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Hair-transplant surgery could become cheaper and more accessible with a new robot that plucks hair follicles from the back and sides of the head so they can be moved to the top and front of a balding pate.

It normally takes eight to nine hours to individually harvest, by hand, the 1,000 follicle clusters needed to build a full mane of hair, according to Dr. James Harris, director of the Hair Sciences Center of Colorado in Denver. Since the surgery is tricky and time-consuming, fewer than 10% of hair-restoration surgeons do it. Most simply remove a whole strip of scalp and separate out the follicles under a microscope. Strip surgery is painful and takes weeks or months to heal versus just a couple of days' healing time and less scarring with individual follicular-unit extraction, Harris says.

The new ARTAS robot decides which follicles to collect and plucks them out as the doctor stands by to check its work. The surgeon can watch from the same room or via a remote monitor.

Harris says the time passes quickly as he watches the robot do its thing: "It's certainly less tedious than doing it by hand. It allows me to think more about the other things I'm going to do with the patient."

The robot halves the surgery time, Harris says, and surgeons can be trained in its use in a couple of days, rather than the two to three years it took him to perfect the by-hand operation.

Categories: Hair Transplant