By Dr. Andrew Elkwood, M.D., a href=http://looknatural.com/The Plastic Surgery Center of NJ

At the Plastic Surgery Center, we pride ourselves on the state-of-the-art hair transplant procedures we do.

The New York Times Thursday Styles section (January 5, 2012) reported that a doctor has used a robot to help with hair transplants. The system uses digital mapping and tracking to extract and harvest “follicular units,” aka hairs.

Frankly, I see no reason to use a robot. I think it’s a lot of hoopla, that doesn’t add anything significant to this procedure. It’s a lot of technology, and a lot of cost. Sometimes technology is wonderful, sometimes useless, and sometimes it simply adds no real value.

Put this way: do you need a robot to help you make brownies? No. You can mix and stir yourself; you’re in control, and it’s cheaper.

Once upon a time, a transplant was done with grafts (thus the look of plugs). Today, we use a much more refined technique. During individual follicle hair transplants at our New Jersey office, the surgeon removes small pieces of hair-bearing scalp from a donor site on your head. Those hair transplants or grafts are then divided under a microscope into individual follicles.

These follicles are then micro-implanted, one hair at a time, into small "pin holes" in the balding area. Hair transplants at our New Jersey practice entail up to 3,500 grafts that can be performed in a single session.

The greatest advance in hair transplant is doing the procedure with individual hair follicles, a relatively recent development. Hair transplants have gotten a “bum rap” in the past, because they were performed with hair plugs, often giving the appearance of a doll’s head. Since the new procedure, most good practitioners have switched to using individual hair follicles. With this procedure, you don’t see the work. It is fairly undetectable. While hair transplants require meticulous and time-consuming work, we believe the terrific, natural results we achieve are worth it.

Read more about The Plastic Surgery Center hair transplant procedure at