Statistics on FUE (Follicular Unit Extraction) / FOX Negative Patients

What are the statistics of FOX test negative patients ? Is any ethnicity ,age , hair color or hair character more prone to be more FOX negative ?

Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) when it was popularized in 2002 at the ISHRS meeting (Follicular Unit Extraction: Minimally Invasive Surgery for Hair Transplantation) did not have a popularized name. We thought FUE (“foo-yee”) was not a very sexy name. Thus we called it FOX (FOllicular unit eXtraction). We identified many patients where FUE or FOX techniques did not work. We published the problem in 2004 with “FUE Megasessions – Evolution of a Technique“.

Over the last 10+ years many doctors have (and continue) to improve the FUE method but the FOX negative patients still remain a challenge. Some (patients) are not the best candidate for the FUE method of donor hair extraction with a high percentage of transection. This is true with even the new ARTAS (robot FUE). Techniques and instruments may improve but the patients are still FUE-negative where their transection rate is too high.

There is no firm data or statistics we keep. There is also no collective data of information by doctors in the hair transplant field. In fact, many would say they don’t really have FOX negative patients for the sake of their reputation and marketing.

In my private practice, our techniques have improved and we have our own proprietary instruments. We also have the ARTAS system. There are still FOX negative patients and we still do the FUE/ FOX test to screen patients before surgery.