Does the rate at which you're losing hair worry you? It's the right time to undergo a hair transplant. After the surgery, you'll have excellent and natural-looking hair. Your surgeon harvests healthy hair follicles and transplants them to parts of the scalp with no hair.
Have you made up your mind to seek a hair transplant? You'll be required to choose between fue vs. fut treatment procedures. They're the most methods that have proven to be effective in restoring lost hair.
So, you need to understand everything about fue vs. fut to decide on the one that suits you best based on your aesthetic needs. But any of the methods between fue vs. fut helps to treat balding and hair thinning with desirable results.
Differences and similarities between fue vs. fut
Though follicular unit extraction and follicular unit transplant procedures achieve the same goal, they differ in several ways. But they also have many things in common. Here is a complete comparison between fue vs. fut that helps you make your decision.
1. Fue vs. fut procedures
Fue involves extracting individual hair follicles and transplanting them. Though your surgeon may manually remove the strands, using a punching tool has made harvesting faster and easier. The surgeon makes tiny holes on your scalp where balding has occurred and places the harvested hair into them.
Depending on your bald or hair thinning size, the surgeon may transplant several hair strands in a session. When all is done, your scalp will be covered using gauze or bandages for a few days to promote safe healing.
On the other hand, it is a bit different in terms of procedure. Unlike fue, fut involves removing a strip of skin from an area with healthy hair and harvesting hair follicles from the strip. Once your surgeon is done harvesting the grafts, they're transplanted on target areas with no hair.
Before the procedure begins, your surgeon applies local anesthesia on the area to be treated for numbing. That helps to eliminate pain and discomfort linked to a hair transplant. Use of anesthesia applies for both fue vs. fut.
2. Length of surgery between fue vs. fut
Do you fear long-time medical treatment procedures? Fue vs. fut time in surgery differs. You'll take a shorter time in surgery when undergoing the fut process than fue. Fut process takes between 4-12 hours but depends on the size of your bald and the number of grafts you require.
In the fue technique, you need about 10 hours or even more to extract and transplant about 2000 hair follicles. You may require more than one day to complete the treatment session. So, you can consider it if you're looking for a hair transplant procedure that takes a shorter time to complete.
3. Fue vs. fut recovery
Everyone wants to recover faster after treatment and in everyday life. Both fue vs. fut have different recovery times. Fue transplant doesn't involve stitches or scalpel. It's minimally invasive, which makes a recovery faster after surgery.
Though you can get back to your daily activities after 2-5 days after fue, it's good to have enough rest. But it will take you about ten days to recover. That's why you may consider a fue transplant if you don't have a lot of time from work.
Recovery after fue or fut isn't complex. However, you need a lot of care to avoid the occurrence of risks associated with post-surgery issues. It's essential to observe the directives given by your surgeon after surgery whether you underwent fue or fut.
4. Results from fue vs. fut surgeries
The two hair transplant methods will give you natural-looking hair. You can begin experiencing results after a few weeks of the surgery. Transplanted hair grows like your normal hair, and you are allowed to wash and treat it just like natural hair.
5. Scarring after fue vs. fut hair transplant surgeries
While you'll have minimal scarring after the fue procedure, fut leaves you with a linear scar. During the fue process, hair follicles are extracted randomly, affecting the donor area. But it involves excising a strip of skin and harvesting follicles, which results in a big scar.
6. Quality of harvested grafts during fue v fut procedures
The use of robots in fue for harvesting follicles allows analysis and calculation of every hair follicle. The robot picks the strongest and healthy follicles for transplant. But in terms of survival rates, hair transplant through fut increases follicle survival rate.
7. Fue vs. fut hair transplant cost
Though hair transplant cost depends on the size of bald or hair follicles to be transplanted and other factors, you'll pay more for fuel procedure than fut. On average, it will cost about $9000 for fue hair transplant while fut cost is about $7000.
Ensure you research and discuss with your surgeon before the treatment process to agree on payment. Some specialists offer discounts and allow different payment plans, which you can take advantage of when seeking hair transplant surgery.
8. Shaving of hair before transplant
Are you among those who never like shaving hair? You'll have to choose fut over fue hair transplant technique. No shaving is required in the fut procedure, but you need to cut your hair short if you settle for fue.
Conclusion
Both fue vs fut is effective in restoring your lost hair. But the two methods have unique differences and similarities you need to know to help choose the right one. They differ in cost, procedure, recovery time and quality of grafts harvested. It's vital to seek a hair transplant from a reputable surgeon. That can eliminate any unexpected and adverse effects of hair transplant surgery.
