Balding can be an uncomfortable, sometimes painful, time for many men. It can cause a sharp decline in confidence, feelings of lessened attractiveness, and overall lowered self worth. And we’ve all seen a less than stellar hair transplant, one that left a considerable scar and doesn’t look particularly natural. The cost of a hair transplant can be prohibitive as well. When many men consider how to treat hair loss, they write off the option of hair replacement immediately.
But a hair loss specialist can recommend something caused a FUE transplant. A FUE (which stands for follicular unit extraction) is a minimally invasive alternative to what we think of as a traditional hair transplant (called FUSS, Follicular Unit Strip Surgery). In a FUSS transplant, a strip of scalp, typically from the back of the head, where hair is thickest, is taken from the patient and placed at the hairline. A FUSS transplant isn’t ideal for a number of reasons. First, it leaves a large scar at the back of the head, preventing men who receive a FUSS transplant from wearing their hair short. It also has a higher complication rate, and a lower rate of success should the procedure need to be repeated. The cost of a hair transplant for a FUSS transplant is often very expensive, meaning that patients spend a lot of money for often not so great results.
A FUE tranpslant, however, is astronomically different. During a FUE transplant, removes naturally occurring groups of hairs and transplants them to the balding area. This type of procedure has a lower risk of complications and minimal scarring. When considering the cost of a hair transplant, a FUE transplant continues to remain the better option. A FUE procedure takes around eight hours from start to finish, but grafts settle and redness dissipates in about four to five days, though this depends on the skin type of the patient.
Balding is not uncommon. By the time they reach the age of fifty, over 85% of men have thinning hair to some degree. In the United States, over 30 million men are in some stage of balding. Just by the young age of thirty five, two thirds of men in the United States have noticed hair loss. But over half of a man’s head of hair can be gone before it becomes cosmetically visible, so their is time to see a male hair loss specialist and stop hair loss in its tracks. The cost of a hair transplant doesn’t have to be prohibitive, and many men suffering from baldness can experience the confidence of a full head of hair again.