Both men and women experience hair loss due to several reasons. Some medical conditions, hormonal imbalances, lack of nutrition, stress, and trauma could result in hair loss. However, the most common cause of hair loss is androgenetic alopecia, in other words, pattern hair loss. Androgenetic alopecia is a genetic hair loss issue that many people suffer from. Unfortunately, many medical treatments fail to restore the hair growth for people who deal with pattern hair loss. Hair transplant operations are surgeries that take place by removing some healthy hair follicles from your scalp or skin and implanting them on the area where hair growth has stopped. So, hair transplants are actually permanent, successful solutions for genetic hair loss.
Since hair transplants were first performed, scientists and doctors have kept innovating the techniques used for better results. The first technique for hair transplant is FUT hair transplant method. Later, due to FUT being more damaging to the skin, different methods were improved. The most preferred and successful one of these is the FUE hair transplant. It both results in natural-looking hair and does not leave any noticeable scars like FUT method does.
From FUT to FUE to More
Just like any other medical technology advances, hair restoration techniques also improve. As mentioned, the first popular method for hair transplant used to be the FUT (Follicular Unit Transplantation) method. However, with the progress in technology, hair transplants started to turn around the FUE (Follicular Unit Extraction) method because of it being minimally-invasive. That is, with the FUE method, patients end up having natural-looking healthy hair without any noticeable scar on their skin. With the FUE hair transplant method, hair follicles are individually removed from the donor area of the scalp, and are transplanted into the bald area. FUE method does not require any stitches because it does not require a tissue being removed. Therefore, it is more preferable and satisfactory among patients.
The FUE hair transplant method is incredibly popular around the world. Especially if you prefer a hair transplant in Turkey, you will notice most clinics offer this method because of its high levels of success. However, there are improved ways of FUE technique as well, such as NeoGraft or SHI. These are basically FUE methods with some minor alterations.
What is NeoGraft
NeoGraft is one of the newest techniques of advanced hair transplant methods. It is a semi-automated version of the FUE hair transplant method. During the FUE technique, the doctor will remove individual hair follicles manually to implant them in the bald areas. With the NeoGraft method, hair follicles are taken by a wand that removes the follicles with pressure. Moreover, during NeoGraft, the surgeon does not need to make incisions on the scalp to prepare the area for new follicles. Instead, with NeoGraft, doctors are able to use specialized tools for incisions and implants.
What is SHI?
SHI (Simultaneous Harvesting and Implantation) is the most recent hair transplant procedure. For a long time, FUT and FUE were the most popular hair transplantation methods. They do, however, have extended treatment and recovery times. SHI was created to solve the minimal issues of FUE and FUT.
In theory, SHI is similar to FUE, but the difference is that a group of 5 to 6 surgeons collaborate, allowing roughly 3000 grafts to be placed in 5 to 6 hours. Traditional techniques take 8-10 hours for the same 3000 follicle transplants. As a result, with SHI, the hair transplants are exposed to air for a substantially shorter period of time, which allows the healing process to get shorter.