FUE single hairs

[Sparky00]

How does an FUE surgeon know if he is taking 1s 2s or 3s when he extracts the hair please? I assume he just has to go on sight? When a surgeon is refining a hairline he should only take 1s and maybe some 2s but without microscopes via FUT I'm confused how they know.

[Melvin- Admin]

Surgeons have high magnification glasses that show the follicular unit (fu) in their natural grouping. However, there are cases where one follicle appears as a 1 but maybe a 2 fu due to one follicle going in to the resting phase. I would say for the most part this is not an issue, but a majority of physicians still examine the fu grafts under a microscope to make sure there are no dormant follicles in the fu’s.

[Sparky00]

But is this magnification done at the time of extraction you mean? I will be getting singles placed along my hairline and I'm curious how my surgeon will know.

[secondtryuser]

Magnification is done both at extraction (so they group all 1s together, all 2s together etc) and implantation. Obviously, it would have to be, as otherwise they wouldn't have to carefully examine each graft before implanting, which wouldn't work as there are usually thousands to get through.

[Melvin- Admin]

The surgeons have high magnification glasses on while extracting so they see the groupings of the fu’s.

[harryforreal]

Magnification is done both at extraction (so they group all 1s together, all 2s together etc) and implantation.

 

That is an assumption that I would not bet on. Tell your doctor that you want the grafts examined microscopically during extraction and prior to implantation.

 

I had numerous doubles placed in my hairline during an FUE procedure.

[mattj]

The extracted follicles should be examined under microscope and this is where the equipment used for FUT surgery comes in. Some clinics that sprang up only doing FUE don't have the microscopes. They'll still be using magnification during the procedure, but might not be sorting and counting the grafts under more powerful microscopes.

Note that when we post results, we have a graft breakdown - a tally of how many singles, doubles, triples and quadruples there were.

 

There might be some dormant hairs within a follicular unit, but the number will be low.

[secondtryuser]

That is an assumption that I would not bet on. Tell your doctor that you want the grafts examined microscopically during extraction and prior to implantation.

 

I had numerous doubles placed in my hairline during an FUE procedure.

 

I'm talking about the procedure generally (which also mirrors my own). Of course, practices will vary, but in answering a general question we can't account for all possibilities. If people are overly concerned wit this, they'd need to discuss it with their surgeon.

 

Having said that, I think I'm right in thinking that in natural, non-transplanted hairlines, there will be a mixing singles, doubles etc (but singles dominate), so the odd triple in the hairline shouldn't look too bad, so long as there are mostly singles.

[Sparky00]

I'm getting confused. Can a doctor see a hair is a single or a double before he punches it? Or are you saying he punches random grafts and then the y sort them? If the latter how will the doctor be able to extract singles for the hairline?

[gillenator]

Approximately 10% of the scalp is in the dormant phase so the margin for error is small.