FUE is a graft harvesting technique popularized in the last fifteen years. Each follicular unit is isolated individually using a sharp metal tube, called a ‘punch’. The punch can be rotated to pass through the skin surface manually or by installing it on a powered device; the latter enabling an easier extraction. Punch sizes should be chosen according to each patient’s follicle characteristics and a punch internal diameter varies from 0.8 to 1.
Some clinics offer very high graft numbers to attract patients whereas others believe much smaller numbers are safer. Most clinics that offer 5000, 6000, 7000 grafts know that the patients will never be able to find out the real graft number.
In reality, 2000 grafts are considered a large number in FUE by the scientific world if adjacent follicular units are not to be removed. In patients with a very good donor area 3000 grafts may be possible and extracting 4000-5000 grafts almost always means violating the safety zone. When very high graft numbers are extracted using FUE, some of the grafts are actually harvested from the nonpermanent areas, which means that these grafts will actually be lost in a couple of years.