FUT FUE Milestone

Restoration Robotics INC. released an upgrade to ARTAS robot, ARTAS 9x. It was presented by Dr. Robert Bernstein at the annual meeting of ISHRS, Prague.

Restoration Robotics INC. worked with Dr. Robert Bernstein for developing an algorithm that empowered ARTAS robot to automatically select follicular units for harvesting.

Dr. Robert Bernstein introduced Long-hair Robotic Follicular Unit Extraction technique that harvested follicular unit from a patient’s donor area with long hair.

Restoration Robotics INC. launched the recipient site creation capabilities for the ARTAS robot.

Restoration Robotics INC. introduced their first ARTAS robot in the industry. This gave birth to the highly innovative and technologically advanced Robotic Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) technique. Dr. Bernstein was the early adopter of this technique.

Dr. James Harris introduced two-step sharp/dull punch instruments, especially designed to minimize follicular unit damage during the procedure.

Team of Dr. Robert Bernstein and Dr. William Rassman worked on the idea (originally developed by an Australian doctor) of extracting units directly from the donor area using a tiny punch. They introduced the Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) technique in their paper Follicular Unit Extraction: Minimally Invasive Surgery for Hair.

Although the FUT technique provided great results, it still remained subject to criticism and resistance till the late 1990’s. However, the procedure gradually got acceptance worldwide and emerged as a “Gold Standard” in the year 2000.

Dr. Robert Bernstein and Dr. William Rassman pioneered the “Follicular Hair Transplant (FUE)” procedure. It coined the term follicular units which was partially based on the graft dissection technique developed by Dr. Bobby Limmer.

The “Mini-Micro Grafting” technique gradually replaced the traditional hair plug technique and emerged as the primary hair transplant procedure. In the same decade, “Mega-Sessions” technique also gained popularity that used extended number of micro-mini grafts.

Dr. Bobby Limmer started using the microscopic graft dissection technique in Australia.

The “Mini-Graft” technique was introduced which used smaller graft cuts from the donor tissue strip, rather than punching out (grafts) directly from the back of the scalp. Later, surgeons started using even smaller “Micro-Grafts” that softened the hair line. They further devised the “Mini-Micro Grafting” technique that used a combination of mini grafts and micro grafts to deliver natural results.

Throughout the decade, surgeons used larger grafts in all hair transplant procedures. The procedure became popular as “Hair Pug technique” and the term became synonymous with hair transplantation in the community.

Surgical hair transplantation was finally accepted in the cosmetic surgery domain. However, Dr. Orentreich’s technique used larger grafts and failed to deliver natural results.

Dr. Norman Orentreich published his paper and coined the term “Donor Dominance”. It explained the fundamental principle of hair restoration and became the basis of all modern-day hair transplant procedures.

The year 1952 marked the first largely recognized milestone of the hair restoration community when Dr. Norman Orentreich reinvented the modern-day hair transplantation procedure. He performed the first known surgery in New York on a patient suffering from male pattern baldness.

In the year 1943, Japanese dermatologist Dr. Hajime Tamura honed Dr. Shoji’s technique and used smaller grafts (of 1-3 hair) for replacing lost pubic hair in female patients. He used an elliptical incision for extracting the donor tissue and dissected it into individual grafts.

The idea of modern-day surgical hair restoration procedure was initially fostered in Japan in the year 1939. Dr. Shoji Okuda described the process of surgical hair restoration for burn victims in his paper. He narrated the punch technique for extracting round sections of hair bearing skin and implanting them on the targeted area.