A few years back I went to you for a consult where you recommended 1,500 grafts to fill in my front hair line, but I went with another doctor that gave me 4000 grafts at a lower cost per graft. The total surgery price was more but what is bad about putting in 2,500 more grafts than you recommended? I have coarse, dark hair and wanted dense packing.
Individuals with a coarser hair do not need as many grafts as a person with a finer hair, so dense packing may not have been necessary.
If we would have put only 1500 grafts into that area and the other doctor got 4000 grafts, that indicates to me that the surgeon must have transplanted into the normal non-balding area (possibly just to make a few dollars extra). Some doctors may claim that preventative hair transplantation into the fringe behind the balding area is an acceptable practice, but with good drug therapy (finasteride) the progression of balding is often less of a problem. I find that for those doctors that say the normal fringe area is going to eventually bald anyway, that excuse is a self-serving financial decision by the doctor which only feeds his pocket.
Still worse, as the average person only has about 7000 grafts to utilize in his lifetime, depletion of the donor supply will absolutely leave many people worse off if the balding become progressive and moves into a more advanced balding pattern, like a Norwood class 6 or 7. Maybe the crown will start balding when the frontal area is stabilized on finasteride, so by putting these extra hairs into the frontal area, the surgeon only deprives the patient of hair for a balding crown if it should develop.
