Half the hair transplantation process is technique and maintenance treatment, and the other half is the hairline design that has to be extremely artistic. I sometimes see patients of mine that have such a natural result I even can not tell they had a transplant! On the other hand so many unfortunate men and women go commercial and by trying to save money, they are stuck with a horribly artificial-looking hair over their head, or poor results.
– Dany Touma, M.D.
Hair transplantation combines surgical technique with careful hairline design and long-term hair-loss management. Dr. Dany Touma places particular emphasis on recreating hair coverage and hairlines that follow the patient’s facial proportions, age, hair characteristics, and natural growth pattern.
Dr. Dany Touma, started his hair transplantation work with the strip technique in 1998, when strips of the scalp were cut out in the donor area and stitched. In 2015, he was the first to introduce the ARTAS® robotic FUE hair transplantation system in the Middle East, at The Skin Clinic in Beirut. The ARTAS® system uses robotic-assisted follicular unit extraction, allowing individual grafts to be selected and harvested from the donor area according to programmed parameters.
His teams currently perform only manual FUE harvesting, allowing the technique to be selected according to the patient’s donor characteristics, hair loss pattern, and treatment requirements, and achieving excellent work with very large sessions, exceeding the performance of the robotic device.
Manual Hair Transplantation: FUE (Follicular Unit Extraction)
Dr. Dany Touma and his team perform FUE hair transplantation, with graft placement tailored to the patient’s hairline and areas of hair loss. The technique is also used for eyebrows, beard, mustache, sideburns, and selected scarred areas.
Individual follicular units are extracted from the donor area using small punches and then prepared for implantation. Single-hair grafts are used to create the frontal hairline and other areas where finer placement is required.
Donor Site
Careful donor-area assessment is an important part of hair transplantation. Hair is usually harvested from the back and sides of the scalp, taking into consideration the stability and density of the donor hair.
When scalp donor supply is limited, selected patients may also be assessed for beard hair as an additional donor source.
FUE (Follicular Unit Extraction) involves extracting individual follicular units with small punches rather than removing a strip under safe local anesthesia. It does not create a linear donor scar, although tiny circular marks may remain.
Recent evidence has shown that many grafts grow back in the donor area after FUE extraction.
Minimal Shave FUE Technique
The recipients’ area is never shaved in women, and only trimmed in men, to allow implantation with full harmony with the direction, angle, and the characteristics of the existing hair.
The donor area is preferably shaved in men to allow large numbers of FUEs but in women and men with longer hair, only bands are shaved and the unshaven hair is left to cover them.
“No Shave” FUE allows selected patients to undergo FUE without completely shaving the donor area. Small sections of donor hair are trimmed and distributed throughout the donor region, allowing surrounding longer hair to conceal extraction sites.
Hairline Design & Long-Term Hair Restoration
Hairline design is an important component of hair transplantation. Dr. Dany Touma and his team consider facial proportions, age, existing hair density, hair direction, donor availability, and the anticipated progression of hair loss when planning the transplant.
Hair transplantation may be combined with medical hair-loss treatments and regenerative therapies such as PRP, where clinically appropriate, as part of a longer-term hair restoration plan.
Hair Transplant Repair
Repairing a previous hair transplant requires careful assessment of the existing grafts, donor supply, hairline position, density, and direction of transplanted hair.
Dr. Dany Touma and his team evaluate previous transplant results and develop an individualized repair strategy, which may involve corrective transplantation, medical treatment, or a combination of approaches. In other cases, laser is used to redesign the hairline.
