However, a light-skinned man with very dark hair will need much more hair to provide the same amount of coverage. You should figure that the average number of hair transplant grafts needed to cover a balding area is 25% of the original hair that was there. You can move up or down from this figure according to your other factors such as thickness, curliness, or color. Mini-grafts were better, but they still had the appearance of plugs, albeit smaller plugs. These were made up of 5-8 hairs each. This size of plugs is still being used by some surgeons even today. As time has gone by, the graft used by most surgeons has gone down. The hair transplant of grafts between 1-8 hairs is the norm. Not all hair transplant stories are good ones. If the doctor you consult with claims that his are, you cannot trust what he says. Virtually every doctor has some procedure that has gone wrong to some degree. A good doctor will admit this and provide a plan to avoid it. There are hair transplant stories that would make most people think twice about having the surgery. If the hair transplant procedure is done well, the scar will not be noticeable even if the patient likes to wear his hair in a short style. The scar will only become unsightly if the patient is genetically predisposed to keloid scarring. People who have this kind of problem need special treatment. If a patient is known to suffer from keloid scarring, the first thing a reputable doctor will do before hair transplant surgery is to explain the possibility of unsightly scars. Your relatives may have had hair that went bald into a horseshoe pattern and held at that stage. If this is the case, your surgeon will know what to expect. Then, he can take "bald-proof" hair from the sides and back of your head as donor hair and perform the hair transplant. If you have lost your hair because of some kind of trauma or burns, you will also make a good candidate for hair transplant surgery. Sometimes, they will try to make you believe they do better work than they do. They will show you pictures that are not true examples of their own work. They might show you photos that they have taken using lighting tricks to make the hair look thicker and healthier than it is. It is often hard to spot such tricks, but knowing that some surgeons do them will help you to watch out for them.