage of the FUE punch technique over the strip excision technique is that the patient is not left with a fine linear scar in the donor area. The disadvantage of the FUE technique is that it drastically increases the surface area of donor hair being exposed to a blind excision technique, which leads to increased damage to the good hair follicles and ultimately wastes the very limited donor hair supply. This technique permanently removes the good genetic hair and replaces it with very tiny circular scars.
As a hair transplant surgery expert, I should do everything in my power to use only those techniques & technologies that ensure the highest percentage of hair grafts survive & grow on a patient with limited hair donor supply, and with the best natural-looking results.
