Paul Shapiro MD
Valued member
This 30 year old patient had a great donor and good laxity and coarse dark hair. He was a good candidate for dense packing the frontal 1/3.
Because his hair is so coarse I instructed the technicians to cut down his four hair FU grafts into two hair follicular units, and to keep the three hair FU s to a minimal. With his type of hair, a four hair FU could look pluggy in the front 1/3. If the patient had fine, blond hair, that would be a different story. I have seen many patients with thin blond hair in which their 4 hair FU is about the same density as this patient s 2 hair FU s. In those patients I would want as many three and four hair FU s as possible. I do believe that in most patients when we are planting in the central core area that 3 and 4 hair follicular units are very useful in giving the appearance of density, especially if the patient has fine hair.
This is just an example of how every patient needs to be approached as an individual, and the discussion about whether a doctor cuts down grafts is not so straight forward. When posting I think it is helpful to give as much information as possible such as the patients age, graft and hair count, special instructions given to technicians, and any other special considerations.
I took the strip out in two sections:
Strip #1: 1.6 cm wide x 7 cm long
Strip #2: 1.4 cm wide x 6 cm long
His graft count is as follows:
1 Hair FU: 1018 Hairs: 1018
2 Hair FU: 1448 Hairs: 2896
3 Hair FU: 331 Hairs: 993
4 Hiar FU: 1 Hairs: 4
Total FU: 2798 Total Hairs: 4911
Because his hair is so coarse I instructed the technicians to cut down his four hair FU grafts into two hair follicular units, and to keep the three hair FU s to a minimal. With his type of hair, a four hair FU could look pluggy in the front 1/3. If the patient had fine, blond hair, that would be a different story. I have seen many patients with thin blond hair in which their 4 hair FU is about the same density as this patient s 2 hair FU s. In those patients I would want as many three and four hair FU s as possible. I do believe that in most patients when we are planting in the central core area that 3 and 4 hair follicular units are very useful in giving the appearance of density, especially if the patient has fine hair.
This is just an example of how every patient needs to be approached as an individual, and the discussion about whether a doctor cuts down grafts is not so straight forward. When posting I think it is helpful to give as much information as possible such as the patients age, graft and hair count, special instructions given to technicians, and any other special considerations.
I took the strip out in two sections:
Strip #1: 1.6 cm wide x 7 cm long
Strip #2: 1.4 cm wide x 6 cm long
His graft count is as follows:
1 Hair FU: 1018 Hairs: 1018
2 Hair FU: 1448 Hairs: 2896
3 Hair FU: 331 Hairs: 993
4 Hiar FU: 1 Hairs: 4
Total FU: 2798 Total Hairs: 4911