What Are The Advantages and Disadvantages to FUE and FUT?

[Melvin- Admin]

I think this is a good topic to touch on again, although FUT is becoming less and less available to those living outside of North America. To me it is still a viable technique. I'm interested to hear your guys list.

What Are The Advantages and Disadvantages of FUE and FUT

[Britanium]

For people wanting to maximise there donor area i still think FUT has its place. Higher Norwoods should at least consider it. I am really liking the mega sessions Hattingen are doing. 
I also am rather impressed with the combo FUT/FUE sessions that BHR perform. The best of both worlds ! 
Advantage for those wanting as many grafts as possible. 

Edited June 24, 2021 by JohnAC71

[Britanium]

Obviously the disadvantage of either is the scarring it leaves. FUT scars always carry a risk of stretching. Where as FUE still can leave noticeable scarring. Over harvesting is another risk when having FUE. 
 

[A Fue Good Men]

From what I know now the best course for many that will go beyond nw3 in their lifetime is to fut til you can’t anymore. Then bht/fue into the scar. Then you can start extracting via fue. Fut is Def not an out of date procedure.

[Melvin- Admin]

13 hours ago, JohnAC71 said:

For people wanting to maximise there donor area i still think FUT has its place. Higher Norwoods should at least consider it. I am really liking the mega sessions Hattingen are doing. 
I also am rather impressed with the combo FUT/FUE sessions that BHR perform. The best of both worlds ! 
Advantage for those wanting as many grafts as possible. 

Great point 

[pre-screened]

18 hours ago, 5BetaReductase said:

From what I know now the best course for many that will go beyond nw3 in their lifetime is to fut til you can’t anymore. Then bht/fue into the scar. Then you can start extracting via fue. Fut is Def not an out of date procedure.

I agree if even the slightest chance exists to progress beyond NW3............FUT followed by FUE is the conservative and safe approach..........only exception is if your somehow wedded to having exceptionally short hair on the back and side (my assumption here is the FUT is being done by a master at the craft like Hasson / Hattingten etc.)..........and at that point you need to ask yourself whats more important some hair style preference or never being in a situation where HAVING hair is an issue in the future. FUT out +FUE later puts you in the ultimate long term safe position.....with a marginal cost around length of hair back and side

[Melvin- Admin]

3 minutes ago, pre-screened said:

I agree if even the slightest chance exists to progress beyond NW3............FUT followed by FUE is the conservative and safe approach..........only exception is if your somehow wedded to having exceptionally short hair on the back and side (my assumption here is the FUT is being done by a master at the craft like Hasson / Hattingten etc.)..........and at that point you need to ask yourself whats more important some hair style preference or never being in a situation where HAVING hair is an issue in the future. FUT out +FUE later puts you in the ultimate long term safe position.....with a marginal cost around length of hair back and side

There’s also things you can do afterwards to hide the scar like smp beard hair to the scar. Dr. Wong said many of his FUT patients are still able to wear their hair short.

[pre-screened]

Just now, Melvin- Moderator said:

There’s also things you can do afterwards to hide the scar like smp beard hair to the scar. Dr. Wong said many of his FUT patients are still able to wear their hair short.

True - remember that he seemed to say that a two or three hundreds FUE grafts were enough to make a good FUT scar pretty undetectable such that you could wear hair very short again.............reminder to all that going to a clinic that does both well ensures your being given/getting the best solution tailored for you.

I can only imagine the amount of people being sold FUE because thats all the clinic does.....but where a large FUT case would be far superior in the immediate and longer term

[Domino]

The scar from an fut is what makes me lean towards fue. A good surgeon can give a nice thin scar but that still doesn’t guarantee it won’t stretch. I want to wear hair short on the sides. Plus I’ll never have thick dense hair on even when I have surgery, so it will be a better contrast with thin on top and short on sides.

[SLA]

It is true that most surgeons practicing both techniques believe that you can extract more starting with FUT and later FUE.

I am curious if we look at homogenous depletion of donor via FUE and then adding some SMP to donor if necessary would ultimately allow more grafts to be extracted than doing FUT followed by FUE. We have seen several examples of homogenous depletion of donor on this forum including @mustang. You can't homogenously deplete a scalp after FUT due to the linear scar.

What gives me pause about FUT is should it not work out (or you don't like results), you are left with a linear scar that is hard or impossible to fully conceal.

With FUE you are left with scarring (although less noticeable) that could be concealed easily with SMP.

Thoughts?

[mustang]

Yeah

My approach was

1) Homogenous depletion 10.000 grafts 

2) Fit Farming (BHT into donor) 2.500 grafts to close big gaps 

3) SMP into donor

4) Final FUE extraction (500-1000 FUE depending on donor)

5) SMP touch up.

This allowed me to end up with 2.500 extra grafts (FUE) and a homogenous donor as if nothing ever happened 

[SLA]

@mustangif the BHT into your donor failed to grow, do you think SMP alone into your donor would have made it look ‘normal’?

[mustang]

Probably shaved yes. But maybe grown out it could be a little evident.

Question is, why would BHT fail to grow? It has the same survival rate as any other graft with modern protocols.

[JP28]

50 minutes ago, mustang said:

Probably shaved yes. But maybe grown out it could be a little evident.

Question is, why would BHT fail to grow? It has the same survival rate as any other graft with modern protocols.

I wonder what your donor would look like if you grew it for a couple of months. 

[JP28]

That’s something I would’ve never considered before coming to this forum and now it totally makes sense but still can’t wrap my head around having a scar behind my head for some reason and I know it’s silly. @Melvin- Moderatorhow may more grafts could you take with a FUT right now versus FUE? @mustangwould it be still possible for you to do an FUT at this point? 

[Melvin- Admin]

41 minutes ago, JP28 said:

That’s something I would’ve never considered before coming to this forum and now it totally makes sense but still can’t wrap my head around having a scar behind my head for some reason and I know it’s silly. @Melvin- Moderatorhow may more grafts could you take with a FUT right now versus FUE? @mustangwould it be still possible for you to do an FUT at this point? 

You can probably get around 2-3000 grafts extra going FUT and FUE. My goal was like @mustang and I even wrote about it back in 2015 when no one had really talked about it. But I’m not sure it’s the best route, it worked for him. But may not always work for everyone. Smp and BHT to a strip scar can make the scar nearly invisible.

[mustang]

I have a friend who has had BHT and SMP into a massive strip scar and it's non detectable and he shaves

Still. Depends on the quality of your hair. Mine is thin, scar would be quite obvious

Thick hair not so much