Questions To Ask

Before you make a decision, it is important to ask your physician questions about pain, residual side effects and the major differences between the ARTAS® Robotic Procedure and manual follicular unit extraction (FUE).

How can robotic hair restoration treat hair loss?

Men suffer hair loss across wider areas of the scalp. Past options to address the hair loss have been the use of ineffective topical medications or transplantation of a strip of harvested hair and scalp from the back of the head to the balding area. The medications were ineffective, at best, and the transplanted strip looked just like, well, a transplanted strip.

Now, we offer the ARTAS® Robotic Hair Transplant System, which is light years ahead of those past procedures and gives you back natural growing hair, your hair.

The ARTAS® system takes individual hair follicles, each having from one to four hairs in it, from the back of your head where the hair is not impacted by male pattern baldness. These follicles are then transplanted one by one into the area of thinning or balding. They start regrowing natural hair.

You may have heard of Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE), where a doctor performs these extractions and then transplants the follicles.

Our ARTAS® system follows that method, but vastly improves upon it. Using computer mapping, intelligent algorithms, and robotic technology the ARTAS® system takes all of the guesswork out of this process. Plus, it removes the fatigue factor, and subsequent errors, involved with a doctor manually harvesting and transplanting hundreds, even thousands of hairs.

The ARTAS® Robotic Hair Transplant System will give you back natural hair with the most consistency and the least pain. The results are incredible.

How does robotic hair restoration work?

The process used by the ARTAS® Robotic Hair Transplant System consists of the following 3 components: 

Design:

The ARTAS® Robotic Hair Transplant System process starts with the ARTAS® Hair Studio. The system software uses photographs of your head to create a 3D simulation that is then used by our Robotic Hair Restoration doctors to plan out your hair restoration. You work with your doctor to design your personalized hair pattern. We’ll show you different options that detail various graft counts and hair distribution. The ARTAS® system software algorithms create a natural site distribution that identifies and protects any existing healthy hair and then plots the transplant sites.

Harvesting:

Once we’ve created your restoration plan, we move on to harvesting the healthy hairs from the back of your head. The ARTAS® system uses advanced digital imaging to analyze and track each hair. This ensures the donor area will look natural after the hairs have been removed. The ARTAS® Robotic Hair Transplant System, under the guidance of our doctors, then gets to work. It identifies and selects the best hairs for harvesting and then the robotic arm does the actual harvesting. This ensures consistency and the highest quality of removed donor hair follicles. The digital mapping in the system provides precise control, far above any manual FUE techniques.

Transplantation:

Once all the hairs are harvested, the ARTAS® Robotic Hair Transplant System holds them and keeps them protected. Next, the system creates a natural site distribution pattern on the transplant area. It looks for any remaining healthy hairs and identifies them so they are not damaged. Then the software algorithms plot out the pattern of transplantation.

Now the robotic arms gets to work transplanting the individual follicles according to the exact specifications set by the algorithms. The supervising doctor dictates hair direction and other variables to ensure the transplanted hair growth patterns will look natural. Unlike a doctor harvesting and transplanting thousands of individual follicles, the ARTAS® Robotic Hair Transplant System robot arm does not get tired. It is completely consistent and it does not make errors. This ensures the highest number of transplanted hairs will successfully start growing hair where there was none.

That ends the process. In about six months, your transplanted follicles will start growing new hair — natural-looking, permanent hair.

Who is a good candidate for ARTAS® Robotic Hair Transplantation?

This procedure is good for men who have thinning hair or fully bald areas. The one requirement, however, is that the entire head cannot be bald. There has to be donor hair available at the back of the scalp. Otherwise, just about anyone with hair loss is a great candidate for robotic hair restoration with the ARTAS® Robotic Hair Transplant System. Certain health conditions and certain medications could preclude a person from being a candidate for this procedure, but we can discuss that will you during your consultation.

How is the physician involved during my ARTAS Robotic Procedure?

The ARTAS Procedure is performed by a licensed physician and surgical staff that have been properly trained and certified on the ARTAS Robotic System. Your physician is the one who creates the hairline design, sets the parameters for harvesting and manages your personalized treatment plan.

What are the qualifications of the ARTAS technicians you use?

At Restoration Robotics, we certify and train the staff on the ARTAS Robotic System. Restoration Robotics also provides ongoing education and training to keep the staff updated on the latest technology developments.

It is important to confirm with your physician that the individuals you meet with make up the team that will execute your procedure.

What are the benefits of the ARTAS® Robotic Hair Transplant System?

For men who were suffering from hair loss, the former alternatives were the use of topical medications that had little success regrowing hair, or linear strip harvesting. In strip harvesting, a strip of scalp with growing hair was removed from the back of the head and transplanted on the balding area. This creates an ugly scar on the back of the scalp that will not grow hair, and the transplanted strip doesn’t look natural.

ARTAS® Robotic Hair Transplant System uses a combination of amazing technology, robotics, intelligent algorithms, and doctor supervision to harvest individual growing follicles from the back of the scalp and transplant them into the balding areas. The result is completely natural, as it is your hair doing the growing, but the computer-aided harvesting and planning delivers the finest results possible. Plus, the robotic arm does an incredibly consistent job harvesting and transplanting, ensuring the most successful hair restoration.

How long does the robotic hair restoration procedure take?

Another benefit of the ARTAS® Robotic Hair Transplant System is that the process doesn’t take as long as manual FUE methods. Robotic hair restoration takes between four and eight hours, depending on the number of follicles being harvested and transplanted.

Does my ARTAS Robotic Procedure require stitches? Is it painful? Are there any residual side effects like with strip surgery?

• In strip surgery, a long strip of tissue is surgically removed from the back of your head and stitches are used to sew the scalp back together again. This can leave a visible linear scar and also make the healing process uncomfortable, or even painful.
• With the ARTAS Procedure, small needles are used to remove thousands of hair follicles from your scalp leaving only small pinpoint incisions. Since the incisions are distributed throughout a broad area, your Donor Area maintains its natural look and the procedure is less detectable. Patients often describe the procedure as virtually pain-free.

What is the difference between the ARTAS Procedure versus manual FUE?

• Follicular Unit Extraction, or FUE, is a labor-intensive procedure that is highly dependent on precision and repetition to harvest thousands of healthy hairs for transplantation. When performed manually, the success of the procedure is limited by hand-eye coordination. Because the procedure is tedious and long, the results can be affected by a person’s fatigue.
• With the ARTAS Procedure, a robot is used to harvest the hair. Robots excel at tasks that require precision, repetition and consistency. Because of the intelligent algorithms and the dissection technique, the robot can harvest hair effectively throughout the procedure. The quality of the first graft is the same as the 500th graft harvested. Robots never get tired.

How do I prepare for robotic hair restoration?

Nothing is required to prepare other than shortening your natural remaining hair to 1 mm for the day of your procedure. This makes it as easy as possible for the ARTAS® system to identify the best hairs for harvesting. As a transition to this short cut, most patients opt to have a “transitional” shorter haircut a few weeks prior to their procedure.