Rootz

Lorenzo's hairlines are generally conservative, and he may not aim for the highest density, but his yields are the best I've seen. Typically in the hairline, with either FUT or FUE, there will be inconsistencies or little gaps here and there where grafts didn't come in. With Lorenzo's results it seems like every hair he plants grows. This is one of the reasons he's able to achieve large coverage with relatively small numbers of grafts. And it's not like he's transplanting at low density either, it's just that he doesn't go "extreme." The density of his hairline results are really good actually.

Please refer to the Theorem of Lorenzo, page 7 I don't know about this, Lorenzo has done a lot of fairly aggressive hairline cases with the usual success.

I'm not sure "honest" was necessarily the word the OP wanted to use, but in terms of posting the most transparent results I think it's pretty easy to identify Lorenzo as being at the top. I personally have not seen another clinic that compares, although someone was saying H&W does something similar.

Looks to me like he didn't get a HT but rather had just had something temporarily done for the Nike event?

Well most of the long standing members that come to mind with great HTs probably did go with FUT... however the concept of FUE being capable of producing results on par with FUT is a relatively new one. But I think arguing about FUE/FUT yields in general is too complex a task to establish something concrete. So let me just simplify things here a bit... I would like to reference the Theorem of Lorenzo, which is as follows, While Dr. Lorenzo is in practice, FUE yields may be consistently obtained that are on par with, or arguably better than, the best possible FUT yields. This is a very powerful theorem. For those who think FUE yield results are too risky and are inferior to FUT... please see the Theorem of Lorenzo. QED.

Keep in mind celebrities typically have their hair professionally styled and enhanced for movies, shows, and other appearances. A good example that comes to mind is Chris Pratt, who in Guardians of the Galaxy looks like a NW 1.5 with no thinning and little to no recession. But looking at candid pictures of him he's actually like NW3 with noticeable recession and thinning. Same person, vastly different hair. Many actors even use partial hair pieces for some of their appearances, Hugh Jackman comes to mind.

Pictures are a bit blurry, hair is pulled up pre-op but hairline is concealed post-op. Can't really evaluate this.

As opposed to 15 years ago there are now several world class FUE doctors producing wonderful results. I'm afraid your argument is invalid. My hair is also a bird.

And yet there are FUE docs who seem to consistently get good results with high yields. So while they may not be able to avoid this skeletonization, does it really matter? Your post comes across as bit of a strawman argument. Am I supposed to be too distracted by your strawman to realize the scar is in fact highly relevant?

This is all under the assumption that your pictures accurately represent FUE and FUT scarring, but I think it's pretty obvious the FUE scars are drastically less noticeable... borderline invisible. Pretty easy choice IMO. If you showed these pictures to random people (who generally don't know about HTs), I bet almost everyone would see the FUT scar immediately but probably no one would even realize the FUE guy had any type of scarring.

I don't know about "honest," but Lorenzo probably has the the most thorough and transparent presentation of results in the business. I haven't seen H&Ws videos. HD or not, videos should ideally become the standard. Clinics should also advise their patients to provide video if they can't return. And just having "a video" isn't necessarily enough. The video need to show the hair being combed and moved around up/down/sideways. I've seen some videos from clinics that were actually worse than what you'd expect from pictures due to shabby editing and angles... if you're going to take a video, show the hair moving. Most of the recommended clinics here (yes, the majority) regularly post biased results. The strategies typically involve using different hairstyles, lighting, and angles to amplify the perceived hairloss pre-op and then inflate the result post-op.

Wow looks like you only have a little bit of redness left. Growth looks pretty typical for 3 months, I'd say you're on track.

I think this is being a bit too dramatic. The FUE scars themselves will if anything just get smaller and even less noticeable as the field advances. I've never seen a case of "unfortunate FUE scars" from a top FUE doctor ever, and doubt I ever will. It's pretty hard to "accidentally" make a bigger hole than the punch size itself hundreds or thousands of times. I doubt over harvesting will be something that trends upwards in any significant way, but who knows. In the event that it does, at least it could be avoided by just doing your research beforehand. Generally speaking I agree FUT will give a higher yield. But I believe the very best FUE docs have extremely similar if not the same yields as the best FUT docs. Lorenzo of course is the golden example. In fact I think a case could be made that Lorenzo has the best yield of anyone in the business, FUT or FUE.

Well to be fair, we only see an angle from one side of his head. How much of his donor area was actually harvested?

There's a reason you never hear about bad FUE scarring from people going reputable FUE docs these days, because as long as an appropriate punch size is used it's a basically a sure thing. Bad FUE scarring is a thing of the past so long as you go to a reputable doctor and do your research. However, a lot of people keloid with their FUT scar no matter what. In fact you can argue everyone keloids to some degree, it's just a matter of how much. All FUT scars stretch, it's just a question of how much. Most of the scars I see from recommended FUT docs here, including the top ones, look like the example bismarck posted... which with just a small section of hair pulled up might look OK, but shaved down shorter like the example pic then it's glaringly obvious. In general FUT docs don't post very good shots of their patient's scar anyways... if they show a picture at all, it's usually a one small secton with some hair pulled up. 30% is a bit extreme, I would suspect the average person could get more than 4000 grafts if their entire donor region was harvested at this rate. But I think we know what happens if you can't get all the grafts you need at 30%... either go above 30%, resort to FUT, or not get a HT at all. You consider 2-3mm "long hair"? That's pretty short IMO. I'm sure most FUT scars would be quite noticeable still. But with 2-3mm hair it would be almost impossible to determine if 0% or 20% (maybe more) had been harvested with FUE. Agreed, but with that said keep in mind the more grafts you harvest with FUT the more notcieable the FUT scar will be as well. It will be wider and/or longer. I'll take up to 30% donor depletion over a big line scar any day.

I was commenting more on the variability in the outcome of the scars. How many bad FUE scars have come out of Bisanga, Feriduni, Lorenzo or any of the other high end FUE doc? I think the answer is exactly 0. Well keep in mind, in your example you removed 1000 cans out of 2500. That's 40%. Reputable docs will only harvest 15-20%, and 25-30% if you really want to push it. If you're concerned about your beer cans you can request a smaller percentage be harvested too. And to be fair, the beer can anology isn't a great example because you can identify every beer can that is missing. But with hair, you can't even come close to identifying every hair that is removed. The granularity is much higher, the hairs overlap/cover each other, and the gaps (missing hairs) blend in partially with the surrounding hair.

If you look closely at HT pics most hairlines immediately post op are a bit asymmetrical. Sometimes by a lot. But when the hair grows in the difference tends to become unnoticeable. Personally I'd prefer the hairline to be relatively symmetrical (in a natural way), but if you really need to conserve donor hair then putting some more hair on one side than the other makes sense to me.

The fundamental difference is, if you go to a high end reputable FUE doc you will always have scarring as good or better as the example pic by bismarck. The same cannot be said for FUT. The wound that causes a FUT scar is entirely different. One is gauranteed if you do your homework, the other is far from it.

I don't have a good example of that, I doubt it would be much worse though. Very few people actually shave down to the skin like that anyways. My point is, the scars are completely different. If someone manages to notice the faint white dots... they'll have no idea what it is. One of the reasons the dots are inconspicuous, even if seen, is because they're spread out consistently on the back of the head. They look like some naturally occuring thing. Like freckles on skin. The linear scar from FUT, however, looks anything but natural and is significantly easier to spot. Our eyes immediately pick up on straight lines. In my opinion you think it's obvious because you're looking for it and know what it is. Now, the linear FUT scar in your pic does stand out because it is a massive line... the first time anyone looks at that guy's head, their eyes will quickly see it and identify it as a scar. They may not know why he has a massive line scar, but it will be obvious it's there and that it's some type of scar. The FUE dots are subtle because they're small and spread out over a large surface. Our eyes are not attracted to that type of pattern to begin with. It's inconspicuous. Even if someone discerns the dots, they won't know what they're looking at... are they some type of skin condition? sun spots? freckles? Who knows, who cares.

Good job sticking to Fin for 4.5 months, now just keep it up. It's a long term commitment. It's like putting sunscreen on every day before going outside, you're not going to appreciate the benefit now... but in 5, 10, 20 years you'll be glad you did.

From a top FUE doc, the FUE scars will not look any worse than the example you gave. Always. From a top FUT doc, the result is more of a variable and can definitely look worse. Well I would classify the FUE example you gave as unnoticeable. Whereas the FUT example you gave is the opposite - very noticeable. The scarring is completely different between them.

Immediate post op pics would be huge. Otherwise I could see how the transformation presented here could have been achieved in ~1500-2000 grafts. To break it down. The improvement at the crown seems marginal (arguably non existent). The improvement around the sides of the head seems small and could very well be accounted for by differences hair style/length/picture technique. That leaves the frontal hairline... at a glance the pictures tend to exagerrate the improvement there. The comparison of pics 1 and 2 might lead you to initially believe he has a full head of hair... but in reality it's a very flattering shot in that the frontal hairline is combed up blocking the view of the balding areas behind. Pic 7 (pre) and pic 6 (post) have a similiar thing going on, pic 7 is actually a top down shot (showing more balding areas) whereas pic 6 is more level (allowing the frontal hairline to block the view more). Anyways, I think this is probably pretty decent.

I just want to say in your example pictures the FUE scarring is orders of magnitude less noticeable. I'm pretty sure the average person would not notice anything weird about the FUE guy's head, even if they sat behind him on a train for hours with a clear view of his head. Whereas with the FUT scarred guy, everyone would immediately notice the moment their eyes went near his head. If you go with a top FUE doctor, the scarring will always look as good or better than your example picture. If you go with a top FUT doctor, the scar could very well end up ]worse. I should also add, the FUE guy has the option of doing a medical tattoo on the little white dots to have his scars become completely unnoticeable. The FUT scar is much more difficult to hide with a medical tattoo and would likely never fully blend in. Even doing a FUE into the FUT scar and then a tattoo on top of that would still stand out a bit. Our eyes are trained to pick up and recognize continuous lines, and that's what a FUT scar is. The main reason we (on the forums) recognize anything wrong with the FUE guy's head is because 1) we're looking for it, and 2) we know about HTs in great detail. The average person, even if they happened to notice the dots, wouldn't even know what to think... they wouldn't know what they were looking at. Whereas with the obvious line scar, "Oh were you in an accident? What happened to you?" In terms of comparing FUE to FUT scars it's not even close. It's like comparing a shark bite to an ant bite.

I can't really comment on the flaws because it is hard to see, but I think it's safe to assume with better pictures his hair would look less ideal. That's not to say this is a bad result, in fact I would wager the opposite. This appears to be a nice result (and will get even better), but the after pictures might lead some people into thinking his result (so far) is quite a bit better than it really is.

yeah it's possible he just got serious with his hair and is styling it differently (longer?) with some product in it. But I will say whatever he did, it's looking good. I'm not sure he would have been able to sneak in a hair transplant. Has he played any actual games with his new hair yet?