WhamHair

8 minutes ago, Tommy1991 said:

It does happen. I am one of those patients. 

ah ok..so you got your HT done at Eugenix?

5 hours ago, Ccd99 said:

I personally have seen more results from Dr Pittella and they're all as equally as impressive, he does amazing work on high NW patients. Dr Bansal has done some good work too but I haven't seen as much... additionally I am not a fan of the Eugenix business model where they have so many packages and depending on your package that determines the doctor or technicians that work on you. 

Definitely not crazy about the various packages either. 

2 minutes ago, Tommy1991 said:

Look mate in all honesty if Dr Arika cannot give you the time needed even during your consultation, it’s just not worth going ahead with the procedure there, it will be no different. 

She will be in an out of surgery rooms, jumping from one patient to another, even if you choose the premium package with her. 

Unless you can get Dr Sethi, then you have a selection dilemma. 
As it stands I would choose Pitella every day of the week. 

In all fairness, she did not rush through the consultation. I basically had no more questions for her specifically that I could remember at that moment. But yes, if she is in and out of surgery rooms, then that is a red flag - so I am hoping more people that have gotten their HT done at Eugenix can weigh in on whether or not this happens with Dr Bansal. 

Just now, Berba11 said:

They are referring here to the week or two before the procedure only, where many clinics advise patients who take minoxidil to stop taking it as it can indeed cause excess oozing or bleeding. You can resume it again a couple weeks after surgery once everything has healed up.

I appreciate the clarification here. I wish they had worded it this way. Thanks so much. I am leaning towards starting on the prescription that Dr Pittella wrote for me in advance of which ever doctor I finally settle on for the HT.

1 hour ago, mr_peanutbutter said:

both are excellent choices, cant go wrong with any of them

 

in your case id choose eugenix bc its more convenient in your case

I appreciate the input here. As you can probably guess, this post probably has a rather obvious undercurrent of validation-seeking from my side! 

17 minutes ago, Ccd99 said:

I'd personally go with Dr Pittella. One of your concerns is going through that many grafts in one go, you could always ask the doctor for a less aggressive restoration to keep some grafts for the future?

Regarding his wait list, you said it is long, how long are we talking? 6-12 months? 12-18 months? Or possibly even longer? (just curious!)

Thank you so much for the response. In all fairness, he did offer me a 6000 grafts route with a slightly higher hairline. This is still higher than the 4500 that Eugenix has proposed. As for his waiting list, it is more like 12-18 months at this point. I really would like to do this in 2024 so that's another factor that is nudging me towards Eugenix. I am curious to understand your view on why you would go with Dr Pittella instead. Please let me know whenever time permits. Thank you once again.

Hello All,

A few months ago, I posted on this forum (here is a link to that post: https://www.hairrestorationnetwork.com/topic/70120-revisiting-the-hair-transplant-questiondecision-after-coasting-along-for-over-a-decade-using-toppik/)  for the first time after over a decade about revisiting the question of having a hair surgery. In the last 2 months I’ve had both an online consultation with Dr Pittella and an in-person consultation in Mumbai (I was there for a few weeks for Christmas) with Dr Arika Bansal from Eugenix. My consultation experience with them and their approaches are quite different. I would like to get my first hair transplant done this year. Dr Felipe has a LONG wait-list but is open to accommodating me at some point this year. Dr Bansal’s staff is optimistic that I can be accommodated this year. I am leaning towards the latter for the following reasons:

A.      Lower use of grafts (and hence lower cost).  

B.      The fact that it is in a city and a neighborhood that I have a home in – which makes post-op help much easier for me and I won’t be on my own.

That being said, I really like Dr Pittella. The consultation was as long as I wanted it to be. I felt like I was talking to someone that was both a professor and a friend at the same time – and his empathy and warmth radiated through every minute of the conversation.

I have made a comparison between the two based on my consultations and their proposed approaches to the hair transplant. Here is the link to that:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1srQHlw4Ig9rf51-_HgCmU9TSeU5cIQd43UZHhwFLSJA/edit?usp=sharing

The folks at Eugenix seem OK doing this WITHOUT my using Finasteride. The one nagging concern I have is that they have not suggested that I take any oral medication (e.g. Minoxidil) prior to the surgery. This is in stark contrast to what Dr Pittella suggested – where he figured getting on meds right away was the wise thing to do. I made the mistake of NOT asking about medication DURING my consultation with Dr Bansal and reached out about it later to their support staff and this is the response I received:

“Pre-procedure, you don't have to start minoxidil as it is a vasodilator and might increase the oozing during the procedure.”

I don’t know what to make of the above. For those of you that had your transplant done by Eugenix, did you hear something similar?

If any of you found yourselves making a similar decision (i.e. Dr Pittella versus Eugenix), I would love to get your perspectives as I navigate this decision. Thank you in advance. I don't even know what I would do without this supportive community. 

I have put together a summary of my assessment so far of Dr Pitella versus Eugenix (Mumbai, India) in the link below:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1srQHlw4Ig9rf51-_HgCmU9TSeU5cIQd43UZHhwFLSJA/edit?usp=sharing

Would love some thoughts from those of you that have evaluated both options for a HT. Thank you in advance.

So there is no scenario in which he does nothing at all. He does the major portions in both scenarios but for the lower-cost scenario, the "less major" (not sure what that means) is done by a junior doctor. Scenario 1 costs $4 per graft while scenario 2 costs $3 per graft. 

Just got done with my online consultation with Dr Pittella. What a pleasant guy!!! The level of detail he goes through is staggering. I do require 10,000 grafts and he seems reasonably confident in his ability to get them. The cost per graft depends on whether he does the whole surgery or if he does only the major parts while a junior doctor does the rest. I am also doing an in-person consultation with Dr Bansal at Eugenix later this month in Bombay. I'll have to make some type of decision by the end of this year. If you were in my position, would you do the higher cost per graft wherein Dr Pittella does the whole thing? A penny for your thoughts. 

UPDATE: I have my online consultation scheduled with Dr Pitella this Wednesday. I obviously have a set of questions that I plan to ask. That being said, are there any questions that some of you wished you had asked during your online consultation that you wouldn't mind sharing? Please let me know. Thank you in advance.

4 hours ago, Shadman said:

I think you'll still have grafts available for future session. But you can discuss again with the clinic so that they plan accordingly. in my procedure, I was running out of grafts so Dr. Decided not to extract more. Because if they extract more, it'll look over harvested, an ethical approach from the clinic.  But If it was some other clinic scenario might've been different. 

This is good to know. Thank you so much for the reassuring response! 

2 hours ago, Shadman said:

I can understand why you don't want to take finasteride completely. But you still have other options. I think above estimated grafts would be enough to give you good coverage. Best wishes

thanks so much. I am just worried that with such a large number of grafts taken from the scalp, I might not have enough for a future HT. Thoughts? Thanks once again.

17 minutes ago, Shadman said:

Regarding the eagerness, I think they're trying to be responsive as much as they can. Whenever I asked them any questions before finalizing my procedure, they were ready to answer always. You  can start finasteride three/two times in a week to see how it is behaving.  If you don't want to take it completely, then you still have many options. You can go for oral minoxidil & finasteride gel or you can go for minoxidil and finasteride topical solution. Usually topical finasteride hardly give any sides. Regarding the scar, Eugenix use very sharp punches to extract grafts so there shouldn't be any scars. In my repair procedure,  they extracted 150 wrongly placed grafts from the hairline. Initially up to 3-4 days it might be noticable but after a week there would be no scars.

May I know what number of grafts they're intially suggesting for the coverage ?

Thanks so much for the prompt and helpful response. I definitely want to avoid oral finasteride altogether. Thanks for the reassuring assessment of beard area scars. I have to admit that when I was a lurker on this forum over a decade ago, beard hair transplants were NOT a thing so I was a bit taken aback by that suggestion. As for grafts, this is what they are proposing:

Proposed Harvest from Scalp: 3500

Proposed Harvest from Beard: 700

So I heard back from both Dr Pitella’s clinic as well as from Eugenix. Both of them were prompt with their initial response. Dr Pitella’s clinic asked me to submit some information via a google form. It has been almost a week since I submitted that form but I have not heard back from them. I will follow up tomorrow for what it is worth. Eugenix has been calling almost regularly to set up a phone consultation after providing an estimate of grafts (extracted from both my scalp and beard) require for both my hairline and crown. I am still unsure as to how to view their eagerness. They indicated that there is a 2-month waiting list for the actual procedure to be done. This is far shorter than I had expected. My sense was that the waiting periods typically exceed 6 months – so this was a bit of a surprise (albeit a pleasant one). As for my concerns around the use of oral Finasteride, this was the response from Eugenix:

“If you choose not to take finasteride in the future, we can still perform the surgery because we have observed that finasteride doesn't impact the final results (1 year) of hair transplant. However, it's important to note that finasteride can prevent further baldness and improve the longevity of transplanted hair. If you're considering alternatives, we recommend consulting our doctors through a video consultation to explore options like finasteride gel or minoxidil. Without finasteride, you may experience thinning in non-transplanted areas and, in the long term, even the transplanted area could become miniaturized. Our aim is to provide you with the knowledge and the intake of finasteride is solely your decision.”

I appreciate them not being wedded to the idea of making the use of oral finasteride a pre-requisite for the surgery. In theory, I am not opposed to finasteride gel or minoxidil. I am wondering what the general take on that is here as a substitute for oral finasteride. Thoughts?

For those of you that have you leveraged the beard area for transplants, were there any long term scars there? This was the response I received from Eugenix when I asked them about this:

“There shouldn't be visible scar of the extraction as we C*** punches, which are sharp and result in small wounds, leading to faster healing. I am sharing you few examples below which can give you an over all idea of beard extraction.”

They actually even sent me photos (attached) of what this would look like. I am wondering how close this is to a typical situation wherein the beard area is used for grafts. Any thoughts?

Thank you all for your guidance as I navigate this somewhat scary path.

On 9/10/2023 at 1:32 AM, Gatsby said:

Dr Pittella would be an excellent choice. His ability to respect the donor management is incredible. All the best @WhamHair. 👍

I just reached out to him with my photos. Let's see what emerges from the consultation. Will keep you all posted on how this pans out. Thank you so much! 

7 hours ago, Shadman said:

 

To answer your question B, both of the centers of Eugenix maintain the same standard of work. Gurgaon is their head of operation center. Most of their international patients had their procedure in Gurgaon, same applies for me also. Around 40 minutes drive from the airport. But no Matter which location you select, quality of work will be same. 

In my opinion, you should also address the frontal part. A new hairline will shape your face. Moreover, you should select a clinic where they take your pre existing hair in consideration and implant in between. 

Mumbai might be easier since the location is close to where my mom lives in that city. And yes, the frontal part/hairline is key. That still takes precedence over the rest. thanks so much! 

21 minutes ago, mrmane85 said:

If you don't want to take Finasteride then I would consult with Dr Pittella as he doesn't recommend Finasteride and is top 2 in the world when it comes to high NW's like yourself 

This is great. You are the second person to mention this - so I will definitely check out Dr Pittella's work.

2 minutes ago, Turkhair said:

Uh I am not sure, I just googled her name and this forum name and that link came up 😅

Admins can answer better.

No worries. This is great regardless. Thanks so much!

1 hour ago, Turkhair said:

She’s still recommended

https://hairtransplantnetwork.com/dr-radha-palakurthi

New surgeons appear and options increase and people start talking about the new options. That’s probably what happened. I  don’t know anything about her though 

I posted a link in my original post that included the list of recommended surgeons but she was not on there. Is there a separate list? Thanks so much for this. 

11 minutes ago, Turkhair said:

Pitella is world class. You’re going to be very pleased at the end of it. I also don’t think he recommends finasteride - unlike some surgeons who don’t even operate unless you’re on fin - so he’s perfect for your situation.

Good luck mate

This is such great input - and as you rightly said, this fits my situation. There used to be a doctor that was highly recommended on here that did the same. Her name is Dr Radha Rani. What happened to her?

52 minutes ago, asterix0 said:

 

thanks a ton for sharing this. Will definitely check this out! 

58 minutes ago, asterix0 said:

Good plan. I would look into Dr. Pitella in Brazil, given your Norwood level I think he would definitely give you as close to full coverage as you can hope for. Take a look at some of his results on this forum, there are quite a few good cases. 

Thank so much for the suggestion. Will spend some time looking at his work.

2 hours ago, asterix0 said:

Your hairline will soon disappear as well without medication, I would say probably in the next 5 years if I had to guess. 

You will need to budget a lot of money to do this properly, of course you can roll the dice at a low cost clinic, but considering how many grafts you need, I would advise you not to do this.

The problem is, the clinics you need to go to will have at least a year long waiting list.

Not sure if this counts but I did take some homeopathic meds many years ago. Not sure what that does but I honestly didn't think I would have the hairline I do at this point. Cannot confirm if there is any correlation here at all. 

9 minutes ago, asterix0 said:

Your hairline will soon disappear as well without medication, I would say probably in the next 5 years if I had to guess. 

You will need to budget a lot of money to do this properly, of course you can roll the dice at a low cost clinic, but considering how many grafts you need, I would advise you not to do this.

The problem is, the clinics you need to go to will have at least a year long waiting list.

I would rather spend more and do it properly given that the donor supply is finite. I have definitely factored in a long waiting list - which is why I am trying to lock down a strategy in the next couple of months. That way, I am not starting this process when it becomes urgent.