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.