Is It Common for People to Run Out of Donor Hair?

How often do people run out of donor hair? I have low density, straight Asian hair. I am already thinning, and my dad has a diffuse NW6 pattern. I am afraid that if I go for a hair transplant I will not have enough donor hair to cover my entire head. Is this a common thing?

This is a very significant question. An Asian has an average of 80,000 hairs on their head. A Caucasian has an average of 100,000 hairs on their head. The donor area can be exploited so much that you can see through it. That is a particular problem for Norwood class 5, 6, or 7 Asian patients who will not have enough hair to cover the entire balding pattern (on average), so I would expect that many of these patients with the higher degree of balding need to have a Master Plan created by the doctor to account for this problem. If I met with a typical Asian with a class 6 pattern, I would tell him (up front) that he will not have enough hair to cover his entire head. This is particularly important in Asians who have finer hair, as they will run out of donor hair earlier in the process. There are some solutions to this problem, but every Asian patient who has these advanced patterns of balding must be aware of the finite amount of donor hair that they have.

I see some Asians and many Caucasians who have run out of donor hair and are perplexed that their doctors never told them this truth. In many of these patients, the donor area is see-through and has become more of a problem then the balding area. Scars in the donor area compound this problem significantly.

I can write a book on this particular subject, so I hope that readers realize that I am just answering the fundamental question posed in this post.