I've had 4 in person consultations and each said 40 FU/sqcm would do just fine for my hairline and temples. But they also said a second procedure touch up might be needed. I have course dark brown hair and a Florida tan.

One of the surgeons who told me this was Dr. Ron Shapiro on his vacation in Miami. I'll most likely go to him or his brother in the end since they are the kings of hairlines.

I agree, I've seen some spot results from these guys, and imagine they will always stand by thier work, so you know your money isnt wasted.

__________________
My Hair Loss Website

Dr. Armani and Dr. Rahal consistently dense pack the hairlines of their patients, both make their incisions with needles. Is it much more difficult for you to plant 70+ grafts/cm?? than 40-50? And what do you think about needles to go over 60 or 70 grafts/cm'

It would be very interesting for many people to see final results from SMG with dense packed (65+) hairlines...!?!?!

I'm sure it's theoretically possible to pack at any density you want. Even 100 FU/CM2. I think the idea is to preserve as much of the donor area as possible though for future work if needed.

__________________
My Hair Loss Web Site - Dr. Ron Shapiro

I am glad I posted these patients because there has been some good questions about what is dense packing and why are some clinic reporting planting in the hairline at a density of 70FU/sqcm.

We should not lose sight of the basic principle of hair transplant surgery which is: We are using a limited donor supply to cover a potentially expanding area of balding scalp. I wrote a post called 'How Many Grafts Are Needed for a Hair Transplant Surgery' in which I reviewed this principal. The post can be found on the following link: http://hair-restoration-info.c...66060861&m=615103223

Another useful tool is the graft calculator in the HTN's multimedia center. If you go to the following link: http://www.hairtransplantnetwork.com/MM-center.asp it will bring you to the multimedia center. Scroll down the page to the box that is titled 'calculate # of grafts needed'. As you can see, if you want to plant hair at a density of 45 FU/sqcm. in the front ?? of the scalp (areas 1,2,3 &4) we would need to use 4,300 grafts. Studies suggest that the average lifetime donor for most patients is 4,000 to 8,000 grafts, with the average being 6,000 grafts. We need to take into consideration future hair loss when we plan a hair transplant surgery. That is why I only dense pack in patients who are at least 30 years of age, and I can confidently predict they won't advance to a Norwood type V or greater.

Even though we can technically plant at densities greater then 40-50FU/sqcm, as I have shown in this post, I believe it is usually not the appropriate thing to do. I would say on average we plant at densities between 30 to 40 FU/sq.cm. We can plant at higher densities but the majority of our patients do not qualify for dense packing. At SMG we cut our blades and they usually measure from .6mm to 1mm. With proper magnification it is not difficult to make incisions at high densities from 50 to 70 FU/sq.cm. So in answer to one of the questions I do not believe there is a difference in whether we use cut to size blades or small needles.

Another point I would like to make is that we are using 1,2,3, and 4 hair FU's in our transplants. It is important to mention hair count as well as graft count to accurately describe our surgeries. Planting 2 hair FU's at a density of 30 FU's'sqcm give us more total hairs then planting all one hair FU's at a density of 50 FU/sqcm. In the first case we end up with 60 hairs and in the second case we end up with 50 hairs. We have 10 more hairs at the lower density of 30FU/sq.cm. What most of us do in hair transplant surgery is to distribute the 1,2,3 and 4 hair FU's at different densities to give us the best results possible.

Taking into account the principle of limited donor and selective distribution of different size hair follicles I would say that in on average we plant at densities between 30 and 40 FU/sqcm. We may plant the one hair FU's at a higher density and the four hair FU's at lower densities. That is why it is difficult to say exactly at what 'density' we are planting in a hair transplant surgery. The density varies depending on the size and caliber of the FU . In fact, I do think it is more common to plant one hair FU's at densities of 40-50 FU/sqcm. Thus, I would call dense packing any case in which we plant the 2 hair FU's at densities greater then 40FU/sqcm.

I hope this is helpful

Dr. Paul Shapiro