What are the best devices used to perform hair transplants?

If you’re looking to get a hair transplant, you’ve probably heard many different terms and phrases thrown around. “Hair transplant,” “non-surgical techniques,” and many other topics have come up. But what exactly is going on while the doctors perform their procedure?

In the past, we used a handheld device with a cylindrical blade to cut out the hairs. Then we’d pull out the hair from the scalp with a tweezer before finally transferring and implanting them at the required area of the scalp.

However, we now have better technologies and techniques to help us carry out these procedures in much less invasive and efficient manners. This article will explore the most common devices and technologies used during hair restoration procedures and how they affect our final hair results. Let’s get started!

Manual Technologies

A hair transplant can be performed using a variety of manual technologies. Here’s a look at two of the more prominent ones today.

NeoGraft

During a hair transplant procedure using NeoGraft technology, we also use a cylindrical blade with a hairpiece for hair extraction. However, the blade is connected to a suction tool, so there’s no longer the need for picking up the graft with a tweezer which can prevent the hair graft from getting crimped and lead to kinky hair growth.

SmartGraft

SmartGraft was a follow-up and the next evolution to the NeoGraft technology. In this case, not only do we have a technology with the cylindrical bit and suction that eliminates the need for a tweezer, but it also has a cooling chamber as well. This chamber is where the hair grafts go straight after they’ve been extracted from the donor sites to keep them better preserved during a procedure.

Automatic Technologies

Automatic hair transplantation is a relatively new technology that automates the entire process of harvesting, processing, and transplanting donor hair. The most popular one available today is the ARTAS AI-enabled and physician-assisted technology.

ARTAS

Unlike manual technologies during a hair transplant, the ARTAS system is not a human collecting your hair grafts. Instead, it’s a robot that has been designed with artificial intelligence that hair grafts on its own and can insert the grafts themselves at some point during the hair transplant procedure.

With this technology, there’s a camera looking at the directions of your hairs as they’re extracted and using a punch accurately placed to remove those grafts from the donor sites effectively. However, this technology is still limited because it doesn’t have a tactile sense of these hairs as a human does. Therefore, the grafts tend to be larger than manual methods, while the procedure is generally more invasive.

Conclusion

So there you have it! Hopefully, you now have a reasonably good idea of what hair transplantation technologies are, why doctors use the different techniques they do today, and how the process works. If you ever need a hair transplant, getting a lot of information in advance will help you prepare for what comes next and make it all easier to deal with.

Schedule a Consult

Interested in hair replacement? Schedule a complimentary consultation with a Northwestern Hair specialist. Choose between comprehensive in-person and convenient virtual consultations.