What is a “Megasession”?

This is when the physician transplants 3,000 to even 6,000 or more very small grafts in a session. The implied objective is to transplant a larger portion of the bald area, and to do it more quickly than in the past. Be careful! One must always compare apples to apples. There are a few points to consider; 1) If a session of 3,000 grafts are all 1 hair grafts (which equals 3000 hairs) then that may actually represent fewer hairs being transplanted than say 1500 grafts with from 1- 5 hairs per graft, (on average 3 hairs per graft) which would yield 4500 hairs; 2) If the megasession is spread over both the front and back half of the scalp you may be starting to treat an area (the back half) which, if you are a young patient, would have been better left untreated. You may for example end up having an island of hair with a sea of baldness around it – because the baldness has extended beyond what was originally estimated – and not enough grafts left in the donor region to fix the problem. 3) The more grafts transplanted, the more incisions in the recipient area and the greater the interruption of blood supply to the grafts. If more than 3,000 plus grafts (depending on the size of the area) are transplanted in a single session, some of the grafts may not grow at all, while some may grow fewer hairs than they would have if the sessions were smaller. I will do megasessions only in appropriate patients. In those patients I am happy to perform a session of 2000 – 3000 or more 1-2 hair “micrografts”. However, I make it clear to the patient that although this will blend in very quickly it will produce a somewhat thinner look and may further sessions to create the sort of density most patients want. Additionally, these operations generally take 5 – 6 hours or more.

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