Canada’s first robotic hair transplant happened Friday in Ottawa, billed as a better way to slow down balding.

Adamo Papa, age 31, said he hasn’t liked the way his hair has been looking for a few years and turned to Dr. Hussein Rahal for help.

“In my later 20s I really noticed that in the shower a lot of hair was falling out,” Papa said. “I found my hair really fine, really frizzy. I just didn’t like it.”

Dr. Rahal’s method uses a computer-guided robotic system to remove and implant hair follicles, saying it’s more precise, less invasive and faster-healing than traditional transplants.

“We’re aiming to take out about 2,500 grafts,” he said. “A graft may have one, two or three hairs . . . so 2,500 is going to give you roughly 6,000 hairs removed and moved.”

The benefits come at a cost, as the $15,000 bill is around twice as much as doing it by hand.

“The older way is we take a strip, and a strip is going to leave a linear scar,” Dr. Rahal said.

“(This way) you take individual grafts out one at a time . . . these don’t leave a linear scar, they leave tiny little dots which allows patients to leave their hair shorter.”

Hair will fully grow back in about a year, with Dr. Rahal likening it to re-growing a garden.

With a report from CTV Ottawa’s Vanessa Lee