Shadow of the EMpire State

The pic on the far left is from 2002, not 2003. It's right after he won the Super Bowl with the 2001 Patriots (the game was played in January or February 2002). He was about 25. And now, 14 years later, he has more hair than he did then. It's probably a transplant---and a good one.

Respectfully, I focus on what I believe to be true. Am I generally more negative than other posters? Maybe, but I think that says more about the fanboyism and political correctness that prevail among prospective patients than about me. I call it the way I see it. In fact, I often find that if I make a critical comment, subsequent posters will admit that they agree with me. Meanwhile, before I posted, it was all praise. Is that a coincidence, or am I simply acknowledging what "some" other posters think but are afraid to say? I've been a member of this forum for years, and I don't tell the moderators which doctors to recommend or ban. I leave that to you; it's your forum. But I think I'm within the rules when I give an opinion, even if some people think I'm a negative poster.

Tell him that you've become a "cutter" in the time since your last operation; that you just started a new relationship with a hot number; and that she sliced your head up during a particularly zealous sexual encounter.

I've stopped participating in this thread because, frankly, I don't really care what happened. The clinic involved was never on my short list, so it's not that important to me. I write now only to say this: never forget that this industry is not "medicine" in any traditional sense. It's a sales-focused business in which ethics isn't often atop the list of priorities. Caveat emptor.

Thinking yourself indispensable is a good way to ruin your business. Every business has to answer to customers. If it doesn't, it will die.

"Appease" us? These are businessmen selling a product. They're doing it for themselves.

Disagree entirely.The controversy here doesn't stem from his allegation that he was a patient or that he had surgery. It stems from his claim that he was baited and switched. So merely establishing that he was a patient would have no bearing on the question whether he got baited and switched. In other words, the "evidence" you want wouldn't prove anything. Even assuming that he was "an ex-patient out to get" the doctor, he would still have pictures and other documents confirming the fact of his surgery at the clinic, right? So how would presenting that evidence prove that he was NOT "an ex-patient out to get" the doctor? It wouldn't. After all, an ex-patient who was out to get the doctor would still have photos and documents. The assumption that he was not a patient and, by extension, that he's just a random psychopath who whiles away his days pretending, of all things, to be a hair-transplant patient is simply not reasonable, in my opinion. What's more reasonable: (1) that a psychopath wandered onto a hair-transplant forum to fabricate a story about a doctor with whom he's never actually had a procedure; or (2) that a doctor who is the subject of such a serious allegation would choose not to refute it simply because the patient did not post photos or a confirmation email?

Query: what evidence could have possibly proved the allegation? Showing post-op pictures or some other indication that he had gone to the clinic would have done nothing to support his specific claims. And doubtless, had he provided that kind of "evidence" (I use the term liberally), that would have been the general response among the forum members. But because he posted no pictures, suddenly it's "the lack of pictures" that makes his story untrustworthy. These are just classic forensic techniques. If one side knows that you don't have a certain piece of evidence---even if that evidence is of little or no probative value---they harp on it. They say, "A-ha! But he doesn't have the all-important X!" Meanwhile, if the guy did have X, they'd be telling you how little it means.

Precisely right. Surgery is not a consumer good. It's not something you want a deal on. If it's that important, save up and get it done with someone proven.

You can't possibly believe that. See! I knew you didn't believe that.

I think it's great that he has such thick donor hair, but 25 is very young to put 2,800 into the frontal third.

No shave, huh? Very interesting. After all, the shave is what's kept me away from hair transplants. I'm a lawyer in a packed office, and I've worn my hair longer for years. If I suddenly walked in with a shaved head and a red scalp, it'd be obvious, and I'd be a laughingstock. Perhaps the next breakthrough in surgical technology lies in reducing or otherwise obscuring the ugly-duckling stage.

What does Konior get for FUE?

Anyone who wants a hair transplant has a psychological issue, although some have greater issues than others.

Oh no? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Ankara_bombings Anyone who goes to Turkey now need to have his head examined---and not for hair loss.

You can't transplant a patient like this and ignore the temple points/sides. When you have a Norwood 2 hairline and Norwood 6 temple points/sides, it looks like a bad rug. And frankly, that's what this looks like. Frankly, this needed to be a much larger procedure.

Not sure whether that would be practical or even possible. This forum needs to come to grips with the idea that held 10 years ago and has, in fact, secretly been the case all along: this is a sleazy business full of bad actors who are willing to say (and do) virtually anything to get your money. That's the reality of it. And no "recommendation" or other stamp of approval should be taken as a foolproof indication that a particular doctor isn't a bum.

I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusion, but your analogy fails because in each of your examples, the recommender is not being paid (directly or indirectly) by the persons who are recommended. Here, it is. I think that complicates the question. I'm not so sure about this either. There can be negligence in referrals and recommendations.

Well put.

Bald men? No. Men with noticeable hair transplants? Without question. Or any detectable hair transplant. That's where you and I part company.

I'm sure that's true. I have high standards in that regard because I know how people think---particularly women. Sure, there are some men who wouldn't notice if you came in with a raccoon on your head, but women (and men like me) will notice. And that, I cannot have. I'm not going to be one of the people who gets laughed at behind his back. 38, Norwood 3. If you're talking about having a full head of hair except for a thinning crown, that's one thing. But unless you have superb hair characteristics (coarse, curly, low contrast, etc.), it's more likely that you'll end up with a bald crown if you progress to a full Norwood 6. Also, if they use more grafts to cover your crown, will there be enough for credible density in the front? Did he have a hair transplant?

Anyone can cherry-pick patients like Bobman and Futzyhead (famous H&W patients from years ago) and claim that that kind of result is representative for advanced Norwood classes. But I've seen enough to know that it's not. You cannot disprove with one patient what has been proved with thousands. I've spent the last 12 years looking at pictures. I've seen thousands of them. And I can say a few things about them. First, in the hair-transplant arena, pictures almost always make the situation appear better than it actually is---sometimes radically so. If you've spent more than five minutes on a forum like this, you've seen a patient upload post-op pictures to rave reviews only to complain that it's not as full as it looks. By contrast, you almost never hear a patient gush that his hair is actually fuller than it appears to be. So rule number one is that pictures lie. Second, clinics cherry-pick patient results. Every clinic has failures. They're unavoidable. But in 12 years, I've yet to see a clinic create a thread called, "Terrible Result from Our Office Proves that Results May Vary." Never happens. They show the winners. The failures never make it onto forums, and that's because clinics are in the business of selling hair transplants. And any clinic that does a reasonable volume will be able to post enough success stories to make good results seem routine when, in fact, they may not be. For example, until recently, Hakan Doganay seemed like Jesus Christ with a scalpel in his hand because his clinic posted one home run after another. It's only now, years later, that the more-checkered truth is coming to the fore. Bottom line, I've seen thousands of transplant photos. And the vast majority are cherry-picked cases of patients with good hair characteristics or just abnormally good results. And even then, pictures often paint a more roseate picture than is true. So how do I know what to believe? First, I remember that all transplants are limited by math. In the vast majority of cases, you cannot cover a Norwood 6 pattern with donor hair in such a fashion as to make it look undetectable and cosmetically acceptable. The space is simply too big for the donor supply, so when you see results that appear too good to be true, they often are. Second, I always remember that clinics post exemplary results, not representative results.

If you're asking for my opinion about the case to which you linked above, I would not recommend a hair transplant for that gentleman regardless of age because I think that that degree of loss is likely too extensive to produce an undetectable, cosmetically acceptable result for patients without extraordinary hair characteristics. But if he's of a mind to proceed anyway, then I don't see a significant downside to doing it now. After all, he's already so far gone that the surgical plan would presumably take stock of a terminal pattern of Norwood 6 or worse. Body hair looks terrible, and everyone knows it. The bottom line is that the surgical aspect of the procedure can advance and advance and advance, but until they find a way to produce more scalp hair (via cloning, multiplication or some other similar procedure), the surgery will have limited efficacy, so donor hair must be conserved to the greatest extent possible.

Correct on all counts.

Many young people tend to think life ends at 40. They suppose that they won't care how they look then or that it won't matter anymore. Then they get to 40 and they think, "Boy, I feel the same way I did when I was 25." And therein lies the myopia of youth.