blkblk

I actually had mine done with Feller. He was quite conservative so I do not think it is caused by the surgery itself.

I think I am experiencing the same. 10 months post op I couldn't be happier. My hair was looking great and I felt that I was just one more procedure from a full head of hair.

I am now 14 months post op and am seeing about 50-100 hairs in sink when I brush my hair instead of the previous 3-4 a few months earlier. This is really scaring me and I'm not sure I can handle the emotional roller coaster of losing it all. I now have less hair on top than I did before my 3300 graft FUT.

Do you have any ideas as to how long it would be needed for most people to make it 'mostly' undetectable? How about 16 days?

Hi,

Last year I had an FUT surgery of 3300 grafts and am happy with the results however I would now like to go back and have some more work done. Unfortunately I won't be able to take another full month off work as I had done before so I don't think strip is an option for me this time.

I would like to go down the FUE path but am unsure what this would look like 1 week after surgery and have had trouble tracking down many examples from this site which show both donor and recipient areas 5-10 days after surgery.

I normally have my head buzzed down to a #4 around the sides and back and long on top. I am thinking of getting 150-200 grafts in each temple to thicken them up and around 800 grafts into the crown.

So, what I'm wondering is how well I could keep it hidden that I've undergone FUE if I only have 9 days off work after surgery. Will the donor area still be red after 9 days? Will the recipient have many scabs? Can the grafts be extracted without shaving donor down so far that my strip scar will be really visible? Can they be implanted without having to shave the recipient area?

If it is a lot less visible to do several small 'lunch time sessions' then I'm fine with this too. I'm very interested to hear your thoughts.

I had worse than average shock loss between months 1 and 3.5

It filled in at roughly the same time as the transplanted hair grew, perhaps a tiny bit faster.

From my experience, people will probably know that something has been done after 2-3 weeks. I needed 4 weeks to get close to normal appearance and even then I required heavy usage of concealers to hide the scar.

It was after about 2 months that the scar was no longer an issue and about 3 months that the shock loss was no longer an issue.

That is perfect, thanks chrisdav!

I'd like to extend this question a bit further.. as it is very relevant to what I have just come here to ask.

I am now at 3months and 1 week since getting a HT. The hair is very clearly growing back and I would say it is at an acceptable rate compared with others I have seen. It is certainly not fast, but I am getting growth.

My question is, at 3 months, roughly what density of the final result can be expected? I would estimate that I need about 3x as many hairs to sprout in order to achieve an end result which I would be happy with and 4x as many to give me something which I would be proud of. For the average person, would it seem ok that only 25-30% of their transplanted hair has sprouted after this time?

I got pimples and about a dozen hairs at 1 month. Nothing changed for a further 2 months and now my hair is starting to fill in (but haven't gotten pimples again)

This is correct, however I believe he was comparing the hair instantly after the transplant v final result. I remember this because a lot of the 'darkness' which he said made it look much better afterwards, was actually blood where the holes are punched in the recipient area.

I would expect that just before grafts fall out (2-4 weeks), the redness gives a bit of a false sense of density, however to counter balance this, when the hair has grown back after 12-18 months, the shadows under the longer hair would also give darkness.

My scar was ok but stretched to 5mm on one side, mine seemed to stretch between 2 and 3 months post op. I'm leaving the staples in for 30days this time as I feel that this time is crucial for healing and should make things stronger in the long run.

Same story with me but a little earlier. My scar as tiny.. almost undetectable for the first month, the someone in the mid second month (possibly when I started going back to the gym?) stretched one side to about 5-8mm. The other side looks great, but as it is, a #4 is too short for me.

my hair was growing like a champion until about 1 month. Then I shed all of it and got quite bad shock loss. I am at 2 months now and I can feel and see the shockloss filling in.

I think that the timing of these things are different for everyone - what seems to be largely consistent with the good doctors is a happy patient at the end.

Making a scientific process like this scalable will take quite some time, especially if you consider demand. Will there be enough demand for this surgery? Not like consumer goods.

The existing HT procedures aren't at all scalable either though.

How much more work can it be for someone to grow hair in a test tube than it is to individually cut out the grafts as they do in FUE?

I think the costs will be higher than traditional HT simply because the patients would be willing to pay it - not because the procedure itself is any more expensive to perform.

That looks like normal shock loss - quite similar to mine in fact. I am 2 months out and using concealer still but I feel like another few weeks and I won't have to anymore.

Some people use bio-oil. I got some but haven't been very vigilant with it.

I don't think you 'have' to dilute it before applying, but if you've seen the stuff you'd understand why.

I would think that it might lose some effectiveness if you use other shampoos at the same time

I love it. I felt that it plus min. plus fin. were doing wonders for my hair. It also smells great. (I mix it with water to thin it out a lot - it is very thick coming out of the bottle).

Nizoral is the other one which people often use - I haven't tried that yet

tattooing is an option - I dont think we have seen enough cases of this to make a verdict though

I used to hate the foam - it seemed to be much more difficult to apply to the scalp (rather than the hair) than the drops were.

Recently I noticed that I was getting much more dandruff from the drops, so I have started using the foam before work and the drops before bed. This is working very well for me.

One tip with the foam - wet your hand and then brush the water off your hand, before you use the foam. When your hand is slightly damp, the foam doesn't just disappear before it hits your scalp (which is the problem I used to have)

kardo: 1 graft from a bad doctor is not the same as a graft from a good doctor. Please be careful not to base your decision purely on cost alone.

As a general rule of thumb, a NW 6 would require approximately 7000 grafts. Hair density, colour and level of NW6 also have an impact.

You should not aim to have it all done in one session. Aim for the front 2/3rds initially and then tackle the crown at a later date.

htrocks: thanks for sharing your site. I am at 7 weeks now and quite depressed (even though I know things will improve a lot!). Seeing your results has made me feel much more positive.

I looked hilarious when I swelled.. fortunately it was not on the front of my face, but I had big bulges (really big) slowly moving down the side of my head in front of my ears. I looked like a chipmunk, and each day it moved down about 2 inches, until it disappeared after about 3-4 days. I wish I took pictures now.

hairupthere here to help calm us down again. Much appreciated!

When you say that the lost hair will come back in 3-4 months, are you meaning 3-4 months from the date of the HT or from when they fell out (which for me was ~3-4 weeks after the HT)

got any spare? I could do with a few of those quads!

I've been reading a bit on shock loss in the recipient area as I believe that I am experiencing that now.

I am now 6 weeks post op and I feel like my hair density from the mid third to the crown has lessened significantly, almost as though 50-70% of the native hairs have fallen out, or become thing. I say feel since I am aware that I might be remembering my hair as better than it was, or there may be some other factor/illusion in play rather than just density and thickness.

I am not surprised to experience shock loss as I believe this is quite common. However, it seems to be difficult to find any pictures of others who's native hair has thinned as much as I believe mine has.

I have a few questions regarding shockloss in the recipient area:

- What does it look like? Mine appears to be diffuse and not concentrated in any one area. I have seen some people describe theirs as patches, which mine definitely isn't. (I do have shockloss around the scar which is a patch however).

- I have read that this can sometimes be permanent, where the lost hair is very weak to begin with. I was taking finasteride, minodoxil and vitamins before the procedure and I know the hair wasn't great but I didn't think it was terrible - how/when will I know whether this is permanent shockloss?

- Best case scenario, when could I expect the native hair to start growing back?

Thanks

I checked his website and agree with you - 4K looks like a great amount to be doing the frontal third.

Perhaps the other docs were just quoting for the temples only.

keep in mind that the 4K session was FUT whereas the other two smaller sessions were both FUE.

There was probably some confusion regarding this.