As we all know, in some areas of life size really does matter.
For example, the size of a car engine — the bigger it is, the more horsepower. Or the size of a yacht, or the carat weight of a diamond.
But when it comes to hair transplantation, that’s not the size that matters.
What really makes the difference is thickness — and I’ll show you exactly what I mean using this little “work of art” we put together with my team.
Here, you see a 5×5 grid of thick pasta pieces, each placed 1 cm apart. Next to it, you see thin pasta placed every 0.5 cm — double the density and double the number of pasta sticks. On the far side, you see the same number of pasta pieces as in the first example — 25 each — but look at the huge difference! With the thick pasta, you can barely see my blue shirt behind it, while with the thin pasta the result is completely see-through.
And that brings us to the common question patients ask:
Why do some hair transplants look very sparse, while others seem much denser, even if done by the same doctor?
The simple answer: when hair is implanted at the same density, thick hairs can create a dense or at least decent look, while thin hairs at the same density don’t provide any real coverage.
So, in hair transplantation — apart from all the other factors like technique, number of grafts, graft survival, and more — one crucial parameter isn’t just density, as many people think. It’s hair shaft thickness combined with density that really determines the final result.
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