PATIENT'S APPROACH: NUMBER OF
GRAFTS OR NUMBER OF HAIRS?

INTRODUCTION:

Actually most of hair surgeons emphasize in their practice and in the approach to their patients the amount of grafts that thev can do in each procedure, that goes from 400 - up to 2.000 under the modern technique of micro - minigrafts in slits or miniholes.
We agree that this is important, but the number of hairs is much more accurate, comprehensive and less tricky, because calculating hair density in each square centimeter we can give our patients a much realistic idea of the number of hairs that are going to be transplanted according to the area that is going to be ressected

it sounds more as a competition between colleaques than a real concern of our patients.

METHODS:

Our major goal should be to give the most accurate information about:

Donor site: It goes from a range of 60 to 100 square cmts., we should always try to do a meassurement of it and register it in the patient's record.
Density:

Is the number of hairs by square cmt. that usually varies from 60 to 180 more or less from one patient to another.

So this way, we can calculate and inform our patient in each case the number of hairs that he has to be transplanted in the whole treatment of 2-4 surgeries; and which would be also the best location and shape of his hairline avoiding false expectations.

Following this information, we can adapt the number of grafts and surgeries according to our capabilities that are of course different from one surgeon to another.

So, if we plan a surgery of 3.000 hairs we can make the marking of an area of 30 square cmts.; example: 15 cmts. lenght x 2 cmts. height and cut the number of micro or minis we want but at the end we will have transplanted the number of hairs we have offered to our patient.

RESULTS:

Following these guidelines, we can be sure that our patients would have a more clear idea of that they are going through, what they could expect as a final result and be more confident because they have an accurate information of the whole process of hair transplantation.

This way us, the Physicians, can expect also to have less chances of malpractice suits, and at the end we are promoting our field and would be increasing our own practice.

COMMENTS:

All these comments are a complement of the information we should give magnifying the natural and cosmetic results we achieve with this new method of micro-minigrafts.
Y would emphasize that the main goal for the patient and for his physician should be achieve the largest amount of hair possible in natural and cosmetic way.