Baldness and thinning hair are two problems that ail many men as they grow older. By the age of 50, approximately 85% of men have significantly thinning hair and in the United States alone, 35 million other men are enduring some level of hair loss or baldness. In fact, by the age of 35, two-thirds of American men will experience some degree of appreciable hair loss.

Fortunately, for many, it takes some time before this change is cosmetically visible. Generally, it takes half a man’s head of hair to be gone before the change is noticeable to the naked eye.

Still, many men face the difficulty of losing hair to the point where the loss is visible, frequently occurring with decreased perceived levels of physical attractiveness and other ills. The loss of hair can cause additional apprehension when dating or when attending important social functions.

However, in the late 1980s, a procedure was developed to be able to alleviate some of the issues associated with hair loss or baldness. It is called Follicular Unit Extraction or FUE. FUE was first developed in 1988 by a man named Masumi Inaba and later conducted on public patients for the first time by Dr. Ray Woods in Australia.

Follicular Unit Extraction is one of just two methods of obtaining follicular units, which are hair follicles clustered into between one and four hair, for later transplants. Sometimes natural groups can have as many as seven to eight hair follicles in a single graft.

FUE has the use of being able to transplant harvested follicular units to areas of the head that may have thinning hair or complete baldness. A typical FUE procedure takes eight hours. It is relatively painless, as an anesthetic numbs the part of the head where the procedure is to take place.

The instrument used to obtain the follicular units is a tiny punch, typically ranging from .7 to 1 millimeter in size. In this way, it has a significant advantage for the other hair transplant surgery called Follicular Unit Strip Surgery or FUSS. In Follicular Unit Strip Surgery, part of the scalp with the hair follicles is surgically removed, then placed on thinning part.

FUSS, unfortunately, is invasive and has a higher complication rate. It also leaves a scar in the back of the head, limits graft harvesting in future procedures, and takes more time to recover from than FUE.

FUE, on the other hand, is minimally invasive, has a lower complication rate, doesn’t leave a large scar, and has a shorter recovery time. FUE patients can also keep their hair short or shave in the future, which is difficult with FUSS.

While there are many methods of hair loss treatment, it is possible to have hair transplant surgery without the complications or without a large scar. Finding the right male hair loss specialist or hair transplant clinic is a matter of search through references and using the Internet.