How many grafts would I need for grade 3 alopecia? (Photo)

Hair transplant surgery is not about "how many grafts" you need, but about how a doctor can match your goals and expectations.  

A hair transplant is the final resort for thinning.  At this stage in the game for you, I'd consider PRP, Rogaine, and Propecia.

I can't tell from the photo if you are a man or a woman but regardless, this diffuse pattern of hairloss is better treated with medical therapies than transplant.  It takes upwards of 8000 grafts to have reasonable but still thin coverage to the entire top of your head. You are also very young so you need to proceed with caution and realistic expectations in your path to hair restoration.

27 is young to consider transplants in the crown/vertex area.  At this point, I would first consider other options such as laser, minoxidil (Rogaine), finasteride (Propecia) and plate-rich plasma (PRP).    A combination of these could regrow some of the hair you've lost over the past five years and help prevent further loss.

Hello in Indianapolis,I agree with Dr. Paul that you should make sure to try Minoxidil and Finasteride as a first line treatment for hair loss.  There are many advantages to doing so, including slowing the rate of hair loss and possibly getting back thicker and fuller hair.  The side-effects of Finasteride have been somewhat overblown in discussion groups. You can see one of my earlier answers for a full discussion of the safety of Finasteride.You want to be really careful with transplanting hair in your crown at age 27. There several reasons for this, but the most important is that you are very likely going to continue losing hair over time (especially if you decide not to use Minoxidil and Finasteride), and in 10 years your scalp is going to look very different than it does now.  The crown is actually a large area, and requires many more grafts  than you'd think.  If you have a 2000 graft restoration now to fill in the crown, in 5 years you will start to look thin again because the grafted hair will stay, but the native hair you still have now in the crown will have disappeared.  You could also develop a very unattractive "halo", where you have a nice circle of graft hair in your crown, surrounded by a ring of bald scalp, and then full hair again along the sides and back.  You are then going to need another 2000-3000 grafts to fix that, and you may not have enough hair grafts left over to restore the front and mid-scalp, which are much more critical areas.You should discuss these exact points with your surgeon before you decide to go for a transplant of your vertex.Good luck!