ttaco

This is 6 months post op. If anyone has any questions or would like to see more pics, please e-mail me at ttm27@hotmail.com. Thanks.

My before pic is of my micro/mini hairline which was done in the mid 90's. As you can see, the density was good but it was very "abrupt." The after pic is 6 months after growth of 1436 FU's. This surgery was done on 8/16/02. [This message was edited by ttaco on February 17, 2003 at 07:06 PM.]

My before pic is of my micro/mini hairline which was done in the mid 90's. As you can see, the density was good but it was very "abrupt." The after pic is 6 months after growth of 1436 FU's. This surgery was done on 8/16/02. [This message was edited by ttaco on February 17, 2003 at 07:06 PM.]

Don't worry, the hairs become "normal" like your existing hair after about 9-12 months. I have straight hair and they started out crooked in the beginning, now they're straight like the rest. Kind of weird how that happens.

Also try a shampoo with Jojoba oil in it. (Just go to www.google.com and type in jojoba oil shampoo, and you'll get a bunch of sites that sell it). That helped me quite a bit, as did cortisone cream on the donor site before bed. I had itching for a month or 2 post op.

I used it religously (every 30-45 mins while awake) after my FU transplant in August, and my scabs were mostly gone after 5 days and I had very little redness at 5 days too. Worked well for me.

It's a pretty cool product that seems like it's too good to be true when you first hear about it, but it really works pretty well if you have a decent amount of hair left. You sprinkle it on your existing hair, comb through, and makes your hair appear much thicker. It's more conducive to the middle of your head and crown area, not the hairline. I use it occassionally for special occasions or bad hair days. It's cheap too ($20/bottle) so it's worth trying. www.toppik.com is the website.

Shady, You made the right call. I have been using propecia for 6 months now along with minox 5% and I just incorporated 5% spiro cream at night and it has definitely helped. You won't wake up in 3 months with a full head of hair, but if you can get some improvement, who knows what may be available down the road. As someone told you earlier, being bald sucks, but it doesn't suck as bad as walking around with an awkward looking HT. Try costco.com for cheap, generic minox. I don't know how others feel about this, but you may want to consult with minoxidil.com to see if he thinks spiro or his regrowth shampoo (simialr to Nizoral) would be good for you. He charges a $20 consult fee in order to order products from him, but he will answer all of your questions via e-mail thereafter. If nothing else, his website will give you a better understaing of how Propecia and Minox work. Best of luck.

No, I didn't have scarring in the hairline area. My old hairline was not natural looking, even though the hair grew and the density was ok. I had always been able to hide the hairline for the most b/c my hair is pretty straight and I parted it on the side. Especially early on when I had remaining hairs there, it looked pretty good. But as time went by that started to change. If I combed my hair straight back it was VERY obvious the hairline was aesthetically poor.

Shady, it's Monday, did you have the HT or not? Very curious. I hope you didn't.

I've been told 6 months is not a good barometer of what the end result will look like. I think most hairs will be growing by the 6 month mark, but aesthetically it won't look close to complete. I am 5 months post op of a 1400 FU prcedure on my hairline to camouflage old micrografts. I'd say 90% of my hairs have grown in, they are just not quite long or thick enough yet to make it totally undetectable, but it's getting close to the point where I could comb it back without it looking too obvious. I had quick growth, about 10-20% of the hairs bever fell out. My doc told me that the hairs will start to thicken and mature between 8 and 10 months post op, so 9 months should give you a good idea of the end result, and the finished product will be about 12 months post op. E-mail me at ttm27@hotmail.com if you want to see my 5 month pic. I can also show you my before pic.

If you are not 100% sure about doing it, don't do it (at least not yet). You can always re-schedule if you decide to go forward with it. I also agree that 800-1000 grafts won't do a whole lot for you aesthetically. If the most respected members of this site (Jotronic, Arfy) tell you to wait, you should wait. I am also a HT veteran by the way. How old are you?

The products sound great in the ads. But experts say the bold claims in some ads often rest on a foundation of shaky research. The heavily advertised Avacor, for example, costs $260 for a three-month supply. That's a lot of money, but you might think it's worth the price if you've heard Dr. David Gordon guaranteeing it works. Gordon has been a familiar fixture in many of Avacor's radio and television ads. But he's also been familiar to inmates of a New York prison where, according to a Men's Health magazine investigation, Gordon was jailed in 1993 following his conviction for Medicaid fraud. The state also revoked his medical license. Expert Calls Research Flawed Avacor has since told 20/20 they've pulled Gordon from their ads. Even without the endorsement of a physician, Avacor makes bold assertions in its ads. One of Avacor's ads claims that "in six years of clinical use by tens of thousands of men and women "??? Avacor re-grew hair on virtually everyone." Dr. Douglas Altchek, a hair loss expert at New York's Mt. Sinai Hospital, disagrees, and says Avacor's research is flawed because it relied on patients themselves or company employees to assess hair growth. Avacor ads describe the product as "a natural herbal treatment." It includes the herb saw palmetto, which some experts feel may have some effect on hair growth. However, as far as its all-natural claim, Avacor's ingredient list includes the chemical name for minoxidil "??? an FDA-approved hair growth solution that's been around for years. But minoxidil, which Avacor says will be marked more clearly on the label, only grows significant hair in about 26 percent of users. A month's supply of generic minoxidil goes for $13 "??? a lot cheaper than the nearly $90 a month for the Avacor system. But not every product has got minoxidil in the mix. Buyer Be Wary Another product out there "??? Hair Genesis "??? is a combination of herbs including saw palmetto. It was invented by Geno Marcovicci, who for years in a now-discontinued commercial claimed that the product "has been shown in clinical studies to work in over 90 percent of the patients." After sponsoring a new, double-blind study Marcovicci had to revise that claim downward. "We found approximately 66 percent re-growth in our treatment population," the new ad claims. That's still impressive until you find out the study consisted of only 10 patients who used the product. "In a study such as this, with such few subjects, it's frankly invalid," Altchek said. Marcovicci also boasted in his infomercial of an endorsement by a medical expert "??? Dr. Michael Sassman. In the ad, Marcovicci refers to Sassman as a physician and a hair restoration expert. We learned, however, that Sassman is not a hair restoration expert. He's a radiologist. Marcovicci said, "Well, perhaps he doesn't have the expertise that some other physicians in this area of medicine might." And some of the impressive "before and after" pictures featured on Marcovicci's infomercial and on the Hair Genesis Web site, aren't so impressive after all. Some of the clients featured in the photos had hair transplant surgery. "In at least two of those, I know for sure that the main improvement was due to surgery," said Dr. Dan Didocha, referring to the photos. Didocha said he not only performed hair transplant surgery on some of the before and after subjects, but said he also operated on Sassman and Marcovicci before Didocha and Marcovicci had a bitter falling out as business associates. Marcovicci says he did not use the pictures in a misleading way. When asked whether viewers should be told that some people in the infomercial had hair transplant surgery, including Marcovicci, he said, "Maybe you should be told that I would have needed a heck of a lot more hair transplant surgery if I hadn't used Hair Genesis," he said. An ad for another product, Hair ZX, says you can "re-grow dense natural hair safely and effectively, free." The fine print notes a "shipping and handling" fee, but how bad could that be? As it turns out, it's pretty steep "??? $95 to ship and handle a dozen bottles. After shelling out nearly $100 for Hair ZX, we waited six months and still hadn't received it. The company blamed a distributor for the problems and has promised to refund to consumers thousands of dollars in orders that were never shipped. A Brave New Bald World? Of course there is another option for men losing their hair. The guys at the annual Bald-headed Men of America convention in North Carolina say hair loss is a cause for celebration "??? not shame. They say women find it sexy. Whether it's considered sexy or not, Dr. Altchek thinks baldness will become more common. "Like it or not, I think that in the 25th century "??? the whole concept of hair will be something that will be seen as a relic of the past," he said. In essence, Altchek says, the world is becoming progressively bald. "Due to increased cranial capacity, we're going to have tighter scalps. Tighter scalps, less hair. That's the way it works ... even with all the remedies, I think it's inevitable." For men desperate to postpone the inevitable "??? the only FDA-approved treatments are minoxidil and the drug propecia "??? neither of which works for everyone. Hair transplants are getting better "??? but cost thousands. Or you can forget the plugs, the drugs and the rugs and let nature take its course.

The products sound great in the ads. But experts say the bold claims in some ads often rest on a foundation of shaky research. The heavily advertised Avacor, for example, costs $260 for a three-month supply. That's a lot of money, but you might think it's worth the price if you've heard Dr. David Gordon guaranteeing it works. Gordon has been a familiar fixture in many of Avacor's radio and television ads. But he's also been familiar to inmates of a New York prison where, according to a Men's Health magazine investigation, Gordon was jailed in 1993 following his conviction for Medicaid fraud. The state also revoked his medical license. Expert Calls Research Flawed Avacor has since told 20/20 they've pulled Gordon from their ads. Even without the endorsement of a physician, Avacor makes bold assertions in its ads. One of Avacor's ads claims that "in six years of clinical use by tens of thousands of men and women "??? Avacor re-grew hair on virtually everyone." Dr. Douglas Altchek, a hair loss expert at New York's Mt. Sinai Hospital, disagrees, and says Avacor's research is flawed because it relied on patients themselves or company employees to assess hair growth. Avacor ads describe the product as "a natural herbal treatment." It includes the herb saw palmetto, which some experts feel may have some effect on hair growth. However, as far as its all-natural claim, Avacor's ingredient list includes the chemical name for minoxidil "??? an FDA-approved hair growth solution that's been around for years. But minoxidil, which Avacor says will be marked more clearly on the label, only grows significant hair in about 26 percent of users. A month's supply of generic minoxidil goes for $13 "??? a lot cheaper than the nearly $90 a month for the Avacor system. But not every product has got minoxidil in the mix. Buyer Be Wary Another product out there "??? Hair Genesis "??? is a combination of herbs including saw palmetto. It was invented by Geno Marcovicci, who for years in a now-discontinued commercial claimed that the product "has been shown in clinical studies to work in over 90 percent of the patients." After sponsoring a new, double-blind study Marcovicci had to revise that claim downward. "We found approximately 66 percent re-growth in our treatment population," the new ad claims. That's still impressive until you find out the study consisted of only 10 patients who used the product. "In a study such as this, with such few subjects, it's frankly invalid," Altchek said. Marcovicci also boasted in his infomercial of an endorsement by a medical expert "??? Dr. Michael Sassman. In the ad, Marcovicci refers to Sassman as a physician and a hair restoration expert. We learned, however, that Sassman is not a hair restoration expert. He's a radiologist. Marcovicci said, "Well, perhaps he doesn't have the expertise that some other physicians in this area of medicine might." And some of the impressive "before and after" pictures featured on Marcovicci's infomercial and on the Hair Genesis Web site, aren't so impressive after all. Some of the clients featured in the photos had hair transplant surgery. "In at least two of those, I know for sure that the main improvement was due to surgery," said Dr. Dan Didocha, referring to the photos. Didocha said he not only performed hair transplant surgery on some of the before and after subjects, but said he also operated on Sassman and Marcovicci before Didocha and Marcovicci had a bitter falling out as business associates. Marcovicci says he did not use the pictures in a misleading way. When asked whether viewers should be told that some people in the infomercial had hair transplant surgery, including Marcovicci, he said, "Maybe you should be told that I would have needed a heck of a lot more hair transplant surgery if I hadn't used Hair Genesis," he said. An ad for another product, Hair ZX, says you can "re-grow dense natural hair safely and effectively, free." The fine print notes a "shipping and handling" fee, but how bad could that be? As it turns out, it's pretty steep "??? $95 to ship and handle a dozen bottles. After shelling out nearly $100 for Hair ZX, we waited six months and still hadn't received it. The company blamed a distributor for the problems and has promised to refund to consumers thousands of dollars in orders that were never shipped. A Brave New Bald World? Of course there is another option for men losing their hair. The guys at the annual Bald-headed Men of America convention in North Carolina say hair loss is a cause for celebration "??? not shame. They say women find it sexy. Whether it's considered sexy or not, Dr. Altchek thinks baldness will become more common. "Like it or not, I think that in the 25th century "??? the whole concept of hair will be something that will be seen as a relic of the past," he said. In essence, Altchek says, the world is becoming progressively bald. "Due to increased cranial capacity, we're going to have tighter scalps. Tighter scalps, less hair. That's the way it works ... even with all the remedies, I think it's inevitable." For men desperate to postpone the inevitable "??? the only FDA-approved treatments are minoxidil and the drug propecia "??? neither of which works for everyone. Hair transplants are getting better "??? but cost thousands. Or you can forget the plugs, the drugs and the rugs and let nature take its course.

You may already know this, but Proscar contains the same medicine as Propecia (finasteride). Proscar is 5 mg finasteride and Propecia is 1 mg. Since you are looking to save money, see if you can get a prescription for Proscar instead, and then get a pill cutter and cut the Proscar into 4ths (or 5ths if you can). Proscar costs me $70 at my local pharmacy for 30 pills. 30 pills lasts me 150 days. I believe Propecia on the other hand is about $55/month. Cutting Proscar with the pill cutter is very easy and in my opinion worth saving $40/month vs. Propecia. I cut the Proscar into 5ths so I get approx 1 mg finasteride in each piece (each piece is not exactly the same size, but over the course of 5 days it evens out). I would also recommend 5% generic minoxidil at Costco. If there isn't a Costco near you, you can get it at www.costco.com. It's only $20 for 4 months. So by doing these 2 things, you'll only be paying $19/month for finasteride and 5% minox. Like the others said, do a lot of research before getting a HT. Don't rush in to it.

I've used Toppik and it works pretty well. I've never seen it in stores, just the website www.toppik.com.

I had 430 minis/micros done when I was 25-26. They went about 40% back on my head. Aesthetically speaking, the end result was not great as time went on (big surprise, huh?). I'm 32 now. The best thing I can say about my minis/micros was that the doctor placed them pretty far back on my hairline, I think 8.5cm above my brow. While I was very young and naive at the time and didn't ask nearly as many questions as I should have, I was mature enough to know I didn't want a low hairline. THANK GOD!So since the doc didn't place the grafts too low, this past August I was able to get 1400 FU's put in front of the old grafts. When I get 8-9 months post op I'll post my pics. I still have pretty good coverage in the crown and I am currently using Proscar, 5% minox and spiro to try to keep what I have. I have straight hair. While my old hairline looked very obvious when it was exposed (combing it straight back wasn't an option), I was able to comb it to the side so that most of the hairline was covered by hair falling in front of it. Even though I was always self conscious about my hairline, some people that I told were stunned that I had previous work done (including my boss of 9 years). I guess I got pretty good at combing it the "right way." The old grafts all grew in well, no problems with growing in the wrong direction, not too much cobblestoning. So it could have been a lot worse. When the new FU's come in, it should end up looking pretty good. I just hope I can keep what I have left so I don't need any more surgeries.

Check out Dr. Vogel in Baltimore. I went for a consultation with him about removing my old minis/micros and re-distributing them as FU's, but the consensus from other quality doctors was that my old hairline was high enough that densely packed FU's in front of the old work would camouflage it, and that it was unnecessary to take out the old grafts. Vogel was hell bent on taking out the old ones, but I decided against it. That is his specialty though. You should at least call him. Good luck.

Joe Greco is in Clearwater, and Paul Rose is in either Clearwater or Tampa. May be worth talking to both of them if you want a good doc in that part of Fla.

Jerry Jones, owner of Dallas Cowboys, also had a HT. His hair looks good, the rest of his plastic surgery doesn't.

Paul, where can one go to get these products? Thanks.

Arfy, Did you see any of Puig's patients before he did your surgery? Or, since you were only 20, were you gullible and believed what he told you without asking the right questions?

Thanks for sharing the success story regarding spiro. I am considering adding it to my "routine". As far as the pics go, you just need to buy or borrow a digital camera, or get your pictures scanned in to the computer.

Arfy, I can understand why it's an issue. And you're right, people should make up their OWN minds. Being an MD is a credential. I won't deny that. But there are other credentials to consider, namely results. You wouldn't go to a general practitioner to get a hair transplant just because he's an MD. Joe is a professional hair transplant surgeon just like the rest of the guys who are on the recommended list. He's been a physician's assistant for years and has been in the industry for 20+ years. It is valid to tell people he's not an MD, and Joe certianly doesn't claim to be an MD, but to say he's as qualified as the guy working at Dunkin Donuts is ridiculous. I think very highly of Joe after he did my last surgery and it just angers me to see people who know nothing about him trash him as though he is unqualified. People should make up their own minds, but in my opinion Joe should be someone any prospective patient should consider in making their decision.

Comparing Greco to "the guy behind the counter at Dunkin Donuts" shows how stupid you are, Kid. Let's see, a guy who's been doing transplants for 20+ years who was recommended by Ron Shapiro and who has produced inredible results vs. a guy making donuts? Joe may not be an MD but he has more experience and know-how in performing transplants that most doctors out there. And he has an MD on premise all day. You can get an MD from Bosley to do your work. It may be terrible, but hey, at least you can tell everyone an MD gave you a terrible HT. Check an old post from Pat Hennessy who also said Joe does great work. From my understanding the reason Joe is no longer recommended by this site is because he doesn't pay a fee like the rest of the recommended docs. The bottom line is results, and from the patients I've seen, I'll put Joe's work up against anyone out there. Anyone. Check out Andy's pics if you don't believe me. Unless you've seen his patients in person, you have no right to give an opinion on his work.