No. FUE can yield excellent results and we offer these cases to patients who understand the tradeoff of FUE and Strip procedures.
First, when you excise a strip, assuming you have good technicians, you are going to get alot of high quality grafts very quickly; and they can be placed fast. Its relatively common for an established practice to be able to do 3000 graft cases in a day. My office for example currently has 6 techs and we can finish 3000 grafts by 5pm. Practices with more techs can do this more quickly, although at some point atraumatic placement becomes the rate limiting step. With FUE, the doctor has to do all of the punches, although a tech may assist in extraction. Even though we do a fair number of FUE cases, hair shafts change their angle gradually across the scalp and even the best candidate can go from an area of "100%" yield to significant loss in just a few horizontal millimeters on the scalp. So we stop frequently, extract, and reassess. This takes time....and it makes the doc tired.
Now even with the grafts are removed, at many offices including ours, the techs then clean these up under the scopes. It takes time and effort but makes better grafts.
Lastly, hairs are finicky--just like nerves are-- and the extraction process definitely stresses the root bulbs more than strip processing. Some blogs have said that this is a doc's excuse for poor results, but I definitely believe that results are less (often not much less, but less nonetheless) full than with strip procedures.
The upsides though include no linear scar, and conceivably more 3 and 4 hair grafts. I find that we get a fair number of 4s, even with a 1.0mm punch.
I hope this helps some in your decision process.
Dr. Lindsey McLean VA
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Does an FUE Hair Transplant Get The Same Yield As a Strip Procedure?
After reviewing your materials I’ve made the decision to have a hair transplant, but now my biggest dilemma is whether to go with FUE or the strip harvesting method. I’m really struggling with this. I think I will need at least 3000 grafts to make a dent in my Norwood III pattern of hair loss, [...]
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