I wanted to cover the difference between hairs and grafts. The industry standard in hair transplants is to quote based on the number of grafts that we transplant. However, there are some players in the industry who will quote based on the number of hairs they transplant. I sometimes wonder if they do this because it tends to overinflate the number, making it look like they’re transplanting more.
Before we get into that, let me explain the difference between hairs and grafts. Grafts are what we take out of the scalp; that’s what we extract and then implant into the balding or thinning area. Within each graft, you can have one hair follicle, two hair follicles, three hair follicles, or even more.
Because it’s the grafts that we’re taking out and implanting, we feel it’s appropriate to quote based on the number of grafts, and that’s what we do. But just so you’re informed—and because we always encourage patients to get a second opinion from other hair transplant doctors—if you want to compare apples with apples, you can roughly double the number of grafts to estimate the number of hairs. This is not a precise calculation, but it will help you compare the two numbers more accurately.
The nature of hair transplants means we have to quote based on the number of grafts because we need a defined, understandable way of quoting these procedures. That’s why we use grafts as the standard. Just so you know, this is how you can calculate the difference between the number of grafts and hairs.
