How Many Grafts do I Need for a Hair Transplant?
These questions were posed directly to Dr. Ken Siporin of Beverly Hills, CA who is one of our recommended hair restoration physicians by a hair loss sufferer seeking hair transplantation as a means to regrow hair. His professional answer is below.
I’ve attached some pictures of my hair loss in another email. Like I mentioned in our phone conversation, I recently shaved the top of my head in order to try a hair system.
How many grafts do you think I need to give me adequate hair density and coverage?
I reviewed your photographs, and although they give me a good idea, I always tell prospective hair transplant patients who send me photographs, without the benefit of an in person examination, as a disclaimer, that I cannot get the entire clinical picture from two dimensional photographs. Having said that, I do have a good idea of what you need. The only unknowns are the density of your donor hair, the laxity of the scalp, which determines how much hair I can harvest, and most importantly, what your specific hair restoration goals are.
With your hair shaven like it is in the photos, I would recommend harvesting and placing as many grafts as I can safely harvest and place. Since I am only looking at a photo of your hair loss, and I do not precisely know the surface area to be covered, I can give you some estimate as to what that would be. In my experience, 2600 -2800 follicular unit grafts would give you nice coverage from front to back. The front would get more coverage and would appear more dense, and this is routinely the case.
The limitations of hair transplantation have nothing to do with the naturalness of the look, but with the density of coverage, and no matter what anybody says, limitations exist, so that you never get as dense as you were prior to balding. Still, I am confident that you would be very happy if we did a hair transplant megasession of that size, and I almost always go over my estimated count, without any additional cost to you.
I think I would be remiss if I did not mention to you the importance of medical therapy. I think non-surgical hair loss treatments go hand and hand with hair transplants, especially in somebody with your situation (miniaturized hairs throughout the scalp), Hair transplants place hair where there are no follicles, and medical therapies allow you to hold on to the other hairs, and to even possibly thicken up those hairs which have miniaturized.
I hope I answered some questions, and when we see each other in person, we will be able to go in to great detail about every aspect of the hair replacement procedure, except cost. The cost is covered by John, my patient coordinator, and since you are coming in on a Saturday evening, he will not be there, but I will be able to give you some range of cost based on our meeting.
Once again, I look forward to meeting you.
Kenneth D. Siporin, M.D., F.A.C.S.
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Bill
Associate Publisher
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