Maximum amount of grafts possible to transplant at top of head?

Realistically, even if it was possible, why would you spend well over $100,000 for surgery (to have hair) and want to shave your head afterwards to spend more money to cover the FUE scars with SMP?  25,000 graft harvest from your scalp is not possible or realistic. You need to talk with your doctor and have basic understanding of what is possible and have realistic goals.

Dear earlybird12334,

Thank you for your clinical post. It sounds like as an advanced Norwood 6
patient you have but a small occipital temporal rim of available donor
hair. As a centre that has been
performing advanced FUE both NeoGraft and artist for 6 or 7 years, we also have
expertise taking hair and harvesting hair from the back, chest and body
areas. Having said that, the occipital
and temporal donor scalp is still the best FUE donor and in general is unlikely
we will be able to harvest more than 3,000 follicular units during an initial
session. For Norwood 6 patients the goal
is to try to create a natural frontotemporal hairline in the front third
followed by a second session usually 6-12 months later for a mid scalp
restoration. You’ll never be able to
harvest 20,000-25,000 grafts, however, by harvesting over three sequential
sessions 10,000 follicular units you may achieve between 20,000 and 25,000
hairs, the average follicular unit has 2.5 hairs per FUE.

Realistic expectations require a realistic consultation with
a very experienced FUE team.

I hope this information has been of some assistance and best
of luck.

For more information, please review the link below.

R. Stephen Mulholland, M.D.

Certified Plastic Surgeon

Yorkville, Toronto

The number of grafts that can be harvested depends on the degree of hair loss and the donor availability.  If  you are a grade six on the Norwood scale of hair loss even if your density is good, your donor availability is limited. Therefore, I doubt that you have vailable donor for 20000 grafts.  You need a to consult with a hair loss specialist in person for an evaluation. 

Without going into mathematical detail, what you seeking is not really possible.  If you want this much hair coverage and to look good and shave your head later in life, get a high quality custom made hairpiece. 

The absolute number of grafts is the wrong question, but I will try to answer it anyway. There is a safe number of grafts that can be harvested and it depends upon your donor density. Assuming that you are a Caucasian with an average total hair count of 100,000 hairs on your head, the donor area safely has 20,000 hairs or 10,000 follicular units which can be removed with FUE. That would, of course, remove all of the donor hair without leaving anything behind, so at most 1/2 to 2/3rds of these follicular units might be harvested. The higher numbers might cause vascular compromise so 7,000 FUEs are risky. Safely 5,000 is not unreasonable for a Class 6 pattern patients with normal weight hair to get reasonable coverage.