How is donor quality measured?

[options]

Happy new year to you all,

 

I'm wondering if you could help me understand the quality of the donor area.

 

I've seen lots of people refer to measurements and technical ways of describing the quality of the donor area, but I don't quite know what people are referring to. I guess it has something to do with average thickness of each hair, and number of hairs per cm squared? Would anyone be able to spell out how donor quality it measured?

 

 

Thanks

[Garageland]

It is measured by firstly density which is number of hairs or more importantly follicular units per cm2. Secondly you are considering hair texture or caliber how thick your hair is? ie coarse or fine.

 

You would also need to consider laxity if your are looking at FUT. Wavy/curly hair can also provide better coverage to straight hair. One thing you cannot judge that well from photos alone is the size of the recipient area do you have a large head or a small head etc. This is important to not just the recipient but also the donor area as the larger the donor area the more grafts you will be able to harvest.

 

Other factors like miniaturization in the donor area and number of multi hair units compared to single hairs will also be considered when the overall donor area is measured.

 

Best to have some in person consultations to determine these factors as photos alone will not.

[fisher4man]

Can not be measured or evaluated before the operation, can be estimated very roughly, but even this rude estimation may not work with FUE. For FUT, it depends the dimension of the strip. The longer and wider the strip, more the grafts; but longer strip means longer scar, wider strip means wider scar or to take more risk not to close the wound or wound opening after closure as it occurred here. http://www.hairrestorationnetwork.com/eve/177864-what-happens-when-donor-site-left-open.html

 

.

[KO]

Indeed what Garageland said. Since you are doing FUE you want to know grafts/cm, hairs/graft, and caliber in microns. I think the most important characteristic is caliber as small differences in diameter are large differences in hair volume.

[options]

Thanks for your help guys.

 

So what kind of ranges are we talking here? For example, what is a good Xmicrons, what is a good X grafts/cm, X hairs/graft?

[KO]

Density you want around 90/cm, hairs/graft>2.0, and caliber > 50 microns. These are favorable.

[gillenator]

Out of all of the factors considered, hair caliber is the most critical factor considered when achieving the illusion of coverage. IMHO, we can easily get caught up with the density factor and although it is important, the attempt to achieve an ambiguously high density level is not a wise approach.

 

Let me explain. We all have variances in hair characteristics and even hair quality. Ideally, every surgeon evaluates every patient's virgin density. If the density in a barren surface area can be brought up to 50% of original density, the area will "appear" restored.

 

Further, none of us have enough donor to replace what is lost over a lifetime. Many docs will tell you that the upper range of proposed densities is not necessary to achieve a restored appearance. So why waste all of that precious limited donor knowing there will be more loss in the future? IMHO, this is a critical consideration for those individuals that have the more advanced classes of hair loss in their future, and in their family history.

 

Even with average hair characteristics, achieving a level of say 50-65 cm2 will look good on most individuals. Increasing the level by another 20-25% does not make that much notable "visual" difference in coverage. So if an individual was to start there as the base goal, and then was not satisfied, the density can be increased in the future. Yet if he is satisfied with the visual results, you have more donor left to go around.

 

Surgical hair restoration was never premised to achieve density. It was always oriented around the goal of achieving "visual" restoration. And there is a world of difference between those two approaches.

[options]

Thanks very much guys

[KO]

^Since you are considering Lorenzo, in his videos he notes hair caliber in microns, so you can compare.

[options]

Thanks KO.

[Spanker]

Out of all of the factors considered, hair caliber is the most critical factor considered when achieving the illusion of coverage. IMHO, we can easily get caught up with the density factor and although it is important, the attempt to achieve an ambiguously high density level is not a wise approach.

 

Let me explain. We all have variances in hair characteristics and even hair quality. Ideally, every surgeon evaluates every patient's virgin density. If the density in a barren surface area can be brought up to 50% of original density, the area will "appear" restored.

 

Further, none of us have enough donor to replace what is lost over a lifetime. Many docs will tell you that the upper range of proposed densities is not necessary to achieve a restored appearance. So why waste all of that precious limited donor knowing there will be more loss in the future? IMHO, this is a critical consideration for those individuals that have the more advanced classes of hair loss in their future, and in their family history.

 

Even with average hair characteristics, achieving a level of say 50-65 cm2 will look good on most individuals. Increasing the level by another 20-25% does not make that much notable "visual" difference in coverage. So if an individual was to start there as the base goal, and then was not satisfied, the density can be increased in the future. Yet if he is satisfied with the visual results, you have more donor left to go around.

 

Surgical hair restoration was never premised to achieve density. It was always oriented around the goal of achieving "visual" restoration. And there is a world of difference between those two approaches.

 

This is a very good explanation.

[options]

So the most important factor is number of microns an average hair is (in the donor area), which is essentially the diameter of an average hair?

[stinger99]

I think grafts per sq cm and groupings are also very important. When I say groupings I mean how many singles, doubles,triples, etc

[stinger99]

For example, if patient a has 3000 fue, split, 1500 singles, 1000 doubles and 500 triples while patient b also has 3000 fue, split, 1000 singles, 700 doubles and 1300 triples, patient b, assuming equal yield will have greater illusion of density and coverage