How Many Grafts to Give Dick Vitale Hair Like Brad Pitt?

Hi Doc, cool blog.

I was just wondering if hair multiplication became a reality, would it be possible to give a guy like Dick Vitale hair like Brad Pitt? If so, how many grafts woud it take, and what approach would you use? I’m sure if any surgeon could duplicate nature, it’s probably you. Thank you.

I am going to assume ESPN’s Dick Vitale is a Norwood Class VII, and he has an average hair density of 2. This equals about 1250 hairs per square inch, or 625 follicular units (FU) per square inch, assuming an average of 2 hairs per FU. The front and top part of the scalp on average cover about 16 square inches, the crown another 16 square inches, for a total area of coverage of 32 square inches. If we had unlimited source of hair (cloning, multiplication, etc) we would need about 20,000 FU or 40,000 hairs to give him coverage with a density of 2 in the transplanted area (for the head of hair that Brad Pitt has). However, as the gold standard is follicular unit transplantation, this would be the method I would use, even in the make-believe world we just described.