The most commonly
performed hair transplant procedure today in the United Kingdom and
worldwide, in fact, is the Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) method.
As the name implies, the procedure involves extracting individual
follicular units containing a couple of hairs at a time.

Over the last couple of
years there have been major advancements made in the field of
automation and robotics. This includes the use of robotics for hair
transplant surgical procedures.

This is a very recent
development that is only being offered in a limited number of hair
loss clinics in the UK and around the world. This also does not mean
that using a robotic method is necessarily superior to a manual FUE
transplant. There are actually pros and cons to both the conventional
manual FUE and the newer robotic FUE, so you may be wondering which
the best option is for you.

Best hair transplant
method in the UK: manual or robotic?

The manual method of FUE
entails a hair specialist completing all stages of the procedure from
making incisions into the scalp to remove follicular units from the
donor site of the head to the actual grafting of hair into the region
of the scalp where it is needed. The pro of this method is that there
are specialists with a lot of experience in doing the FUE in this
way.

The robotic method uses an
Artas instrument that selects and cuts the follicular units out of
the person’s donor site. The con of this method is that the machine
can’t evaluate the quality of the follicular unit that is it is
punching out. Only a hair loss expert can make such an assessment of
the hair being excised, and the Artas simply loosens the section of
scalp while the physician still has to remove the tissue using
forceps.

The pro of the robotic
method is that it reduces the amount of work for the physician since
the harvesting is a very time consuming process, and the Artas can
speed up the selection and initial part of the process.

The manual FUE has the
disadvantage of being a slower and more tedious process than the
Artas FUE system. There is also the possible drawback of the
physician accidentally damaging hair follicles while first cutting
into the scalp to remove the unit of hair. However, physicians with a
good track record and many years of FUE hair experience are unlikely
to make such errors.

Clinics in many countries
of the world, such as the Vera
Clinic in Turkey have over 10 years of experience in manual FUE.
Thus, there is not much to worry about when it comes to having the
manual FUE done.

Over time there is likely
to be improvements in automation and the Artas robotic FUE system.
With time and increased advancements the robotic system may produce
better results than the manual FUE, but at the moment the system is
still in its infancy.