Spanker

There really is not a enough data to give you any valuable advice. 

Preop pics would be helpful.  My guess would be that you still had hair to lose when you had the 3200 grafts. You opted to not take finasteride and lost more hair in a relatively short amount of time, leaving your transplant sparse compared to your initial results. However, if your transplant were dry and combed, I feel it wouldn't be a disaster. 

Anyway, you could consider fin and have a consultation to check on how much donor you have left. I would guess that you do have grafts left. 

10 hours ago, jjsrader said:

Regardless, you waited 'til  your mid 30's - had very little miniaturization (as you noted) and got a great yield vis a vi strip and yea, Konior combines the ART of a hair transplant w/the science & has a very good eye for his craft.

How many grafts for your strip, btw?

I had a little less than 2200 I believe. 

9 hours ago, jjsrader said:

Your natural hair caliber and wave are extraordinary for a male at age 40 (your native hair).  Frankly, I'm pleased you are so happy - but you're results are not typical.  They are so far outside the norm from a statistical standpoint.  I would put it at less than 1% of hair patients could possibly acheive your look - maybe those Spanish guys and dudes w/insanely thick/wavy donor hair that is the best of the best (comparitive to a woman's hair diameter and natural density).

Also, as a Norwood 2 who then had a hair transplant (considering how likely your donor hair's exceptional quality) - your doctor really did a great job cherry-picking the best fue's - after all he could use your entire donor area and be very picky 'cause you didn't have a large procedure, right?

Results like this used to trigger me - now I take the high road.  Rock-star hair my man.  And the hairline will serve you for a long time.  I'm sure you know all this and are grateful for your doctor's excellent work and your proactive research that most people don't fully appreciate.

Cheers!

 

I considered myself a NW2.5. 

I don't know that my caliber is extraordinary at all.  I think it's pretty medium, I just dont have a lot of miniaturization so it looks pretty solid. Super thick caliber hair is awesome, but it's also harder to get such soft result.

I had around 2200 grafts and it was strip.  At the time, when I was researching about 9 years ago, FUE was just coming into it's own.  The results were not as strong as they are now and the visible scarring was worse because most docs used a 1mm punch. I also have a scalp condition that prevents me from shaving my head, so I was OK with Strip. Dr. Konior was very picky about the caliber of each hair and where it was placed, meaning he split of 1s and F1s (fine 1s), which allowed for such a natural result by meticulously placing for the most natural result. 

My results may be out of the norm because there are so many variables for each if us, but there is nothing extra special about it either.  Anyone who is lucky enough to have have minor loss (so far), want better hair, commits to medication, and does extensive amounts of research to pick top doc can get a similar result I believe. 

3 minutes ago, jj51702 said:

Looks great Spanker. Is finasteride all you use?

I also use minox at night once a day. 

Hello all, 

Wanted to drop a line and make and update and some observations. I am 6.5 years post op. 

1.  Finasteride has been a life saver for me. I've been on fin for almost 9 years.  This last decade on being on it have allowed me to pass up many of my peers.  As I have held steady, many have began to lose. The value is different for every person based on how picky they are and how aggressive their hairloss is. I have no thoughts that fin will work for me forever, but I do believe I'll always be above my baseline on it. IMO, anyone that is a NW4 and better needs to be on it when they get a HT.  There is just too much to hair lose and it's too hard to replace.

2. Turning 40 this week is something else. It's interesting how fast you age. I've said before that I would have been happy with a higher hairline and saved the grafts, had I been 40 when I had the surgery. However, I wasn't. Luckily, my hair looks great and I've been have to hold steady. My advice is to err on the conservative side and you can always come back and do a little drop, like Spex recently did. 

3.  Dr.Konior is still doing top notch work. I do not deal with scheduling or money.  I just give advice based on my almost decade of research , talk about my case, and answer questions that I can. 

So anyway, here is to turning 40, Dr. K, and Finasteride.

Depends...who is going to do it. If you get a average or below average doc, I say wait it skip it. You are 41 with with a great head of hair. 

If you are going to get on fin in the next your or 2 and you go to a top doc, I would say go for it. 

I've seen no evidence to believe that he has had FUE. 

1 hour ago, HairDew said:

I don't know, I would expect more from 3500+ grafts.

This is only at 3 months. 

Looks like you had poor growth and you are losing additional hair.  The hairline is waaaaay too low. 

Very natural result 

Some people do only have 4000 grafts available. Asians do tend to have a lower lifetime availability, but the caliber tends to be better. Without pics, who knows. 

I have been using it and fin for 9 years.  I seem to be holding steady, so I'm afraid to do anything different. 

4 hours ago, 1978matt said:

Ralph Fiennes:  great hair in The English Patient (aged 33/34); still quite good in the early 2000s (38-40).

...now at least a NW4A aged 56

You are right. He has lost a lot in the last 15 years. 

He's an interesting case on someone in their early 40s was a NW2.5 to NW3 that ends up a NW6. 

Alan Alda is another one. Its not something that is terribly uncommon. 

I just have a hard time believing your numbers unless you had a mini graft procedure. It isn't natural to have 90 percent 3s and 4s. I have also told you before that you absolutely do NOT have unusually thick or coarse hair and that was easy to see in your donor photos. 

I imagine that you will need to give Dr. Keller permission to discuss your case to get the facts out about it.  You should see nice improvements still after 5 months and 3 weeks. 

I see no reason to remove grafts based on the pics. 

So, I noticed The Mountain from Game of Thrones got a hair transplant. 

Had a nice head, beautiful wife, great career, and the strongest man in the world, and still, hairloss made him insecure.

Good for him though.  

Looks appropriate and natural. 

At a glance, I would guess that to be a 7cm hairline. 

The recessed corners look better and will age better too. 

This looks very natural. 

Is the left current?

Very nice procedure. 

Detailed write up. I do disagree with some of it.  

To say that there is less skill involved than a nose job or breast reduction is an opinion I am not sure i agree with, as this would assume that you know what it takes to do these three surgeries very well, and at 28 years old, there is a good chance you have not significant experience in all three to learn them well.  Sure, a hair transplant can be done easily enough, and is tried by many, but to do it really well...there are just a handful of top tier surgeons IMO. I would not minimize the skill level that it takes the be a an elite HT doc.  Transplantation is more that graft survival. A lot of it is art and I am sure that you can appreciate that. 

You are very right, lighting and angles in photos can be deceptive and create expectations that will not be lived up to. 

I feel like these sites are important for patients to see results from both the docs and the patients. That is why I would NOT go to doc that doesnt have an online presence from patients and his or her clinic. The doc, also, will find a LOT of benefit from marketing on a site like this. Assume that the doc averages 2500 grafts a case. He does surgery 4 days a week and takes 6 weeks vacation per year, and because of his excellent global reputation from a site like this he is able to charge $1 more per graft, this means that his practice will bring in $460,000 per year more.  So, if they have no interest in internet marketing, IMO, they are either not an elite surgeon OR they are poor businessmen. 

2 minutes ago, Phil36fromaus said:

What are the requirements?

I wholeheartedly agree Spanker. My last transplant i went to a clinic that uses deceptively soft lighting to bolster their results. In real life i had a thinning crown, but under their lighting I have a full head of hair. I've seen other posts here where doctors use certain angles to make their work look better than it is a well. If you are doing quality work your results should be able to withstand the (literal) light of day.

How can a patient reasonably assess and moderate their expectations for surgery if different clinics are not held to the same photographic standards? 

If the pre op photos are in the same lighting, this would be a hard call to make.  I think that resolution of your photo is good, and I would say that people with a full head of hair could look thin in that lighting on the left. 

I say that to say, I'm not wanting clinics to post photos that make their work look bad, I just want to be able see it  

Phil, they have a sticky thread on how to post photos in the Post by Clinics forum. 

Looking forward to following. 

I enjoy seeing clinic posts at the end of the month, which seems to be when a small wave of them usually come in. 

However, my patience for poor photography is waning and I believe very good photography should be required by physicians that are posting their results when they are recommended. 

I am not talking about patients. They can post poor photos if they want.  We do not deserve anything from them and anything they provide is a generous bonus.  I am talking about clinics. 

I know that the moderators give the clinics requirements for posting photos and I encourage them to hold the clinics to it. 

We have cell phones today that can take excellent photos in good lighting, yet a lot of the photos posted lately look like they were taken with potatoes. 

I caution the readers to not consider clinics who post poor photos, because if there is low attention to detail in documentation and marketing, there is a chance that there will be low attention to detail on the operating table. 

All the best,

Spanker