I am a 36 year old male.  I have had about 10-12 hair transplant procedures starting when I was about 23 years old.  1/3 of these procedures consisted of the old larger plugs. Most of my donor area is depleted.  So I assume your FIT procedure would work best for me.  

My goals and some questions:

1) I am interested in redistributing some of these larger plugs into thinner areas so my hairline looks more natural. Have you done any repair work of this nature before on your patients? Based on my pictures, how many of these repair sessions do I need? Can you fix them all in one session?  

Dr. Cole: It is difficult to tell just how bad off you are at this time from the photos. It looks like you've had an attempt to soften the hairline, but that you may also have quite a few larger plugs behind this. Redistributing plugs is not easy work. It is very time consuming and labor intensive. It is perhaps the most difficult work we do. I do my best to re-distribute everything in a single session. Sometimes we can't get everything and it takes a second trip. Certainly if we take hair out, you will have less hair for coverage while you wait for the re-located hairs to grow back. We do this work routinely these days.

2) I would also like some more density in this area too. I feel around 600-1000 graft would do this for me. Can this be done together with the repair session or do I need to book a separate session to add density? 

Dr. Cole: Hard to say for sure if this is needed from the photos, but obviously you can see the need in person. It all depends on how much we can get out of the donor area. If we can get quite a bit, then it is no problem. If the density is lower, we may get closer to 600 than 1000. We will need to shave some regions to get the grafts. You are getting pretty weak in the mid-donor area. You are fuller in the lower regions on the neck, but we must be careful to insure that this is a permanent zone. If the sides are good, we should be able to get the grafts you desire at the same time as the re-distribution. I'd plan on a two day session. How much hair we need to shave is a question mark. We did over 850 grafts today without shaving a very scarred donor area and over 1500 last week in a virgin donor area without having to shave the entire area. In other words, patients were able to conceal their work. Of course these numbers are individually dependent on the follicular density.

3) Based on the pictures of the back of my head above, do you think you can extract about 600-1000 grafts for the procedure? 

Dr. Cole: Maybe. see above

4) I understand that your fees for the FIT procedure is calculated on a per graft basis. But what about the fees for the repair session (ie: redistributing the larger plugs to other thinning areas)? 

Dr. Cole: We charge a fee for repair. the cost is 6000 to sit in the chair and then a per graft cost for each graft we move to a new location. as i said, it is difficult work.

5) How long is the waiting list if I schedule a surgery with your office now? Do I have to wait for months? 

Dr. Cole: I'm sorry, I don't keep up with this. I do more grafts by FUE than anyone I know in a single day or single week, so I can work more patients in.

6) Any additional comments or advice for my case?

Dr. Cole: Better photos would be great. Coverage is good right now so it may simply be an issue with trying to look more natural. Plugs are too dense due to contraction of the tissue. This is what makes them unnatural. Thinning the plugs out helps quite a bit to improve naturalness.