How many grafts to fill in my temples?

Thank you for the question, it’s one I receive very often. I would want to hear from you how you’d like to redraw your hairline however. As of now, it’s a bit subjective to judge what ‘filling out’ would mean to you. Based on a general appraisal I might recommend around 1000-1500 grafts to extend and reshape your hairline.
I would also highly recommend starting an auxiliary hair growth program that which includes some or all of the following: finasteride, minoxidil, groMD. Given your relatively young age, preventing further loss and maintaining what you have is equally important. An in person formal diagnosis with a board-certified hair transplant doctor will be able to run down what program and procedure would work best for you.

Thanks for your question. Each physician is different with numbers especially in specialty areas like the temples. Some are more conservative, others more aggressive. I've done as little as 75 grafts on each temple up to 400 for a patient that wanted very strong temporal peaks. My guess based on your pics would be 150-200 on each temple to reinforce what you currently have and give a stronger leading edge. 

 I have gone through your pictures and the history attached, it is very difficult to suggest anything right now as I do not know about your age, hair loss condition, family history, etc. In my opinion, it will be better to postpone the surgery if you want only reconstruction of the temple areas to be done. Let the hair loss progress and then undergo the same along with frontal hairline reconstruction.

This is one of the most common requests that I receive from men with mild hair loss like yourself. Now that we can treat the area  relatively painlessly and without a linear scar in the donor area, FUE is especially popular. Without seeing in you in person, I would say 600-800 fue grafts. Keep in  mind this will average 2 hairs per graft. 

This area usually is 2.5 to 3 cm squared per side.  So, you would have about 12.5-18 sq cm of area that needed to be transplanted when total area is considered.  We usually try to place 40-45 grafts per square cm; thus, your estimate in number of grafts needed is about 560-810 grafts.  It would be better to have someone measure this and look at the hair density surrounding the area to determine if further grafting is needed in case future hair loss is expected.

In order to calculate the number of grafts needed, your doctor would need to draw your new hairline and measure the size of the area to be covered. Depending on the hair quality, we usually aim to put about 40 or 45 grafts per square cm in order to recreate your hairline. One caveat, depending on your age and the possibility of future hair loss, there is a risk of more hair loss behind the transplanted hair falling out necessitating more work in the future. For this reason, you should strongly consider going on Propecia,Dr. Robert Jones

Assuming that you are comfortable with the level and shape of your frontal hairline, (and there is no thinning in the frontal hairline), you would need 400+ follicles per side. You would need a "tighter" pattern of recipient sites, (30 to 40 follicles per cm squared of recipient scalp), to overcome the wide color contrast of your dark brown hair and light colored scalp. But.....understand that placing permanent follicles into only your bi-temporal recessions is considered aggressive. If you were to lose more of your frontal hairline over time, the transplanted temporal hairline would remain, and you would be at risk for an unnatural result. For this reason it is considered to be a more conservative approach for you to combine minoxidil,finasteride, or low level laser therapy with the hair transplant to minimize the likelihood of ongoing hair loss to your natural hairline. Best regards, Robert Reese, DO, FISHRS. Past-President ABHRS.

It is very difficult to estimate the number of grafts without knowing the area that is to be covered and the thickness (fine, medium or coarse) of the hair. I suspect that the number will fall between 800-1500 grafts