In follicular unit hair transplantation, donor hair is harvested by excising a narrow strip of scalp from the donor area—an area at the back of the head that is resistant to hair loss. Each follicular unit in the donor strip contains one to four hairs. Follicular unit transplantation is extremely efficient because several thousand hair grafts can be obtained from one donor strip. While in principle follicular unit hair transplantation is very simple, its implementation requires meticulous micro-surgical skills, attention to detail, and artistry.

Graft Production

Hair in the scalp grows in small family groupings know as follicular units, which contain between one and five hairs each. It is important that the integrity of these groupings remain undisturbed during the dissection process.

The production of follicular unit grafts from the donor scalp requires a two-stage process of firstly slivering the ellipse into very fine scalp sections and then dissection of the follicular units from these slivers.

Both stages of this process are accomplished by the use of the stereoscopic dissecting microscope. The use of these technically advanced microscopes has reduced transection of hair follicles to the extent that we now have a 30% increase in yield from our donor strip. The reason for this is that we are now able to directly visualize the scalp we are dissecting under high magnification, rather than simply cutting blindly through the donor strip as seen in older techniques.