Noodles123

Elective cosmetic surgery is exactly that. Cosmetic surgeons are not in the business of "helping" anyone. Patients are free to exercise the power of the purse and not use a particular surgeon if they believe he charges an exorbitant fee. Eventually these doctors who charge higher fees will be forced to reduce their prices.

The one thing I would change if I had to do it over again is that I would have done a much larger procedure and reach as much of my goal as possible in one shot (granted if you have a fairly good guess as to your ultimate balding pattern). Getting a hair transplant is incredibly disruptive to one's life for at least 3-4 months before you get out of that ugly duckling period. If you are sure you want to do a future session anyway, I'd go for a larger procedure and stick with the medicine so that you can have a great result for as long as possible.

Not much to add other than this is a nice final outcome from a pretty negative initial experience. How many grafts was the touch up procedure with Arocha? Sorry if you mentioned it.

Cosmetic surgery is not a God-given unalienable human right. Let's face it, we do it because we're vain to a certain extent.

I thought that you could NOT be on propecia because it interferes with testing for banned substances, like giving false negatives or something. Don't quote me on that.

Just a heads up to watch out for some hack surgeon in Irvine / Las Vegas that is using H&W pictures on his website, ModenaHair.com. The surgeon is Amir Yazdan. The pictures are cropped to show only the hairline but the signature blue background gave it right away. The Patient on H&W website. Hair Transplant Photos Hair Transplant Gallery - Hasson & Wong. Sessions: 1. Grafts: 4200

Rocking that pompadour.

There is the issue that Rahal does not do all the FUE extractions himself. That may have changed, but it's up to you if that matters. My very close friend recently had an FUT with Rahal, and let me tell you, his scar after 3 months is a NON issue. It's so narrow. Of course, personal physiology plays a role, but I think Rahal's superlative skills speak for themselves.

This is only a personal observation, but there have been other medications that I use where the effect is noticeable immediately. I also take Zolpidem, which is generic for Ambien, for severe insomnia and there have been occasions where the pharmacy switched manufacturers and I noticed immediately the reduction in potency. In this situation, it's easy to note the difference right away since ambien works in under 30 minutes. For something like Propecia, any difference in potency would only be appreciable after months of being on it and then noticing increased hair loss. The problem is that you've already lost ground before you notice that difference. For me, the increased shedding and lack of consistency was enough to convince me to shell out money for the brand name Proscar. At least I save some money by cutting up the Proscar instead of paying retail for Propecia.

Unfortunately, I've experienced fullness behind the nipple as well, or otherwise known as puffy nipples. I'm at a point where I am seriously considering surgery, but it's so freaking expensive. Is it absolutely horrible? No, but it is visible through more fitted clothes and bothers me to no end.

I bought the generic finasteride and cut up the pills. I did this for years until I started to notice that the generics were inconsistent and I had increased shedding on them. I specifically asked my doc to prescribe brand name Proscar by Merck, and did not have the same problems. Despite the usual line about generics being equivalent to brand name drugs, in my experience that is just not always true.

Agree with Joe, if this is the result of only 1 year's worth of hair loss, something else may be going on - not to alarm you. That would be super aggressive hair loss given such a short period of time. I think surgery when your hair loss is not stabilized will only make matters worse. Given that your hair is so fine, either surgery, FUT or FUE, would result in visible scarring and an overall less than ideal look.

Might be necrosis. I'd have this looked at immediately.

Extremely impressive and meticulous work.

This is such an excellent explanation. Joe, you really have a talent for putting technical concepts in plain English and for responding to arm chair experts.

So did you ever get that second procedure olmert?

It looks nice. I would agree though that making an irregular hairline is good, but you don't want to make it look too "regularly IRRegular" to the point where it looks like a pattern. The human eye spots patterns and if you start making peaks and valleys in the hairline at regular intervals it does start to look like a pattern as opposed to a natural randomness.

In my mind FUE would definitely have a more noticeable impact on density globally throughout the scalp than FUT. If you extract the same number of grafts via FUE as you would FUT, there will be a more visible depletion of density in the FUE case. Of course FUT would also decrease density, but it would be greatest near the incision and lessen as you move further away because the greatest amount of tension is at the incision line. So yes, in both cases density would be reduced but the "visual impact" is more in FUE because it is spread all over equally, versus concentrated more at the incision line in FUT.

It's extremely telling that this guy has gone out of his way to respond to every single negative-sounding comment, and yet cannot post any photos to demonstrate without a shadow of a doubt his "disastrous" results. He is supposedly worried about his identity? How is possible with a cropped photo, or blacked out face. What I still don't get is why is the crookedness of the hairline more pronounced in the fully grown out pictures, versus the immediate post op photos. As an objective observer with zero interest in this matter, it seems like he thought that he could just create a thread and whip up enough drama to force H&W to give him his "complete refund." He fully expected them to acquiesce and just put the matter to bed. Clearly he did not anticipate this much push back from the community. From my experience, most people on here are reasonable and logical. If you appealed to their logic, I've seen more times than not, the members here stand behind and support the patient. HairFramer, you know what would silence everyone? POST THE PICTURES. Show the devastating damage, and stop wasting so much time responding to every supposed slight.

DUH.... The rest of the internet doesn't know who he is.

Everything this guys claims has been repeatedly refuted. There clearly was communication at many points post op, and not radio silence from H&W as this guy claims.

I'm just going to say it. Yes you have a crooked hairline, although not severe. At this point, from your demands it sounds like you want a complete refund. This sounds like a shakedown to get a free hair transplant.

Spanker, I may have used a hyperbole to make a point. You are correct, not every doctor hands everything off to techs after the strip is removed. Dr. Konoir is the most notable exception, but the vast majority of very high quality doctors do rely heavily on techs to do the dissecting and implanting, which I've gathered is the longest and most tedious part of the surgery. The way the OP worded it made it seem as if he was totally surprised by this practice, while in reality it is what happens in most cases. It is not unusual. To the OP, I agree that it looks noticeably asymmetrical with the buzz cut, but it did not look as apparent in the immediate post op picture. Do you have any other pics of your head immediately post op so we can get an idea of the graft placement?

Was it also visibly crooked immediately post op? It's noticeable when you shave it down to a 1 guard, but by no means "disastrous." You can certainly make things more symmetrical by transplanting more on the right side. And I'm not sure the part about Dr. Wong disappearing for the remainder of the surgery is a fair charge. EVERYONE hands it off to the techs after the strip is removed. At most, the doctor pops in back and forth to supervise and maintain quality control.

It's really hard to evaluate Umar's true capability on a "regular" hair transplant case, because the pictures he presents are always end of the line cases. These are guys who have pretty much exhausted all their options and have been left disfigured by shoddy surgeons. I'm sure for these guys, looking somewhat normal is a tremendous relief. Of the "regular" cases I have seen, I have not been impressed at all and the results have been extremely inconsistent. I can't remember a regular case that could even be considered to be in the same league as a Rahal or any of the recommended European FUE experts. I would agree that of those 3, Diep is the most consistent and has the largest body of work. Where I think Diep has excelled is his work on African American hair, which is typically difficult to do FUE on. Where I think he needs to do some work is in graft placement and to achieve better densities, as some results look a little sparse. As for Rassman, even when he was practicing I was not impressed. He seems more like an academic than a talented surgeon, as his results just couldn't compete with the best.