R. Jones

Our standard fee is $6.00 USD per graft. At this rate you can pick any opening on our schedule. A significant portion of our patients choose our standby rate of $5.00 per graft. You would be put on a waiting list and when we have openings in our schedule, we call those patients on our standby list and if they can have the surgery on the days open it is $5.00 a graft. You generally will be called around 10 days before the open date to see if you are available on that date. There is no difference in the surgery and generally I am completely unaware as to what the patient is paying for his surgery. The largest session I have done is 3700, but not many patients would have a donor area that would allow that many grafts to be harvested in a single session. Most patients would have close to 2500 available. Roy Jones MD

YankeeMan, Your questions are valid, pertinent and are frequently asked. On of the problems in the area of hair transplantation is that transplant surgeons do not necessarily speak the same "language." This is particularly true when talking about mini-grafts and micro-grafts. Generally speaking, a micro-graft is a graft that contains 1-3 hairs while a mini-graft is larger and should contain 4-6 hairs. The problem is that some surgeons who still utilize these grafts will use mini-grafts that are larger than 4-6 hairs and call grafts slightly larger than 1-3 hairs, micro-grafts. There are no accepted standards. With follicular unit transplantation the language problem does not exist. In every human, hair occurs in groups called follicular units, containing, for the most part, 1-4 hairs. The vast majority of FU's contain one, two or three hairs, with only a few four-hair FU's being found. When follicular units are cut from a strip (and this must be done with a microscope to avoid unnecessary damage) the number of grafts obtained should be equal to the number of follicular units present. With mini-grafting and micro-grafting, the grafts are cut to size according to the hair numbers desired in each graft, without regard to follicular units. Even a micro-graft may contain more than one follicular unit, making them slightly larger than follicular units. Mini-grafts by definition contain two or more FU's. FU's can be safely cut into smaller grafts, but there is no point in doing so. The only exception would be if an individual had an insufficient supply of single hair FU's to complete the hairline. And this discussion draws us to one of your other questions regarding the use of all single-hair grafts. The hairline is probably the most critical aspect of a hair transplant and the hairline is intolerant of improper graft use. If you had looked at your hairline before you ever lost hair, you would have noticed that all the FU's in front were single hair FU's. This should be the goal in reconstructing a hairline, for if large grafts are used on the front of the hairline they will look like "grafts." I generally place several rows of single hair FU's in the front hairline, followed by two-hair FU's. Slightly anterior to the hairline I will scatter a few single hair FU's to "feather" the hairline and soften it. Three and four hair FU's are not used in the hairline. If I do not have a sufficient number of single hair FU's, I will cut some two's into one's until I have enough, but it is rare that I have to do this. Once the hairline is completed, I would prefer not to use single hair FU's, and would rather have the larger FU's to provide greater density and therefore coverage. Scalp FU's normally exist approximately 1mm apart. With most current techniques, we cannot replace them at such a close distance and can only expect to place them around 3-4mm apart in a single pass (perhaps) slightly closer. The reason we would not recommend cutting all FU's into ones is that you would have significantly less density and coverage, as you correctly pointed out. Disregarding the hairline and perhaps the crown, if you have 1000 holes to fill, you would rather fill them with larger FU's than single hair FU's. Oftentimes if we have an excess of single hair FU's, we will double them into a single hole (site) to inprove the density (i.e., coverage). And a three or four hair FU will look perfectly natural, simply because that is how hair is normally distributed in the scalp, as I mentioned earlier. The beauty of FU's is their naturalness. Roy Jones MD San Jose, CA