FUE How Many Grafts in 1 Visit?

[hairyharry]

How many FUE grafts can typically be done in a single visit?

[Raphael84]

Each persons donor area is unique to them. Their donor density, follicular grouping (how many hairs in a follicle 1/2/3/4), any miniaturisation and the calibre of their hair. It is a persons donor that will influence how many grafts can be extracted from that area safely, without showing visible signs of extraction.

Patients with average donor density are generally not able to provide more than 3000 grafts from their donor area in one procedure. More favourable donor density and data can allow higher grafts counts, but a lesser percentage of patients can provide near 4000 grafts and this would require higher natural density.

If the patient may have other limitations such as a dipping in the lower crown and/or retrograde alopecia meaning decline from the nape or above the ears, this then presents a limitation in terms of "safe" surface area in the donor and graft availability will reflect this.

Below your scalp in your donor area you have small blood vessels that will play a crucial part in donor area healing post surgery. It is important not to make too many extraction sites in one surgery that would put too much in terms of demand on these blood vessels which could compromise healing.

For those patients who may have high graft demands, It is in the best interests to plan restoration over subsequent surgeries to allow healing of the donor before revisiting and a managed donor extraction pattern will then allow maximal grafts in the long term.

You can often see low quality clinics pushing 4000 - 5000 grafts in patients whose donors honestly can not support this and the effect is either signs of over harvesting, or it compromises the donor with non optimal healing due to the "trauma" of such high graft numbers, and the donor may not recover as it would, meaning less graft availability in the future.

[HugoX]

So many factors that matters, but I did over 7000 grafts over 2 days with Dr Zarev, and it is not unusual that Dr Zarev can do around 7-8k grafts over 2 days.

Of course you have to have the donor capacity for this and a Dr that knows donor management and is experienced with this type of larger sessions. 

[Rahal Hair Transplant]

Hairyharry,

The amount of available donor hair each person has is unique. Also, how much can be moved in a single session depends on a number of factors.  This includes donor density, hair size (in microns), hair to scalp color ratio, etc.  yeah he doctor’s skill and experience with FUE and performing larger sessions is also a major factor.

also, a FUE Hair Transplant “session“ can be performed over multiple days unlike FUT which is typically all done in a single day.  So therefore, if somebody tells you they’ve had 4000 FUE grafts performed in a single session, that doesn’t mean it was all necessarily done within the same day. It could’ve been performed over two days where approximately 2000 FUE grafts were moved each day.

Of course, just because a surgeon can move a certain number of grafts in a single day or bad n a single session, doesn’t mean that’s what is necessarily needed in order to achieve true desired result.

Thus, in my opinion, the best thing to do is to consult a few leading hair transplant surgeons and garner their input in terms of how many grafts you need and how many they think can be moved in a single session to achieve your desired result.

Best wishes,

Rahal Hair Transplant