Hair plugs are still around and are still being used. However because the plugs had such a bad connotation they aren’t called hair plugs anymore. It’s a good thing they were improved as the old style just didn’t work well. There were just to many hairs in the past plugs that were used so your new hair didn’t look natural. Instead it looked like a bunch of hair dots growing all alone.
By the way, they are no longer called hair plugs. It’s now called a follicular hair transplant. Another thing also happened with the name change, it was discovered that hairs from the back back of the head didn’t have the same problems with falling out or getting weak as did hairs from the top of the head.
There has been a lot of progress made in the hair transplantation field since hair plugs were first introduced. Micro tools were invented which make the process much better and the results look a lot more natural than they did years ago. These micro tools allowed the harvesting of smaller plugs with only a few hairs which look more natural as your hair grows in groups of strands, usually 1 – 4 hair strands per grouping.
Now advanced techniques transplant these naturally occurring 1 4 hair groups in their natural groupings. This technique achieves a natural appearance. This recent hair transplant procedure is called Follicular Unit Transplantation (FUT). Donor hair can be harvested in two very different ways;
Strip Harvesting – a strip of scalp is removed under local anesthesia, the wound is then sutured back together and this piece of scalp tissue is then cut in to small pieces of tissue called grafts which are then transplanted back in to the thinning area of the patients head. This method will leave a linear scar in the donor area, which should be covered by a patients hair (if long). The recovery period is around 2 weeks and will require the stitches to be removed by medical personnel.
FUE Harvesting – (Follicular Unit Extraction) individual follicles of hair are removed under local anesthesia; this micro removal uses tiny punches of between 0.6mm and 1.25mm in diameter. Each follicle is then reinserted back in to the scalp in the thinning area using a micro blade. Because this is single follicles and no large amount of tissue is removed there is no visible scars or post-surgery pain, with no stitches to be removed. Recovery from FUE is within 7 days.
In the late 1980s the use of the stereo-microscope to dissect a single donor strip into small micrografts was invented. With microscopic dissection of donor pieces from an excised portion of scalp, individual follicular units containing but 1-4 hairs could be prepared and individually relocated into needle punctures in the recipient areas. Close to natural results were attainable. With the new technique of ultra refined follicular unit hair transplantation, over 50 grafts can be placed per square centimeter.
The follicular unit hair transplant procedure has continued to evolve, becoming more refined and minimally invasive as the size of the graft incisions have become smaller. These smaller and less invasive incisions let surgeons place a larger number of follicular grafts in a given area.
Hair transplant surgery is the most expensive of all of the of hair loss solutions. Considering the long term necessity of using topical hair therapy medications that can never be stopped, or the prospect of being bald, the cost of hair transplant surgery is not so bad.
So check out the new process for getting your hair to grow again. Hair plugs are still around and they now work and look better than they ever did. Sometimes a name change is the correct thing to do and in the case of hair plugs it was a good thing. There are few negative connotations to getting hair replacement surgery now days.