Two of these three acronyms describe genuinely different operations. The third describes the same operation with a different tool in the surgeon's hand, and knowing which is which saves you a great deal of comparing.
Nobody arrives at this knowing what any of them stand for, and there's no reason anybody should. They are trade shorthand, invented by the people who do the work and then printed on price lists as though everyone had been sent the memo. So here they are in plain English, in the order they turned up.
What an FUT hair transplant is: the strip method
FUT stands for follicular unit transplantation, though its other name, the strip method, tells you rather more.
A strip of hair-bearing skin is taken from the donor area at the back of the head, where hair is genetically resistant to the hormone behind pattern baldness. The edges of that area are closed with stitches. The strip itself goes to the team's table, where it's divided under magnification into individual grafts, each one a follicular unit of one to four hairs, exactly as they grow on your scalp. Those grafts are then placed one at a time into the areas where you've lost hair.
It works, it has been done this way for decades, and surgeons still use it, so none of this is an argument against it. Two things simply follow from taking a strip. The first is a fine line across the back of the head where the strip came from, which sits out of sight under hair worn long enough to cover it. The second is the recovery: a stitched area is tight and tender for a while, and the stitches have to come out, so the donor site has a job of its own on top of everything happening at the front.
That combination is why FUT has largely given way to FUE for most patients, rather than any question about whether it does the job.
What an FUE hair transplant is
FUE stands for follicular unit excision, and you'll still see the older word, extraction, in plenty of places. It collects exactly the same thing, follicular units, in an entirely different way.
No strip is taken. Each unit is removed on its own with a tiny punch, and they're taken from all over the donor area rather than from one place. Nothing needs dividing afterwards, because every graft comes out already the size it's meant to be. What it leaves behind is a scatter of very small round openings that close over as dots, and no stitched line anywhere.
A well-stocked bookcase makes the same point. Lift out one whole run of books and the gap is the first thing you see from the doorway, however tidily you slide the rest along. Take one from the top shelf, one from a shelf down, one from the far end, and the bookcase still looks the way it always did, because nothing was taken from any single place. That's precisely why the extraction is spread across the whole donor area: the hair left behind closes over the gaps, and the dots sit far enough apart that hair covers them even cut short.
The picture has one honest limit, and it's better said than left out. Books can go back on the shelf; a follicle that has been lifted doesn't come back where it was. Every unit taken is spent, which is why the spreading matters, and why how much your donor area can safely give is something a person has to judge before anything is taken.
There's a cost to working that way, and it's time. Taking thousands of units one at a time is slower than taking a strip, which is why an FUE day runs six to eight hours under local anaesthesia.
What a DHI hair transplant is, honestly
Now DHI, which is where the comparing usually goes astray, because it isn't really the third member of the set. DHI stands for direct hair implantation, and it sits inside the FUE family rather than beside it.
The extraction is FUE. The same punch, the same one-at-a-time removal, the same dots at the back. What differs is the placing, and the difference is real, only smaller than the name suggests. In the usual way of working, the sites are made first, each one angled to match the way your hair already grows, and the grafts are then set into them. With DHI, each graft is loaded into an implanter pen, and the pen makes the site and delivers the graft in one movement.
It's the difference between drilling a pilot hole and then driving the screw into it, and using a screw that cuts its own way as it goes. Two motions or one, two tools or one, and at the end the same screw is sitting in the same wood, holding the same weight.
Which is the whole of DHI vs FUE, put plainly. The follicular unit that ends up in your scalp is the same unit either way, lifted the same way, from the same donor area, and set at an angle a person has judged. What changes is the tool that puts it in, not the graft and not the head receiving it.
So when you meet DHI listed as a separate procedure with its own price, the name itself is doing an honest job: it describes how the grafts go in. Worth knowing before you hold two quotes up against each other, because what you're comparing there is a placement technique rather than a different operation.
FUE vs FUT: the comparison a patient actually needs
Four differences are worth having straight.
The first is scarring, and it's the big one. FUT leaves a single fine line across the donor area; FUE leaves scattered dots. Neither vanishes under a bright light, but they hide in completely different ways. A line needs a certain length of hair over it for the rest of your life. Dots are covered at much shorter lengths, which is why people who keep it to a number two at the barber tend towards FUE.
The second is shaving. FUE generally wants the donor area clipped short, because each unit has to be seen clearly and reached individually. FUT needs only the strip area trimmed, with the hair above it worn down over the top, which is one honest attraction of it for people with long hair. Approaches that keep the shaving to a minimum exist, and what a no-shave transplant can and can't do is a subject in its own right.
The third is where the hours of the day go. A strip is quicker to take than several thousand individual units, so FUT spends less of the day on the taking and more of it at the dissecting table; FUE spends its hours on your head, because every unit is lifted one at a time.
The fourth is the donor site afterwards. Stitches mean a closed wound and an appointment to have them out; dots heal on their own through the first stretch of your twelve-month recovery, while your attention is on the front of your head anyway.
Put together, they come down to a straightforward question: how do you wear your hair, and how short do you have it cut?
The method we perform, and why
We perform FUE, and the reasons are the four above.
The day itself happens at our CQC-registered Leeds clinic: six to eight hours under local anaesthesia, 3,500 to 4,000 grafts in a single session, follicles lifted one at a time from the back and sides and set one at a time at angles judged to match the way your hair already grows. Nothing is stitched, so the donor area heals as dots rather than as a line, and you can wear your hair as short as you like once it's settled. The moved follicles keep their resistance to the hormone behind pattern baldness, which is why the result is permanent.
The price is £2,500, all-inclusive: the grafts, the PRP given straight afterwards, the complete aftercare kit, the check-ins and the twelve-month review, with everything that sits inside that figure set out openly.
The part no acronym can tell you
Here's the thing the letters are quietly hiding. Both operations move your own follicular units from the back and sides of your head to the areas where you've lost hair, and neither one decides what those areas are going to look like.
That comes from judgement: where the hairline is drawn and at what height, the angle every graft is set at, how density is built so an area reads as hair rather than as rows, and how carefully the grafts are handled between coming out and going in. Two teams with identical equipment produce different results, which is why the method is a much smaller question than the people. We've written out the five checks worth making on any clinic, and not one of them is an acronym.
The other question no acronym answers is whether you need surgery at all. For hair that is thinning all over rather than gone from a defined area, moving follicles is often the wrong tool entirely, and you should hear that plainly from anybody assessing you.
So put the letters down for a moment. The free consultation is around thirty minutes, on video, any evening from 6pm, with the team that would treat you. They look at your hair loss pattern and your donor density and tell you honestly what your own head needs, including the answer that it needs nothing yet. Book the free video consultation and start with your hair rather than with the alphabet.