BaldWhisky

MSM doesn't make it grow at an earlier point but makes it grow quicker once it starts. I started using Minoxidil, Biotin, vitammine E, B6, B12 and MSM after my HT.

Everyone is different but I saw the first growth after six weeks so at least these suppliments didn't hurt!

It definately looks like you have more of a "shadow" effect from hairs in the scalp compared to your pictures from November.

But you seriolusly should stop taking 2.5mg. Remember that it's cancer medicine you are taking!

Do some research into it and you will see that there is no upside in using more than 1mg a day, it only increases side effects. There is actually limited increased effect in using 1mg over 0.2mg so your dose is straightout unnecessary high!

I would say you estimate of 7k-10k for strip would be a little high...Im thinking " on average " 6k-8k via FUT....probably get another 2k via FUE....so in general terms, probably around 10k total...

Just a question on this. Is it well documented that you get the max out by combining FUT and FUE?

For example, most people would perfom two FUT to get the 6-10k grafts. From that point you imply that a natural third HT might be best done by FUE to get more grafts. At the same time we have for example Joe from H&W here who has had four HTs, all of which FUT.

Is that more an unusual solution you think?

Of course you can get grafts from a bigger area with FUE, but on the other hand FUT would have a bettter covering effect in the donor area as the remaining grafts are stretched over a bigger area.

As you already have a scar and a thinning donor area, why not just keep going with smaller FUTs at least until the last <500-1000 grafts?

Pro hair clinc belgium are the cheapest i have seen for FUE, they are popular on some of the other boards I frequent, I quite wonder what the HT veterans of this site would make of them? I have seen consistent and well documented results but as far as I understand, its a group of technicians, not one surgeon (apologies to all if this is all mis-information).

 

 

Prohair have many good results to show but most of them are from before the surgeon quit. So be careful in looking too much into the cases that are more than a year old or so (can't remember exactly when he quit). IF they are good I would expect to see they show as many new cases ove r the next year to show that they can operate well without the surgeon.

Feel free to challenge me but it's widely accepted that dr farjo is the only Uk doctor worth considering. Do yourself a favor and consider at least the excellent doctors in Belgum which are very close by both considering travel time and distance.

That short will be difficult with fibers like toppik or nanogen no matter what. I found nanogen sprayed on with the toppik pump of a thin layer of american crew fibers to stick best to the hairs when it is short. Might be worth a shot if you don't like how dermach looks on its own.

I agree that it's the completely wrong focus but I don't see anything wrong with looking into cheaper areas of the world. I agree that to look for the cheapest one in the US or in Europe is the recipe for disaster and will most likely cost you more to fix that the HT itself. For cheap, you get inexperienced or bad doctors and unfortunately there are thousands of example of how horribly bad that can go.

But on the other hand, there are good doctors in Thailand, Turkey, Thailand and India, many of whom are recommended by this very forum. I don’t see anything wrong with looking into these. I could mention names but wouldn’t be doing you any favor in doing so as that undermines how important research is before you decide on an HT!

I'd suggest you start your research in cheap areas such as brazil, tyrkey, thailand and india. There are some good ones there. Some of them perform FUT only but that should stop you is price is your utmost consern.

Hey Baldy,

 

Rather than me writing another rant, I'm just gonna take a step back, and remind myself what we are actually discussing! :confused:

 

I am claiming that if FUE wasn't more expensive than FUT - more FUE megasessions would happen, and so the 'best' FUE megasession examples would become better (just because there were more of them).

 

Do you disagree with this?

 

Just to be sure: do you believe that there are lots of FUE megasessions happening with the top doctors, or not?

 

Cheers

Well that’s pretty hypothetical at the moment but taking that into account I don’t doubt you are correct; at the same price more mega sessions would have happened and you would have seen more examples of good ones. Both because more of them were performed but also because there would have been more experience in performing them.

You would see more good results but it would take years of development before you saw 11.5 good mega FUEs for every 88.5 good large FUT you see.

Chris, I listed them but my post was censored. One of them I'm not allowed to mention, the other two were Feriduni and Bisanga.

 

As I already stated - both lean towards FUT - but both say yields are only slightly less, and both confirmed that the zone of extraction is widened and can in some people mean more grafts can be extracted with FUE. Both have excellent track records of achieving excellent yields with both, too.

 

Baldwhisky - honestly, I think your numbers are incorrect.

 

1 - The rich people would have to go to one of the 30 doctors for 'one doctor to stand out', So lets cut your odds by a factor of 30.

2 - The rich people would have to agree to have their pictures displayed. Lets cut your odds by a factor of 10? I reckon only 10% of very rich people would want to be made a public example, if that.

3 - The people you mention would have to choose FUE over FUT when considering the time too. This reduces your example by another factor of 10 (most rich people would prefer a single operation and 15 months to 2 operations over 4 years).

 

That's already 3 factors off the top of my head which reduce the odds you stated by a factor of 3000.

 

Lets put some sensible numbers around this.

 

You say that 1% of the men consider a hair transplant, that's 30 million people. Yet extrapolated worldwide, the number of hair restoration procedures in 2010 was approximately 279,381, 88.5% of which were FUT procedures (again, this is conservative because as the grafts increase, the % who select FUT increases too). This means that only 1% of the people considering a transplant have one at all, in any given year. By your own logic, lets say that 1% of them are rich enough to afford the large FUE. This leaves 279381*0.115*0.01 people, which is just 321 people. Lets then factor in the fact that probably 90% of those who get hair transplants don't need the massive 10,000 operations (it's actually probably closer to 95%). This leaves us with 3.21 people. How many hair replacement surgeons are there in the world? Again, lets use your numbers - you say an average surgeon can do 150 per year. If we take the 279,381, this means roughly 1862 doctors (assuming they are all fully booked all the time), of which 30 are 'top' doctors. This leaves 30/1862 * 3.21 people who go to a top doctor, which gives us 0.05 people . You might say that the top doctors attract more patients, but if this were true, the other surgeons wouldn't be fully booked so there would be more of them, so it all adds up the same either way

 

So, we're now left with 0.05 people who will have a HT, need a megasession, are rich enough to afford FUE, selected FUE over FUT, and went to one of the top 30 doctors.

 

This leaves 0.0061 patient per 'top doctor' per year, who wants and can afford an FUE megasession.

 

Then lets factor in the fact that only 10% of those want their pictures and story published on the internet. You can see how this leaves 0.00061 patients per 'top doctor' per year who have the FUE megasessions, as a conservative maximum.

 

Hair Transplant Statistics, Hair Restoration Surgery Info | Bernstein Medical - Center for Hair Restoration

Sorry I find it difficult to follow you logic so can't respond to all of it, but to follow your suggestion to cut the odds down to one doctor:

That doctor needs to fill 150spots (my guess)

By your numbers there are performed 32200 FUEs

There is no douct that these 32200 people could afford an FUE as they had one performed.

So if they can afford an FUE.

247,381 could afford an FUT. They had one.

How you get from there, to conclude that there isn't enough people in the world that can afford and want an FUE I don't get. Guess we just have to agree to disagree.

I'm far from rich but there were all kinds of other reasons that I deceded for FUT over FUE. Not to sound overly arrogant, but 30-40grand isn't that much money for many mature men.

I completely disagree with this. If there's one thing I've learned simply by living and knowing people - the majority of people can't afford to spend 30-40k on their hair. To disregard this is a factor is... unsympathetic to the situation many patients find themselves in, in my view

 

 

I'll leave for others to commment on the other parts but this part is focused on the wrong part.

Let's say there are 30 doctors we could rate as "top". Each parform say 150 HTs a year. As these are the top doctors people from all over the world will consider them. In total they would perform 4500 HTs a year.

There are about 3billion men in the world. Let's say 1% of them consider an HT. If anything I'd think that's on the moderate side.

Now lets say only the 1% richest poople in the world could affort the money you mention. That's 3,000,000,000x1%*1%=300,000 men.

So for it to be possible 1.5 percent of the 1% ricehst and the 1% that consider an HT (4.5'/300') would have to decide to go with one of the top 30 FUE doctors.

It speaks for itself that if it was possible to stand out doing 10,000 graft FUEs on a regularly basis at least one doctor would have taken taht opportunity.

Is there a way you can have a look at a spot where you certainly didn't have hair before the HT?

Exactly at 6 week I spotted my new first hairs in an area it hadn't been growing for years so it's not impossible that it's a new one!

Were you shaved in the recipient area???

Yes I was shaved. So after 10 days I still had the new grafts in place while my natural hair had been shaved off. I lost the transplanted grafts between week two and four but at that stage my natural hair had started to grow back.

If you have average hair growth your hair grows about 15cm a year. So after two weeks the natural hair on average should be 15cm/52=0.57cm (or about a clipper #2 I think).

So with a little Toppic and Courve it looked like I had lost some more hair on the top but far from bad enough to feel that I couldn't go out in public.

I wore a cap outside for the first week but after that I didn't feel the need to as I don't lie wearing them.

Daytrader

While I certainly agree with the above post in that you should start preventative meds for sure. You may not need more than one procedure. It really just depends what you want. I've seen case with less hair than you who have 4500 us megasessions and look great. The problem I think you are gonna run into is your job it sounds like. If you can't wear a hat, I would take ATLEAST one month off for some regrowth. About your age, I think you are certainly not to you, but you may be too young for a real aggressive hairline. Good luck to u

How long time off you need really depends on how important it is that the HT is impossible to see. Probably most of your colleagues won't even know what has happend and just think you have had a horrible haircut.

I went back after just one week. Even at that stage just one comment appeared. As your name indicates, I am also a trader working in a male dominated company but only one guy asked quite loudly if I got a new haircut. I answered "yeah, and I'm never going back there!" and no one really seemed to care afterwards.

However, If I was to do it again (which I will for HT #2) I'd take 10 days off. After 10 days the scabs should pretty much be gone and you can rempove the staples so at that point it just looks like you have lost a lot of hair but you can cover up the readiness by courve and to cover the scar + use some toppik to make look slightly thicker.

After 12 days I also had a haircut telling the hairdresser my story and she made the old hair mix really well in with the short hair over the recepient area by cutting it short near the recepient, keeping full length over scar and shorter bellow. Magic.

I'm not saying 10 days is right for everyone, but it's a subjective issue and for me a full month sounds like an extreme overkill.

The disadvantage of strip is the scar. No doubt about that.

The disadvantage of Fue is less available donor and lower survival rate, even with a top doctor.

If you are a NW5 at age 26 there really should be no doubt that Strip is the way to go.

In my opinion Bisanga is the best FUE doctor in Europe and one of the absolute best in the world. Also after talking with him he does not seem biased at all on FUE, Strip or a combination for a mega session. I don’t know what Scar5 base his view on but I tend to disagree on that point.

If it’s very important to shave down maybe doing a HT isn’t the way to go at all as that in itself isn’t own isn’t good enough argument for a FUE over Strip for a 26 year old NW5!

As others have stated they are both excellent and you won't go wrong either way.

If I had to chose I'd say that Feriduni is slightly better on FUT while Bisanga is slightly better FUE but that's very subjective.

I've seen some amazing crown-work from Feriduni but as for hairline you've narrowed it so much down already that it comes down to who you feel most comfortable with yourself or even price/availability.

Not all the doctors I mentioned perform FUE.

For the pros and cons for FUE vs FUT I strongly urge you to do your research and reading old posts on this forum is a good start.

In general people with a low NW are the best candidates for FUE and higher for FUT. That’s because FUT will give you availability to more donor grafts and the survival rate of the grafts is higher. “Everyone” wants FUE, me included. But after doing more research I found FUT to be the best option, being an NW5.

Disadvantage of FUT is the scar or course, and just the more important to chose a top doctors. If you do that, the scar will in most cases be close to invisible unless you shave your head.

I agree that it's difficult to decide based on the pictures only, and naturally the doctors mainly post the best results, so it's also imortant that they have many cases to show.

There are many good doctors on the list but it could be a good starting point to look at those that are most often on people's favorite list.

These include Arocha, Feller, Bernstein, Shapiro, Umar, Hassan, Wong, Feller, Konior and Rahal in America and Feriduni, Besinga, Devroye in Europe.

To make a trip out of it you also have Koray and Keser that are good in Turkey for FUE, Pathomvanic or Pong in Thailand for FUT or Madhu in India.

 

A lot of people have concerns that if you do that, you could end up needing a second transplant. The idea is that if you get all transplanted hair to thicken up the front, then the back continues to thin (for example if you#re not taking your Finasteride) it can end up looking strange. However this is another reason why I chose Dr. Devroye. His philosophy is that every transplant should be treated as your last. Therefore while the focus will be on thinner areas, he tends to transplant hair to all parts of your head (almost). He#ll discuss with you which areas you#re most worried about and come up with a strategy that means you#ll never need another transplant, even if you no longer take Finasteride and start thinning again.

 

 

Just want to specify that the main point is that Devroye discusses this thoroughly with the patient, not that just one procedure is the best alternative for all patients. I discussed this with him and being a NW5, probably going on NW6 at the age of 32 it would be best to have [at least] two procedure and leave the crown for a second round and focus on the frontal 2/3ds first.

I’m justsix weeks from my HT so waiting for the results but I’m very happy with the experience so far.

In nyc its about 250 for a 3 month supply. I echo what futurehair said, get a prescription. I don't know why anyone would mess around with nonprescription "propecia". How do you even what you're getting without a script is even propecia?

If you check your online provider properly I don't see a big problem with buying it online as you can get it substantially cheaper. As it's harder to know whether you can trust your supplier than when buying locally a little effort is needed but with a little research it's not impossible to find out.

There are plenty of places you can find generic proscar online. Just be sure to do a background check on your provider.

Also remember you don't need prescription for Proscar in all countries. For example, I bought a years supply otc in Turkey.

Online, I've bought (non generic) Proscar from Greece before as they can give online prescriptions online (or something along those lines) and send it to you.

I fugure how that works depends on your customs but where I live (europe, non Eu) customs doesn't seem to mind.

Not hearing much about Dr Patrick Mwamba anymore. Any updated views on him? He is also located in Belgium.

As others mention here there are good opportunities to get an earlier HT if you’re on the waiting list.

Of European doctors I looked into Devroye, Feriduni and Besinga and they all had about 4 month waiting. However, as I told them I could be interested in filling a cancelled spot I was offered an earlier appointment with all three of them within about three weeks of telling about my interest. The first two I couldn’t make but the third one fit me perfectly.

So unless you have narrowed your shortlist down to just one doctor (I had three in EU and three in US) it should be possible to get an appointment with one of the best ones without having to wait six months.

You are thinking of the site member who was refused by Dr. Arocha because he didn't accept Chase Care Credit. Those health care credit cards are a completely different ball game.

I remember that case, but it's not the one I'm thinking of. I think the main reason why doctors want cash equivalens it the delay in getting the funds and to avoid the struggle if you use creditcard refuse to or can't pay the bill.

I paid both Karamikian and Dr Feller via credit card. Bald whiskey, most doctors I know (no matter what their specialty is) accept credit cards. They would lose a ton of business if they didn't. What are you basing this statement on?

Didn't we just have another issue here where a patient had to postpone his HT a couple days because he couldn't pay with creditcard?

Except for that I'm basing it on the doctors I was in contact with and came so close to book with that I got the paiment instructions. Money transfer, cash and debitcard was the method most preferred.

Should add that paiment method wasn't part on my equation for deciding doctor.