State of the Art Hair Restoration
We encourage you to schedule your free, confidential consultation today. Meet with a medical professional at our center in Jupiter Beach, Florida. There is no charge or obligation! Your consultant will provide information regarding causes of baldness and options tailored to your specific situation and lifestyle.
Each of our procedures is individually designed for your specific needs and lifestyle and budget. Whether you are just starting to experience baldness or are in the most advanced stages, we can help with our full spectrum of professional treatment options.
At Palm Beaches Center for Hair Restoration, we constantly strive to give you the freedom to choose what the absolute best solution for you. We provide our clients with personalized custom solutions that are so incredibly natural that there is simply no reason to suffer any longer.
Follicular Unit Transplantation
Follicular Unit Transplantation (FUT) is a procedure where hair is removed in a strip from the back of the scalp (donor area), micro-dissected in a laboratory using specialized stereomicroscopes, and the individual hair units are placed into sites in the front of the scalp (recipient area). In nature, human scalp hairs exist in groups of 1, 2, 3, or 4 hairs. Single hair units are used to recreate the fine detail of the “hair line” and 3- or 4-hair units are used behind the hair line to increase the apparent density of the recipient area. In this procedure, the patient’s posterior scalp is anesthetized. A strip of hair-bearing skin about 1 cm in width is removed surgically with a small scalpel. The length of the strip is directly related to the number of hairs needed and can be adjusted to fit the need of the patient. After removal, the strip is immediately placed in 0.9% saline solution and taken to the lab.
The wound edges are pulled together and stitched in a fine line. While the hair units are being micro-dissected in the lab by a team of experienced technicians, the physician creates small holes called “recipient sites” in the frontal scalp. Recipient sites are tiny holes or slits made by the surgeon in which the follicular unit grafts are placed. The orientation of the slits is made to match the way a patient’s hair grows naturally. Then the graft hairs are transplanted into the recipient sites. The transfer of graft hairs to the recipient sites is slow and tedious, but very important for the outcome of the procedure.
The main advantages of FUT or “strip” procedures are that it is relatively fast and less expensive. The disadvantages are that there will be a faint scar line present in the posterior scalp which will be invisible unless the patient shaved their head completely bald.
Follicular Unit Extraction
Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) is a minimally invasive hair transplantation technique in which follicular unit grafts are individually removed from the patient’s donor area and then individually transplanted to the recipient area. Essentially, the only difference between FUE and FUT strip procedure is the way that the donor hairs are harvested. In FUE, the entire donor area is shaved and using a small punch tool or automated punch device, individual hair units are removed from the donor area. Instead of removing a strip of hair bearing skin and leaving a wound that requires stitches, FUE leaves numerous very small 1 mm holes in the scalp. These very small holes close by themselves over about 3 days and are virtually invisible to the eye after 5-7 days.
In contrast to an FUT strip procedure, there is no stitching or scar line in an FUE procedure. The main advantages with FUE are no scar. The main disadvantages are that generally the scalp needs to be shaved to enable removal of individual hair units. FUE takes longer and is generally more expensive than an FUT strip procedure.
Historically, the time needed to harvest individual grafts has been the rate-limiting step for FUE procedures.
Understanding Alopecias
The term alopecia means hair loss. It is derived from the Greek word alopekia, meaning fox mange. In order to understand hair loss syndromes, one must first understand that hair cycles through a growth phase called anagen, an involuting or regressing phase called catagen, a resting or quiescent phase referred to as telogen, and a shedding or exogen phase. In a normal scalp, 90-95% of the hair follicles will be in the anagen phase and 5-10% will be in the telogen phase and an average of 50-100 hairs will be shed per day.
The amount of time spent in the growth or anagen part of the hair cycle determines the ultimate length of the hair. Consequently, eyebrow hairs have a much shorter cycle of around 4 months when compared to scalp hairs which complete a cycle in 3-4 years. Hair grows 0.3 mm per day or about 1 mm per month.
