Hair Transplant Glossary, Acronyms & Terminologies

Your Hair Transplant Dictionary

New to hair transplant? Considering hair transplant as a treatment for hair loss? Well, think of this as your hair transplant dictionary. Your one stop glossary for all hair transplant terminologies that you should know while researching for a hair transplant.

Confusing World of Hair Transplant Acronyms

It is not easy to navigate through the world of hair transplant. Most doctors have big egos. They all claim their clinic is the best in the world or that they are the inventor of this and that techniques. One way for the clinics to distinguish themselves from the rest is by claiming that their techniques are uniquie and prioprietary not available elsewhere. All this turns into a race to see which clinic has the most number of acronyms or meaningless terminologies that are nothing but confusing to people researching for a good hair transplant.

Dissecting Hair Transplant Acronyms

Let's cut through the mud and see if we can make sense of some of the confusing hair transplant acronyms commonly seen out there. Granted, there are clinics who actually did invent and patent their own techniques and deserve their own accolades for their procedure. But here, for the purpose of our hair transplant glossary, we summarize 4 hair transplant acronyms or terminologies that should make up everything you need to know about hair transplant.

FUE Hair Transplant 

FUE stands for follicular unit extraction. It is a technique that allows the doctor to manually extract one follicular unit at a time from the patient's donor site. FUE is the hair transplant technique that revolutionalizes hair transplantation in the past decade or so. It is presently the most sought after alternative to traditional STRIP surgeries. The advantages of FUE are that it is minimally invasive when compared to traditional techniques, fast healing for the patients and it does not leave a visible linear scar in the back of the patient's head.

It gets confusing when clinics use alternative terminologies to distinguish their technique, for example:

• sFUE (single follicular unit extraction);
• FSUE (follicular single unit extraction);
• uGraft;
• Cole Isolation Technique (CIT);
• Bio-FUE;
• Robo-FUE;
• DHI;
• etc etc..

No doubt some of the above acronyms do pertain to actual invention or patented process and have its own merits, but from the patient's perspective, they all belong to the FUE classification umbrella.

STRIP Hair Transplant

STRIP hair transplant refers to traditional hair transplant technique where a a strip of skin is removed from the back of the patient's head prior to donor harvesting. The harvesting or extraction of donor follicles is done directly on the strip of skin once it is taken out of the patient's head. STRIP technique can be very efficient when compared to FUE. It is not uncommon for a doctor to be able to transplant twice as many grafts in one sitting using STRIP than with FUE technique.

The main disadvantage of STRIP is that as the name denotes, the technique does leave a linear strip scar across the back of the patient's head. This prevents the patient from wearing his hair short as it will expose the strip scars.

Very often, STRIP is also referred to as:

• FUSS (follicular unit strip surgery);
• FUHT (follicular unit hair transplant);

Technically FUE is a kind of FUHT or follicular unit hair transplant. We do not like to see clinics advertise their STRIP procedures as FUHT technique. FUE and FUHT sound very similar and it can only create more confusion for the patient thinking that they are getting a FUE procedure when they walk into a FUHT clinic.

BHT

BHT stands for Body Hair Transplant. Do not confuse BHT with Beard Hair Transplant. The technique is similar to FUE, the only difference is that with BHT, the doctor uses the patient's body hair such as from their chest, legs, arms etc as donor and transplant them to thinning areas in the patient's scalp. FUE uses donor from the patient's head or scalp.

BHT is a techcnique for scalp hair loss. This is commonly used for patients who need repair procedures for a previously failed hair transplant or for patients with severely depleted scalp donor and hence require a new donor source and in this case the donor comes from their body hair.

Do not confuse BHT with the process whereby the doctor restores body hair for a patient such as creating chest hair at a patient's request, this would be reverse BHT

Reverse BHT

Reverse BHT is the process used for patients who desire to have chest hair, leg hair or even pubic hair created or restored on their body.

Beard Hair Transplant vs BHT

This one requires more clarification than any other hair transplant acronyms. Under no circumstances shall Beard Hair Transplant be abbreviated to BHT. BHT should always be reserved for Body Hair Transplant where donor follicles are extracted from body parts (chest, arms, legs) and transplanted to thinning areas in the scalp.

Beard Hair Transplant is the process where facial hair such as beard or moustache is used as donor for transplantation to the scalp. Facial hair is found to be very robust for regeneration. This procedure is particular common among hair transplant repair patients especially for strip scars repair. But please do not confuse Beard Hair Transplant with BHT.

Facial Hair Transplant vs Beard Hair Transplant

This is another tricky one in the world of hair transplant terminologies. Beard Hair Transplant vs Facial Hair Transplant. As explained earlier, Beard Hair Transplant is the process where beard or facial hair is used as donor for transplantation to bald areas in the scalp. Facial Hair Transplant, on the other hand, is for patients who desire to have more facial hair, such as beard, moustache, sideburns etc.

In our opinion, to avoid confusion, Facial Hair Transplant maybe more aptly referred to as Facial Hair Restoration so that we all know that this is about restoring facial hair for the patient as opposed to taking facial hair away from the patient.

SMP vs Trichopigmentation

SMP stands for Scalp Micropigmentation. It is a kind of micro tattooing process for people with hair loss or thinning hair. The idea is to use tattoo ink to simulate actual hair follicles on a patient's scalp in order to achieve the buzz cut look. This technique can also create camouflage for people with hair transplant scars.

Some clinics distinguish their SMP procedures by calling it Trichopigmentation. While one can argue there are differences between the two, it is essentially the same concept. The patient is still getting ink on his scalp.

PRP

PRP stands for Platelet Rich Plasma. It is a cell based hair therapy that uses the patient's own blood as growth factors for healthy hair growth. Many hair transplant clinics now incorporate PRP to assist hair transplant healing and faster regrowth.

Some clinics advertise their FUE procedure as Bio-FUE, what it means is that the clinic simply adds PRP to the FUE procedure.

Confused Yet? 

Confused? Contact Hasson & Wong at info@hassonandwong.com, they can answer any questions you have about hair transplant surgery. No cost, no fee, no fancy acronyms; just good honest and straight forward information.

Hasson & Wong is presently the #1 Top Ranked FUE & STRIP hair clinic in US and Canada with over 15 years of uninterrupted patient results in our database.

For more info, visit www.hassonandwong.com

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