BaldWhisky

Yes, and most doctors won't accept credit card.

Most or doctors will demand cash or upfront paiment, I higly doubt anyone would give a cash discount.

I would definately go for dark brown for the donor scar as the concealers main job is for your scar to be concealed and therefore more to "blend in" just as much with your scalp as with your hair. Your scar will be dark brownish from the blood in the beginning so dark brown will work well while black could look like a black tie around your head.

I would suggest one shade lighter than your hair on the donor scar and the same shade as your hair in the recepient area if you want anything to combine with the toppik there.

That worked very well for me.

One way to get discount is to be flexible on timing. If you contact a doctor you'd like to use and that has a waiting list, say you can do it on fairly short notice if he get's a cancellation. Most doctors will than give you a discount to fill the empty seat.

You don't have to meet the all doctors before the procedure. Some (or maybe most) will accept an online consultation and a morning meeting before the procedure.

However, as others have said it sounds like you need to do a lot more research before taking the plunge. Don't rush into it, spend at least another 6 month researching and looking into different doctors and find one you're comfortable with.

If you've already done some reasearch you should continue by looking into the different doctors here, both reccomended by the forum and other posters.

Look into their work and find someone that suits what you are looking for and you would be comfortable going to.

It might be sounding very general but it is only you that know what you are looking for.

I'm currently 2 weeks post op and have tried Toppik, but at this point it actually looks better without as the hairs are too short for the toppik to look natural.

Actually I've found the oposite of most reccomend working best on me. I use Courve on the recepient area to make the contrast between scalp and hairs as little as possible and I use Toppik using a spray applicator over the donor scar. That works pretty well for me.

I would get on to this asap, even just your normal doctor to get some strong antibiotic cream if I were you. Or apply something like fucidin on it if you have that around the house.

It is supposed to get on your scalp and as little as possible on the hairs so it's not a good idea to apply it after Toppik.

I find it difficult to get Toppik to stick to the hairs and look good after applying minoxidl and donn't really have a good solution to it if you want to apply twice a day.

This is true. It has been know to cause a synergistic effect. However, if you really only wanna use one medication it will be better to start them at different times. Probably around 6 months apart. So that way you will know which one is actually doing a better job. As for me, I just wanted max protection from the get go so I started taking the big 3 together and never looked back!

Minoxidil, Finasteride and what's the third one you mean?

Best of luck mate, feel with you.

I used Aloe Vera constantly on my scabs to soften them. Might be worth a shot.

I also used Vitamine E directly on head by puncturing the oil-tablets and squeeze it out.

I'm actually having my surgery with Devroye on Monday so let me know if you have any quesstions I can help with before or after.

Let’s say you plan 2HTs and start with scalp flexity 100% on sides and back and you go for a short strip. Will that influence how many grafts you can get on the second one? I would assume the doctors don’t want to make the strip too wide on the sides in the second one.

If you take a short strip let’s say your flexity is back to 70% in the back and 100% on the sides. Then, as the doctor doesn’t want to make the strip wider on the side, number of gfrafts available due to scalp flexity would be controlled by the 70% flexity in the back, thus you get fewer grafts. Is this correct to assume?

Alternatively, with a long and narrower strip maybe you get the overall flexity back to 85 both on sides and back and can therefore make a larger strip in the second HT. Would that be correct?

Shadow of...

He does say that he is a NW5-6 and need at least 6,000 grafts.

A normal assumption is that you need at least 1,000 grafts per NW class so nothing wrong with what he says.

If you mean what I think you mean, it think it should be specified that you refer to the grafts needed for a FULL coverage not to scare of anyone.

So at NW5 people in general need 5-8,000 grafts depending of how thick hairs are and how full the coverage you are looking for.

NW6 needs 6-8,000 grafts

NW7 needs 7-15,000 grafts as a rough guide.

Try Prospeica for at least a year first. See if hair loss stabilize. If it does, you can start considering a HT. Not before.

As you have hairloss in the family you should keep in mind that if you start on Prospeica and it works, you have to stay on it for the rest of your life or at least for as long as you want to keep your hair.

If you are considered a New York doctor you should consider Dr. Feller as well.

Just make sure you read through the agreement you sign

No one can help you with an objective answer that will help you on that question. You had a tree of apples and narrowed it down to the two apples that look the best. From here it's all up to your subjective view as they are both top class. Good luck either way.

Thanks for the reply, I might even do some photoshop trickery to show him the exact hairline! I was actually going to spend all my time in Chiang Mai, as my gf said it's really beautiful - I may have 21 days to kill. If you say it's boring then I might re-think that. Don't want to do anything that puts the grafts in jeopardy though, so partying, gym, scuba diving and rainforest walks are out I guess! How long did you stay for? Did you spend your recovery in Thailand?

Chiang Mai is a quite small city, but very exotic so in my opinion definately worth staying a few days. For shopping it's two things. Local handycraft which is very cheap. And, if you're into that kind of stuff: it's maybe the "fake-capital" of the world. It's close to the chinese boarder and therefore a lot of the fake things produced there is sold in Chiang Mai.

However, there is another thing which is the main reson for travellers to Chian Mai: Trekking.

They have trips of varying length into forests, and villages which basically takes you 100-200 years back in time and of course the touristy things like elephant riding. Definately worth spending a few days at if you are in the area.

Comparing to for example a caesarean I'm actually quite impressed with the healing time, as I've seen it becoming gradually better both after two and three years getting more the same colour as the rest of the skin back (less red). Is the shorter healing time related to thre triclosure technique, or becuase the scalp has different parameters?

I’ve spent plenty of hours looking into different doctors myself, both in India, Thailand, America and Europe. When you do such a job, it’s important to remember why you do it. You do it to find a doctor you trust, and a balance between price and results that suits you.

I’m new at this forum and other similar sites and what both members and admins do, is to do a massive amount of research that you won’t be able to do yourself. For example, you can’t go visit all the doctors you consider using.

Whether you feel more secure with a doctor you have the impression that’s high rated in India by the locals, base it on word of mouth or prefer someone recommended on this forum is a matter of preferences. But what’s for sure, it that you can’t do all the research yourself.

Thanks for the feedback guys, much appreciated.

My analysis probably doesn't make perfect sense in the way that I've focused on most doctors that have proven good results in megasessions, and landing on one that in my eyes shows very good results but have quite few megasessions (3000+). For all I know he might not have the team size for such a size.

But at some point through my research I came to the conclusion that it's better for me to go for two transplantations rather than one. I've been on Prospeica for 8 months now, but am not entirely sure my balding of vertix has stopped yet. Therefore I'll leave that part out now and rather focus on the other areas. In total there is little doubt that I need 5000+ grafts but that won’t be the case at my first transplantation.

One of the doctors I spoke with suggested that I'd wait four years (till I'm 35) with the vertex which I thought was a good idea as that's not an area that bothers me too much.

I'm also pretty sure that my donor graft density is below average, so even with a large strip I'd be surprised to see more that 3500 grafts. So my conclusion was that for the number of grafts I will have, I found Devroyes results to be very good on patients that looked to have many of the same hair characteristics as myself (equally good as the others on my US and EU shortlist).

I admit that I might have jumped to the conclusion a bit too quickly on Feller, and good to see that most agree with my shortlists. However I’m not sure convinced that US doctors in general need to be better. It could easily be led in that direction as there are more US posters here. Europeans also tend to speak less when they have something positive to say. So I was rather looking whether I could find anything negatively said by Europeans about the Belgium doctors which I basically couldn’t find.

I’m sure there are some good doctors in Asian as well, but I agree that it’s more difficult to be completely convinced. So for me Asia is out of the question also for the second transplantation. That will either be one on my European or American shortlist unless a new superstar pops up in the meantime.

After long time lurking on this incredibly informative forum it’s time to give something back. I’ve been researching extensively for a hair transplant doctor over the last couple months and have probably spent 100 hours+ on this forum and want to share one experience of mine, on a topic that I think is important when it comes to the final decision –deciding which doctor to go for. Being a novice (at least at first) I started looking into FUE and I think this is where most people start. However, I soon realized that I was a NW5 and Strip became more of the natural choice. Now, over to how I researched and the results I found.

Many experienced posters on this forum say that you shouldn’t let location and cost be of very big importance when deciding which hair clinic to choose. I agree that this should be where you start researching. And so I did.

As I am located in Europe I started looking into the clinics locally I presumed to be the best ones.

The one I’ve looked into are Feriduni, Devroye, Bisanga, Farjo, Hatting, HDC and Mwamba. In addition I looked into the Turkish ones of Koray, Keser and Kulachi.

Now keep in mind that this is my personal subjective review of what I found, and even though I’ll keep this utterly brief there are numbers of hours behind the decisions.

*Koray and Keser both seems like good doctors but focus mainly on younger low NW patients. Further research was therefore not needed

*Kulachi, I didn’t like the cases where she claimed a 90%+ survival rate, as my donor area is limited compared to what I need

* Hattingen have too few results to show, and likewise with Prohair after their main doctor “retired” and just the team was back.

*HDC I just didn’t like, and they have some cases to show that aren’t very good.

That ended with me having four potentials from Europe to compare with from the rest of the world. The natural next step would we North America where I’ve looked into Umar, Feller, Rahal, Armani, Bernstein, Arocha, Konior, H&W and Shapiro.

Unlike the European alternatives, I couldn’t take any of these of my list because of quality. Actually at this point I was already of the impression that I was dealing with mostly world class doctors, where it comes more down to personal preferences and other factors when it comes to choice.

* Umar was removed until further as I am not in his focus group at the moment. However, should I need a BHT at some stage, he would be my top choice.

* Feller and Bernstein are one the top of many potential clients lists, and I have no doubt they are world class. However, when I am considering doctors all over the world, I have an issue with flying into the most expensive spots on the planet. I think they are great choices for residents close by, or if you can get there easily but keep in mind that you the doctor also have to pay his rent and personell. Therefore, everything else unchanged you pay more in a high cost area than elsewhere.

* Similarly with Armani, I didn’t really see the reason to pay extra for a doctor that others (better experts than me) have set question marks with.

Of the others I have been particularly impressed with Ron Shapiro, H&W and Rahal for bigger strip sessions. Honestly I found it very difficult to distinguish the results from the other doctors. In no way could I say “yup, that a Bernstein hearline”. Either others (naturally excluding the 1000+ posters) are better at analyzing than me, or a majority is adjusting their comments to what they want to see as it fits the choice they’ve made based on other factors.

So after looking into the high cost countries I looked into whether I could find just as good choices in much cheaper Asia. In India I looked at Dr A and Madhu. In Thailand I researched Pat and Pong.

* Madhu also appears to do excellent work. However, an issue brought to mind after studying other Indian work, was that for the most part his patients has been dark/Asian not bleak north European with blond thin hair like me. Maybe it’s just because of ignorance from my part, but as most of his clients, including American based, seemed to have different hair quality than me I decided on not taking the risk.

* In Thailand I was impressed with both Pat and Pongs work. They also have more cases of western looking clients. The two doctors appear to be good friends serving different parts of the country. Pong even has a picture of the two of them on his wall, and they refer clients to each other if they are fully booked. Pat in Bangkok and Pong in much cheaper Chiang Mai. As Pong was a lot cheaper, he would be my choice in Thailand. As with the US doctors, I just didn’t find any good reason to go for Bangkok over the lovely and cheap city of Chiang Mai.

So there you have my shortlist. Feriduni, Mwamba, Bisanga and Devroye in Europe, Shapiro, Rahal and H&W in North America and Pong for the cheap choice. And this is where I think a lot of future HT take a wrong step. If you research worldwide, without having found one absolute favorite don’t spend a lot of energy of actually finding one!

When you have narrowed it down this much, you have already excluded 99%. Like if you are picking an apple from a tree and can’t choose between the two that looks the best. Sure they are different but most likely you’ll be just as happy either way, and if you only want one you’ll never be sure if the other had been better. Therefore, let other factors such as price, location and availability play a bigger role. First do the open minded analysis, but when that is done, count in the other factors to a bigger extent than many others give the impression of, as that part is foremost a comments to the newbies here.

I decided that I could find just as good doctors in Europe as in US. Due to the exchange rate US doctors are more expensive at the moment, so for my first hair transplant I see little point in going there.

Of the cheaper choices, Pong became my top choice for my first hair transplant. However, being a married man it is easier to get support from choosing a world class clinic than taking cosmetic surgery in Asia. Also compared to other investments, it’s not massive compared what one (or at leat I) will waste over a lifetime on for example a car that is slightly too expensive car.

So, down to Mwamba, Feriduni, Besinga and Devroye. After speaking with Mwamba, he charges the same per grafte either Strip or FUE. As I’m having strip, he therefore relatively overcharges for strip.

Feriduni Besinga and Devroye all looked like top choices to me. Feriduni clearly has a lot of fans here (but also slightly more expensive). Top results, megasessions and thin scars. Devroyes analysis fit what I was looking for very well both with focus areas on high NW patients and hair angle and shadow effects. Besinga, shows that he’s a good master overall with world class FUE, knows the art of repairwork and very nice strip work.

I ended up with trying to find dates with all of them, as I didn’t see any good reason to narrow it down further. It ended up with booking with Devroye on December 5th, which I’m looking a lot forward to as I know my destiny is left in world class hands!