A man of Chinese descent came into the office this week. He had a Norwood Class 4A balding pattern (see art below). He told me that in surfing the Internet, he found and contacted a couple of doctors, sending pictures of his balding pattern to them via email. Conversations with both doctors suggested that he receive 4000-5000 grafts. First of all, he is an Asian, which means that his average density should be around 1.7 hairs per mm square (Caucasian average is 2.1) and he was probably born with 80,000 hairs on his head. But when I measured his density, it was low for a Chinese man, measuring 1.3 hairs per mm square (total hair count on his head before he lost hair was in the 60,000 range). His hair was black and straight with an average weight. His skin laxity was average.
To get 4000-5000 grafts, it might require more than a 3 cm width excision and that would put him at risk for problems in his donor area, possibly not being able to close the wound. These two medical groups made promises that were completely unrealistic. Of course I can not tell what they would have done had he come into their offices for the surgery. Would they have sold him 5,000 grafts and split the grafts into one hair units? Even that, with a 1.3 density, would doubtfully yield that number of grafts. Would they have charged him for 5,000 grafts and delivered only 2,000 (or less) single hair grafts?
What is irking me is that the promises over the phone were either misrepresenting what can be done, or it was part of a market scam. I stick to my pitch: Let the Buyer Beware!
Well, it certainly is fitting that this iPhone application shows up on Network World’s “most idiotic” list. It also shows up on Fortune Magazine’s 
The donor area is always the rim of hair that is seen in the Norwood Class 7 patient (see art at right). It starts at the occipital prominence of the skull (back of the skull) and goes up in the midline to a height of about 2 1/2 inches. It runs from the temple prominences by the forehead from one side to the other. The total measurement depends upon the size of the head. Large heads might have a 15 inch measurement from temple prominence to temple prominence and let’s say 13 inches to be safe, of which 1/2 inch on each side is not usable because any hair extraction from that close to the forehead will show as a thin donor area or a scar from the frontal view. So if you were to harvest the donor area (either by strip or FUE) the donor area would measure 12 inches long multiplied by 2.5 inches high or 30 square inches of scalp in a person with a typical size head. Half of that 30 square inch number would produce 15 square inches of usable donor hair. Each square inch in a Caucasian’s scalp with average hair density contains 1250 hairs which if multiplied times 15 square inches (half the donor area) would give 18,750 permanent movable hairs or in theory 9,375 two hair follicular units (grafts). I know this estimate is high, because the side rim of the donor area usually has a lower donor density than hair in the main part of the scalp. 
Here’s what I just learned from Wikipedia —