How Did You Get The Idea For Follicular Unit Transplantation?

The idea for Follicular Unit Transplantation came rather suddenly. I had been looking through a densitometer that shows these hairs that grow in groups of one to four. We were using the densitometer to actually measure the hair density, but no one was actually thinking of the groups in terms of the unit of a transplant. It was just basically measuring the amount of hair and then cutting grafts into very small parts -- we were calling them micrografts at that time -- but no one thought of actually using these naturally-occurring groupings of one to four hairs to be the basic element of the transplant. What Follicular Unit Transplantation does is instead of treating the scalp as a mass of skin and hair, it looks at it anatomically in terms of these naturally-occurring groups where each group would be a graft. So, a one-hair follicular unit would be used to design the hairline, because naturally, the hairline is composed of one-hair grafts. Two's behind that, you get the soft feathering zone. You use the larger three- and four-hair grafts in the central part of the scalp, called the forelock area, to give it more density.

• View before and after photos of our hair transplant patients
• Read about Follicular Unit Transplantation

• What is Follicular Unit Excision?
• Simultaneous Robotic Incision and Manual Extraction
• Can Grafts Fall Out After A Hair Transplant?
• How Young Is Too Young To Have A Hair Transplant?
• How Do You Determine Who Is A Candidate For A Hair Transplant?