Follicular Unit Extraction - History and Research

History and Research

Follicular unit extraction (FUE) was first described by Masumi Inaba in Japan in 1988 who introduced the use of a 1-mm needle for extracting follicular units. FUE was successfully conducted on public patients by DR Ray Woods in Australia, 1989 and was filmed for the 'Good Medicine' program for the first time in 1996. In 2002 it was first described in the medical literature by William R. Rassman and Robert M. Bernstein in their publication “Follicular Unit Extraction: Minimally Invasive Surgery for Hair Transplantation.”Robotic FUE devices were discussed at the 2007 meeting of the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery (ISHRS), and research in robotic devices was presented by Dr. Miquen G. Canales and Dr. David Berman at the 2008 meeting of the ISHRS.Research was conducted by on the Artas system by Restoration Robotics in Mountain View, California and the Berman Skin Institute in Palo Alto and found that follicles could be removed individually at a rate of up to 1000 per hour through the use of 1-mm hollow needles. Despite showing evidence of improvements in transection rate from the prior year, the findings suggested transection at a rate of 6–15% was not low enough for general use in hair restoration procedures.

BHFUE or BHT is the Follicular Unit Extraction of body hair which is transplanted to the scalp. It was first tested and proven effective by Dr Ray Woods in 1998. It was also documented that although the body hair would typically only grow up to 4cm, when transplanted to the scalp it could grow to 15cm.

There are still extremely few surgeons and practices which have mastered Follicular unit extraction because the procedure takes considerable time and expense to learn and to develop skills to a high standard. In recent years, the tools used for this approach have increased in complexity. Special Follicular extraction tools include the SAFE system, alphagraft, Neograft, and Artas system. These newer devices still have very little peer reviewed evidence based research in the medical literature.