Donor Density Analysis (photo)

Good morning, I came across your balding blog and think that it’s a great resource. Thank you for doing that. I see people ask you all sorts of questions and I wasn’t sure how to post on there and/or ask something anonymously so I figured I would email you. I had  alopecia on my scalp into which I had roughly 3,200 FUE grafts transplanted into the scar to conceal it (not all at once but in smaller separate procedures).  I uploaded a picture of about a centimeter or so of my donor area where grafts were extracted and was wondering if you can from the picture help me estimate roughly how many grafts I still have left in my donor in case I want future transplants.  I counted 32 follicular units and 78 hairs so that comes out to an average of about 2.4 hairs per unit. I tried doing the math I saw you explain on one of your threads and here is what I got. The average donor area is 12,500 units X 2.4 hairs = 30,000 hairs. You need roughly 12,500 hairs remaining in the donor area to provide adequate coverage so 30,000-12,500= 17,500 movable hairs. 17,500 hairs ÷ 2.4 hairs per graft equals 7,291 available grafts that I could move. That would have meant that before I used those 3,200 grafts for the scaring alopecia that I would have had a total of 10,491 harvestable grafts in my donor. Is that even possible?

Your donor density is higher than average.  What you didn’t take into account is your hair thickness, a very important factor in determining your harvestable donor area. Remember, that there are only 50,000 follicular units on the head of which 20-25% of them are in the donor area.  If you are thinking that you take out more than half or 2/3rds of your donor area hairs, you will be in trouble if you have fine hair, which I believe is your situation.

How many grafts were removed totally?  Answer 3200.  Were these all follicular unit grafts?  Yes?   Subtract that number from 12,500 total donor supply and the remaining follicular units and you get 9,200 graft remaining.  If your hair is fine, the actual number of grafts that are available will be significantly less than if your have a coarse hair.  Medium is somewhere in the middle. You might still have a significant donor reserve based upon the hair thickness of the donor hair provided that you hair isn’t fine as I suspect it is.  Does this help?