Dr. Cole's Comments

RP,

You are currently a class 5, headed to a class 6. You have considerable hair on the top of your head still. Over the remaining years you may loose more hair on the top naturally. It is difficult to tell how dense your hair is on the sides and back from these photos.

Follicular density is very important to the potential for full coverage. Blonde hair certainly helps, but density and hair diameter are important parts of the equation in predicting coverage over the entire area of loss.

Usually we try to work the front as much as possible and go for a thinner look in the back. If you have excellent hair characteristics, more coverage is possible. I often recommend a slightly higher hair line that you have drawn in for the mature individual. The line you have drawn is about 7 cm. I think that 8 cm above the glabella is a much safer location for you, but certainly feel that patient input is important.

Typically, we do about 2500 to 3000 grafts in the frontal area. There is room for an additional 1000 to 2000 grafts in the back. We do not know if it is possible to take 5000 grafts from your scalp by FIT in a single pass. Certainly we can do it, but we try to remove only 25% of the follicular units in a single pass. We almost certainly can do 3000 grafts in a single pass, however in a virgin scalp.

The average scalp yields about 7000 grafts from strip surgery. We are not certain how many we can take from fue at this time. It is still too new a procedure.

The frontal area may require 4000 to 5000 grafts in two procedure to create the fullness you desire. FUE certainly will allow this. I know we can take 7000 grafts from fue, but we want to insure that we do not disturb the follicular density to the point that it appears patchy in some areas. There may be new techniques we devise in the future to preclude this.

Certainly, you can switch to strip surgery at any time after FUE. We charge 8.00 per graft for our version of FUE, called FIT.

Shock loss is always a risk regardless of technique (strip or fue). It will grow back, but it may not cover as well if it does fall out. Mature men can go either way - strip or fue- in our opinion.

The choice is up to you and your preference. I prefer fue personally. I recognize it is not for everyone.

Dr. John Cole
www.forhair.com
800-368-4247