Many veteraned hair transplant patients are familiar with the term "follicular unit grafting" and have come to know this as the today's "Gold Standard" in hair transplant surgery. What many don't know however, is that a "follicular unit" falls under a particular category of "micrograft" - a term often wrongfully associated with a much less favorable and also misconstrued term "minigraft".

Believe it or not even some of the leading physicians in the hair transplant profession today use some "minigrafts" when appropriate for the patient. But what exactly is a "minigraft"? Are they really as bad as some have perceived them to be?

Unfortunately, the terms for the various types of grafts have been misunderstood and miscontrued in this community for a long time.

Recently, Coalition member Dr. Ron Shapiro wrote an article to help hair loss sufferers understand the differences and appropriate use of various types of grafts.

I encourage you to read through Understanding Hair Transplant "Graft" Terminology to learn the various graft types and how they're appropriately used.

Best wishes,

Bill (Falc)

I thought Dr. Shapiro's article was very thorough and helped explain some of the terminology differences for the different grafts.
I wanted to add that an important reason for having different size grafts is for CREATING GRADIENTS of hair density on the balding head. In perhaps half of the men who come to us, we look at their donor area and the area on top that will probably bald in the future, and we realize we can't fill in everything. Simply creating "wall-to-wall-carpet" of FU's in the same density and hairs/graft from one side to the other is not very artistic and has a tendency to often create a "see through" result. But when the surgeon thinks things through and plans where he/she is going to use the 3-hair FU's, the 2-hair FU's, and what planting densities will be used, then one can imitate some stage of early natural hair loss in a man and have it look good for the rest of that person's life span. We have two tools for creating a gradient: the density we choose to plant the grafts, and the number of hairs per graft. I, along with a lot of other current practitioners, feel that the DFU graft of 4-5 hairs is very valuable in the front-central "core" area for blocking light from revealing the scalp and in creating visible density. It does take some judgement in selecting which patients are appropriate for these slightly larger grafts. Someone with coarse, dark hair and pale skin would not be a candidate. Virtually all patients with "salt and pepper" colored hair I believe are excellent candidates for this approach. The important thing to remember is that these grafts have to be used in such a way that you don't actually see the individual grafts when viewing the patient. We typically place 500 FU's along the front hairline to outline the front view of the patient's hair and also use them in large amounts along both sides and in the rear areas.
Mike Beehner, M.D.