In the early 1900s hair loss became a prominent enough problem for someone to develop a technology to combat the condition. The dawn of hair restoration developed in Japan during this time, and has continued to evolve ever since. We have seen scalp reduction, flap surgery, and in the 1950s we saw the first of hair transplantation with punch grafting. Hair transplantation itself has come a long way; from the punch graft, to strip surgery, and now, to basic follicular unit extraction (FUE).

The follicular unit extraction technique first came about in the 1980s, also in Japan. It was an improvement of the punch grafting method, which used 4mm punch grafts for hair transplant. The result with punch graft hair transplantation was always unnatural and pluggy hair, with 4mm round bald scars in the donor area (generally the back of the head). To vastly improve results, they refined the size of the grafting area, making it much smaller and more precise. But what is basic follicular unit extraction, really?

How Basic Follicular Unit Extraction Is Done

Basic Follicular unit extraction ( FUE )is the removal of hairs from the middle of the back and sides of the head donor area in follicular units—natural groups of one to four hairs. This is not to be confused with Advanced Follicular unit extraction using UGraft which enables the use of FUE by specialized tools to efficiently and consistently extract body hair, nape hair and kinky or tightly curled afro-american hair. Basic FUE is incapable of these fits

Basic follicular unit extraction requires a higher skill set than that required for follicualr unit strip surgery. It more laborious, and detailed. FUE hair transplant surgeons generally use a manual handheld device resembling a pen to excise the follicular units one by one. Of late, there have been campaigns for powered basic follicular unit extraction machines, such as the NeoGraft and Artas .

Due to technical limitations, it is difficult for such systems to address finer details needed for a highly successful outcome.

This is why the use of these automated tools is strongly opposed by advanced FUE hair transplant surgeons.

The Advantages of Basic Follicular Unit Extraction Over Strip Surgery

On the matter of hair transplantation, the superior between FUE and strip surgery is a popular debate. There are many reasons one researching hair transplantation will find that follicular unit extraction is the better choice. Some of those reasons include:

• Follicular unit extraction avoids leaving an embarrassing linear scar.
• The tiny, individual incisions made during follicular unit extraction result in cosmetically insignificant scarring.
• Follicular unit extraction is a less invasive hair transplant procedure, thus the recovery time is quicker.
• Follicular unit extraction makes it possible to extract specifically chosen hairs, such as those from the nape of the neck or behind the ears, to design a most natural-looking hairline.
• Follicular unit extraction widens the pool of donor hair by enabling body hair transplantation (BHT).
• Those who were once considered poor hair transplant candidates due to a depleted donor pool are now in the running due to BHT.