Which is the best method for a large transplant – FUE or FUT?

This is a tricky question to answer. The first step is for you to see an experienced hair transplant surgeon who can assess your hair loss, your hair loss progression, and properly plan for your hair restoration.

If you have a large area of hair to restore, then you may be looking at doing 2-3 transplants over a few years. This is usually done to restore the frontal hair line first, and then progressing to fill in the rest of the space over another one to two transplants. In most cases, we do FUT (strip) harvest and transplantation for large cases as this gets us the highest quality and highest number of grafts from a small thin strip in the fewest procedures.

In some cases, we will combine both FUT (Follicular Unit Transplant) and FUE (Follicular Unit Excision).  This could be done if we do a couple large strip (FUT) transplants, followed by one or two FUE sessions to add additional hairs that can be harvested from outside the safe area.  This can get additional hair with individual punch scars rather than a linear scar.  Sometimes FUE may be a good method if the scalp is too tight after strip harvesting has been done.

Bottom line is that it really depends on the amount of hair you have to transplant, the amount of hair you require to restore, the laxity of the scalp, and your surgeon’s experience.