Androgenetic alopecia – FUE hair transplant as one of the more effective treatment methods

Hair transplantation offered to patients as one of the treatments for androgenetic alopecia is gaining ground every day and is becoming an increasingly popular method of treating the problem of hair loss for both men and women. The first hair transplants performed back in the 1960s and 1970s had a high risk of producing very unnatural final results. This was due to the technical and substantive limitations of the clinics or doctors who performed such procedures. Overly large hair units, so-called “plugs”, or grafts consisting of several hair units, were transplanted, later resulting in very unnatural regrowth effects, often called the “doll effect”.

Absolutely no consideration was given to the aesthetic aspect of the procedure and the patient’s expectations. The end results of the procedure were very sparse, highly artificial and far from natural appearance. It was not until the development of hair transplantation technology in the 1980s and 1990s that a completely new and innovative approach was introduced. Hair transplantation procedures began to use the technique of so-called mini-grafting, consisting of, transplanting hair units containing a maximum of 4-5 hair follicles, and the use of small hair units, 1 and 2 follicles to restore the hairline was initiated.

The real revolution in hair transplantation technology was yet to come. In the mid-1990s, with the rise in popularity of the mini-grafting method, research began into a brand new hair transplant technique, followed by the introduction of FUE ( follicular unit extraction) i.e. taking individual hair units directly from the donor area, without the need to cut a strip of skin, as was the case with the FUT- STRIP method.

The first FUE procedures, of course, cannot be considered a full aesthetic success, but they offered hope for revolutionizing the hair transplant method. The real boom and flourishing of the new method came at the beginning of the 21st century. Along with the development of new technologies and medicine, patients’ expectations for hair transplantation procedures also increased. They were looking for surgical treatments that would guarantee a quick return to work, daily life, activity and, of paramount importance, a method that would reduce post-operative complications to a minimum. All of these aforementioned advantages were offered by only one hair transplant method and that was FUE.

In recent years, there has been a steady increase in the sophistication of the hair follicle harvesting method and the equipment used for this purpose. Currently, one of the most precise devices available on the market is the WAW system, which uses a blunt hybrid drill (barb) and rotational-oscillatory motion to harvest hair units. However, even the best medical equipment available in the world is useless if it is not operated in the hands of a capable androgenetic alopecia treatment specialist who, in addition to high manual skills, also has extensive knowledge of performing hair transplantation procedures and has undergone thorough training in FUE HYBRID hair transplantation.

The standard of hair transplant treatment in the world is to take care of the most natural aesthetic effect of the patient, to fully understand the patient’s expectations, but also to orient the patient to the real achievable results for different degrees of alopecia disease.