ARTAS Hair Transplant vs NeoGraft Hair Transplant

ARTAS Hair Transplant vs NeoGraft: How They are the Same

ARTAS Robotic and NeoGraft have several commonalities. They are both minimally-invasive, have a fast recovery time compared to other hair transplant methods, and do not require general anesthesia. Both technologies are FDA-approve, and with either method a surgeon or technician manually implants the hair follicles in their new location.

ARTAS Hair Transplant vs NeoGraft: How They are Different

While both ARTAS and NeoGraft employ the Follicular Unit Extraction or FUE method to extract the hair, there is one crucial difference: During a NeoGraft procedure, a Master Technician manually harvests the hair from the donor area of the patient’s scalp, whereas this process is automated with ARTAS via a computer-controlled robotic arm. For both methods, the hair follicles are harvested individually or in groups of up to four, also called follicular units. The key difference is that the ARTAS system has a computer rather than a human deciding which follicles to extract, which can speed up this process considerably.

Is ARTAS or NeoGraft better?

To answer that question, let’s look at the pros and cons of an ARTAS hair transplant vs NeoGraft hair transplant.

Where ARTAS has an advantage is speed. It’s impossible for a human to beat a computer that can make thousands of calculations per second. The ARTAS system selects the best hair grafts for transplantation based on a complex algorithm. This way it can shave off up to 50% of the time it takes to extract your hair manually. Please note that this advantage only exists during the harvesting of hair. Both ARTAS and NeoGraft use the same implantation method – via a wand operated manually by a technician or surgeon.

However, ARTAS has three disadvantages compared to NeoGraft:

1. The robot needs enough contrast to identify hair follicles, and therefor this method is only recommended for people with straight, dark hair. Blond or fair haired people are not good candidates for ARTAS.
2. The transection or damage rate of the extracted hair follicles is actually higher for ARTAS at 8-10% than it is for an experienced NeoGraft technician (3-5%).
3. Due to the complexity of the apparatus, ARTAS is quite a bit more pricey than NeoGraft.

An Experienced Technician Makes All the Difference

However you feel about an ARTAS hair transplant vs NeoGraft hair transplant, going with an experienced hair transplant technician or surgeon is key. He or she needs a good knowledge of hair, preferably gained over decades of experience. Since the technician is also the one manually implanting your hair, you want someone who has the unique aesthetic skill for this part of the procedure. Implanting a new hairline requires particular finesse, since it has to be recreated to look aesthetically pleasing and age-appropriate. Only an experienced hair restoration master technician who has done this for years can get you results that look great and are not detectable.

At the Nashville Hair Doctor, we believe that hair harvesting and implantation is as much art form as precision, and that a machine can rarely beat a gifted artist in his craft. Maybe that’s because our NeoGraft Master Tech is one of the best in his field, with countless happy patients to show for.