AB2000

While the appearance of density is impossible for a patient like this, I find this appearance preferable to SMP by itself. The reason being, the hair can be allowed to grow out, and maintained. With SMP on a slick bald head, that person is forever locked into a situation of shaving his head every day, because if he lets his native hair grow, on the sides and back of his head, it will be jarring to see that against the head tattoo that looks like stubble. The person in this video, who pushed his result by using beard and body hair, still has the option to mix in some SMP and not look unnatural.

If you are looking to style your hair short and want the appearance of more density that you have, then skin micro pigmentation might be a good option at that point. SMP along on a bald area forces someone to always keep their hair short of have a very strange appearance, but if you mix it in with your transplant result it should maximize the illusion of even density.

Look up past patients to give you a good idea of where to go. I don't think there are many surgeons in the Atlanta area but I could be mistaken. A good way to find these posts with photo results is to look up the search term "afro" of "african" and you should find some good case studies.

There have been a lot of very interesting photo result posts on this forum from Dr. Pittella the past year. It might interest the person who started the thread. It won't be as cheap as a hair mill in Turkey, but is still affordable, compared to some of the places in Europe and North America.

Save your money. You have already thrown out finite donor grafts and you seem determined to play Russian roulette again. Keep your money and keep whatever hair you have left. The only thing worse than wasting thousands of dollars is wasting the transplanted hair that can never come back once it has been botched. If you are curious on how to have avoided your situation then spend time on this site looking at the hundreds of results posted by doctors and patients. You will see trends on which clinics consistently deliver results. In the Turkish hair mills your transplant is dependent on random technicians that they cycle through. There is no consistency.

Sorry for the delay, @Ajamilo. I had intended a more full update once the hair grew out again, but here is the interim result, about 2 years later from the 2020 surgery.

The only situation where I think that would be wise is for a patient who is already significantly towards the end point of their hair loss pattern and then transplant those hairs which are not susceptible to further hair loss, locking in a permanent hairline. Once you don't have anymore hair to lose, meds are going to help so they won't be needed. In the case of someone like yourself where your end point Norwood is still unknown, using up valuable donor hair now, and allowing your balding to proceed because of a lack of hairloss meds, will leave you in a position where you have an odd amount of density at the front of your hairline and little left to fill in the rest. Someone your age is best holding off until it becomes apparent where you are going to wind up. A good surgeon will work around that with what you have available. Have you though about using just Minoxidil? It's much less problematic in terms of side effects than Fin and might buy you some years.

I have no idea if these things work, but if someone was looking to buy, Amazon has them on sale for Prime Day. Listed now at $430, which is over half off: https://www.amazon.com/iRestore-Laser-Hair-Growth-System/dp/B01B29PCUU/ref=sr_1_5?crid=1T9N1ZIL61GY2&keywords=iRestore+Essential+Laser+Hair+Growth+System&qid=1657671069&sprefix=irestore+essential+laser+hair+growth+system%2Caps%2C204&sr=8-5

Not just that. When it becomes apparent that he has a botch he'll blame the concept of hair transplantation itself.

From looking at your after photo you look like you're in a good place for growing the hair longer. I started NW6 and have reasonable success growing it out long, but it's not perfect. Here's an example from my photo thread, the Feb. 24, 2019 post:

https://huggingface.co/spaces/dalle-mini/dalle-mini I have been checking out AI generated images based on text queries, as it related to hair transplants. Here's how the computers see things.

Even ignoring your crown area and leaving that bald, I don't see how you will get full density with those many grafts, especially if you intend to *lower* your hairline down towards the mole. You best chance is to fill in the area up front where you current have coverage, although those native hairs will eventually leave too. But filling in up front with a high hairline is do-able. Here's a patient of Vories who wasn't quite as bald as you to begin with and used 5k grafts to a fantastic result. If you go for a more modest HT and focus on there, then the result will for for you long term.

Once depression is far enough along, altering brain function it's not a simple matter of thinking positive thoughts to get out the trajectory. You might have to look into medication to help in your recovery if other things like exercise, rest and changing your circumstances don't work.

It would be interesting to see that patient's result all these years later. There appears to be some discrepancy of what appeared in that thread - if I was looking at the right one - and the posted video results. The thread I found was titled "CASO DR.UMAR 15.000 GRAFT DI BODY HAIR", translated to "CASE DR.UMAR 15,000 GRAFT OF BODY HAIR". Since links to other hair loss forums are not permitted I won't share the link, but if someone wants to follow up they can use these strings as search terms in a web engine. What is known is that the patient appeared to have three clusters of surgeries. The first one between 15-18k, followed up with 5k, then some time later with another 5k. The Italian forum thread states it as 15,000 body hair, and the patient wrote on this forum many years ago it was 18k, so I think the difference in 3k was that the first 15k were BHT and the next 3k done at the same time were sourced from his scalp. His thread was here: The follow up photos from the first procedure in the Italian forum don't look great, from 2009, about two years later. Better looking was his first video posted on youtube by the doctor: Some point not too long after this it appears is when the patient went for 5k more grafts to round the total up to 20k. In this next video the overall head donor is now 5k, up a couple thousand from the last time, so the rest of the difference to get to 20k would be more BHT. At this point the result looks like good coverage and density for short cut hair: This looks much better than the results shown in message thread in the other forum from an earlier point of time. The patient went in for a final 5k procedure. I had asked Umar why this was done, and it was to add density as there was some more progression of hair loss of the native hair: So from what I can see, it took many body FUEs to achieve a result than would have been done had more scalp hair been available, which is a consequence of a high norwood and lack of traditional donor. I think the way the patient presented it here, with the hair short, makes it look fairly natural. Growing it longer would expose the characteristics of the chest, arm, leg donors. I'll disagree on two points. It does not appear he had 30,000 body FUE's, as claimed. And it does not appear he spent $150,000 for the results shown in the Italian forum thread at the point of the 15k body hair surgery. As he stated himself on this forum in the message thread I linked to above: "Mine was basically $ 5 per graft. So compared to the market place I felt OK with the price. The last 3,745 grafts, that went above our originally planned 15,000 grafts, were $ 4.5 per graft." This works out to $91,852.50. Not $150,000. He went on to get two more 5k procedures, so he spent more, but I see people in the Bellicapelli forum getting some facts wrong.

Did you even read the original post? He asked about touch ups, not restoring NW7 level baldness.

Compare your FUE scarring to this:

By this man?

It's pretty bad hairloss, and it's going to get worse. If that is native hair on the top of his head, then I'd say that's about 10% left. The same lighting condition is not making his sides look see through. NW5. If he ever goes with a transplant his beard and neck have a copious amount to make use of.

He appears to have a very good word of mouth reputation outside of this message board. He's already booked up through to early next year. The fact that he's posted a series of recent results, and not cherry picking from years past, would also indicate he does top line work.

Yes, that is normal.

Hair today, gone tomorrow.