In spite of the sluggish global
economy, demand for hair restoration surgery is on the rise –
increasing 15 percent in the US and 66 percent worldwide between
2004 and 2010, according to the International Society of Hair
Restoration Surgery’s 2011 Practice Census. The key reason for this
spike in procedures, according to ISHRS member Alan J. Bauman, M.D.,
is the demand for a less-invasive hair transplant procedure known as
Follicular-Unit Extraction, or FUE.
“I remember vividly back in 2003 at the ISHRS Orlando Live Surgery
Workshop where I demonstrated the first live FUE procedure performed
at that conference, that many doctors were reluctant to adopt the
challenging technique, preferring instead to persist with the
traditional strip-harvest method,” said Dr. Bauman, a
board-certified hair restoration surgeon and member of the ISHRS
Media Relations Committee. “Only recently have more doctors rushed
to offer FUE, and it’s plain to see how well patients are responding
to it.”
FUE has proven to be a major advancement for the field of hair loss
as it allows the surgeon to restore living and growing hair to
balding patients without the traditional removal of a large strip of
‘donor’ skin from the back of the head.
This traditional
strip-harvest method requires the use of scalpel and stitches – and
results in a tell-tale linear scar at the donor site. It’s easy to
see why patients would prefer the less-invasive no-scalpel/no-stitch FUE over the traditional strip-harvest method. Now that FUE is
gaining increased acceptance in the hair transplant community, and
there is a growing track record of results worldwide, patient demand
is soaring – even in spite of the sluggish economy.
Key findings of the 2011 ISHRS Practice Census:
The total number of hair transplants performed worldwide in 2010
rose to 279,381 – an increase of 66 percent since 2004 and an 11
percent gain since 2008.
Less-invasive FUE no-scalpel/no-stitch harvesting techniques have
increased exponentially in popularity while the total numbers of
traditional “linear” or strip-harvest surgery have continued to
drop.
In 2008, FUE procedures comprised just 11 percent of all hair
transplants compared to the 22 percent share of the market they hold
today—more than doubling the total amount of FUE procedures
performed over the same time and tripling since 2004.
Strip-harvest surgeries dropped from 92 percent of all hair
transplant procedures performed in 2004 to 77.5 percent of these
procedures today.
Surgeons disagree whether strip-harvesting will ever be completely
abandoned; but few will argue that the procedure is in decline. In
fact, as mentioned in his recent lecture at the ISHRS Annual
Scientific Meeting held in Anchorage Alaska September 14-18, Bauman
presented statistical data that suggests that strip-harvest
surgeries could be surpassed by minimally-invasive FUE procedures in
as little as three to five years. New technology like NeoGraft, as
well as futuristic technology like robotic transplants, could
further accelerate this trend.
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