The ARTAS Robotic Hair Restoration Device

In each issue, Modern Aesthetics® magazine spotlights a new device that cosmetic physicians are introducing to their patients. Here, plastic surgeons Brian Reuben, MD, and Neal Moores, MD, of 22 Plastic Surgery and Spa MD in Cottonwood Heights, UT, discuss their joint decision to bring the ARTAS Robotic Hair Restoration device into their practice.

What is the ARTAS device, and why did you decide to bring it into your practice?

Brian Reuben, MD: The ARTAS device is a cutting-edge robot designed for surgical hair transplantation that can harvest and transplant individual hair follicles. This technology will improve patient results, and this is why we decided to bring it into our practice.

Neal Moores, MD: The device provides many advantages over the human hand, including greater precision, efficiency, and less trauma to tissues, resulting in less swelling and quicker recovery, and more predictable harvest results for better hair transplant grafts. The individual follicular transplant technique creates hairlines that are almost indistinguishable from a natural hairline. In the old-days hair transplants were done with large clumps of hair and looked very fake. The new technique of individual follicle transplant, however, is very precise and demanding. The ARTAS robot can precisely harvest individual hairs with tremendous speed and accuracy. This is vital to the safe handling, and survival of the hair grafts, and to patient comfort.

What sets the ARTAS device apart from other hair restoration devices?

Dr. Moores: There is nothing else like it on the market. It ensures inconspicuous harvest sites and precisely avoids your existing hairs when making sites that will receive the transplanted hairs.

Dr. Reuben: The ARTAS robotic hair transplant device maps the scalp, identifies the ideal hair follicles for transplant, and removes them with minimal trauma, helping us determine the precise placement of the hairs without damaging surrounding hairs and creating the perfect hairline and density.

Who is the ideal patient?

Dr. Reuben: Men and women who are experiencing early hair loss, on the front of the head and sides, who desire improvement in their hair density and hairline are ideal candidates. They have often started medical management but want to see further improvement in density, not just preventing further loss.

What type of results are patients seeing?

Dr. Moores: The results are impressive. The time to perform the procedures is down, patient comfort is up, and we are seeing results that look incredibly natural.

Dr. Reuben: Patients are seeing excellent results in both density as well as natural-appearing results. Frontal hairlines appear natural and do not have the “old fashioned plug” look that was the sure tell sign of a hair transplant. There are no long scars in the back of the head so a “high and tight” haircut in the back shows no signs of a surgical procedure.

Is there a learning curve for providers?

Dr. Reuben: The learning curve is not too steep because the robot does so much of the fine detail work with the harvesting and placement of the grafts. It can do this more efficiently and, unlike humans, does not fatigue over time.

Dr. Moores: I truly believe that machine-level precision is exactly what is needed for a procedure like this. Hair transplant is so fine and technical, the ARTAS does not suffer from fatigue, it is a tremendous tool.

Neither Brian Reuben, MD, or Neal Moores, MD, have any relevant financial disclosures.