Shadow of the EMpire State

You're too young for a transplant. Period.

Respectfully, if you're a Norwood 6, you shouldn't get a transplant.

I find it a bit absurd to call a woman "shallow" for judging a man on his hair when you, yourself, thought it important enough to undergo two transplants. Let's face it: every man here is shallow about hair. Otherwise, they'd shave and be done with it.

The hairline looks a little suspicious, i.e., transplantish.

Aleppo is the ISIS capital. It's only 363 miles from Antalya. Less than an hour by plane. Plus, Turkey is sympathetic to ISIS (it's doing nothing to stop it), meaning that those people will have very little trouble entering and traveling inside the country.

They're pretty damned close. ISIS take over a third of Turkey border town despite airstrikes | New York Post

I'd be more worried about ISIS, frankly.

I've seen thousands of transplants over the past 11 years, and the best ones are almost always precocious. Clinics like to advertise a 12-to-18-month growth horizon (mostly to sate anxious and irate patients), but in my experience, the six-month mark is telling. Of course, that's not to say that the transplant is entirely grown in by six months, but it's usually much closer to complete than they'd like you to believe. Bottom line: the best transplants almost always start strong. The harsh truth about this particular case is that the gentleman was a poor candidate for any transplant, let alone FUE. He had an aggressive, high-norwood balding pattern in his mid-20s. People like that should not get hair transplants unless they belong to that exceedingly small class of men with extraordinary hair characteristics. And that class probably comprises less than five percent of men. Otherwise, there simply isn't enough hair to go around. It's basic math. The modern hair transplant procedure is most effective on over-30 men in the Norwood 3-4 range. Indeed, the standard "wow" result comes from using 2,000-3,000 grafts in the frontal third alone. First, that's what's needed to provide sufficient density even in a small area. Second, that sort of procedure is advisable only when the man does not have balding outside the NW 3-4 range.

Again, there's an increasing amount of evidence to suggest that discontinuing the medication will not always fix the problem.

"Totally untrue"? Here's a report from a fledgling little media outlet called . . . ABC News. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/baldness-drug-propecia-long-lasting-possibly-permanent-sexual/story?id=16758123 Merck itself has abandoned its previous claim that side effects always abate after discontinuing the drug, and there's a deluge of lawsuits in the offing.

But if he does take finasteride, he might be unable to perform on his wedding night. I'd rather be bald.

No. Your situation appears equal parts good and bad. The bad, of course, is that you seem to have an aggressive balding pattern at a young age. Of course, the balding process can't be predicted with mathematical precision, and some men do experience a spontaneous and unexplained slowdown after early onset, but as a general rule, the sooner it begins, the worse it is. And in my opinion, that's sufficiently ominous to avoid a hair transplant at your age. After all, if you get a transplant now and then advance to a NW6 by 30 (which is very possible), the work will have been for naught. The good part is that you're only 24 and will thus be a principal beneficiary of all the advances in the coming years. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they substantially resolve the balding problem in the next 15 years. But even if they don't, the treatments will be much better.

Keep rolling your eyes. Respectfully, I've read your posts, and it's clear that you've no idea what you're talking about. Worse still, you seem to have no compunction about dispensing your nescience to naive people who don't know any better. Anyone who's spent more than 30 days on this forum (i.e., not you) understands that there's an enormous difference between 24 and 30 because the balding process is usually most aggressive in one's 20s, meaning that it's much harder to predict a 24-year old's terminal pattern than it is to predict a 30-year old's terminal pattern. Raissman has discussed this at length: the vast majority of advanced balding patterns become manifest by 30. Thus, there's a world of difference between a 30-year-old NW3 and a 24-year-old NW3, the latter being considerably more likely to develop an advanced pattern than the 30-year old.

He's not in the same boat. Not even close. First, the OP has more hair loss than the guy in the link. Second, the guy in the link is 30, which is significantly different from 24. Third, the guy in the link got more than 1,800 grafts. Meanwhile, you have (wrongly) claimed that 1,000 will make a significant difference for the OP.

Entirely correct.

Having read this page and others for more than 10 years, I find it incredible that this topic is still a source of spirited debate. Strip surgery is an outdated, invasive, and somewhat barbaric procedure that serves only those men with advanced hairloss. And frankly, most of those men aren't good candidates for hair transplantation anyway. Keep this in mind: strip surgery is supposed to be a corrective procedure. Meanwhile, a significant portion of the people who undergo that procedure wind up needing a so-called scar revision to . . . correct their corrective procedure. By contrast, I think I've seen one such case with FUE----maybe. A corrective procedure should not require another corrective procedure. Also, there are other issues quite apart from visibility of the scar, such as nerve damage and persistent numbness. Bottom line: everything I've seen, read, and learned about hair transplants since 2003 has led me to believe (a) that the failure rate of transplants is much higher than clinics lead the public to believe; (b) that the vast majority of men over NW4 will not realize a cosmetically acceptable result from a hair transplant; © that hair transplantation is best used on men over 30 who are NW 3 or less; and (d) that the only advisable procedure for those men is FUE.

You should probably keep that private.

Having been on these boards for more than 10 years, I can tell you that there's no better spokesman for your clinic than Joe Tillman. Nor is there a more honest or knowledgeable resource for patients. In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that I don't know Joe personally. In fact, I've never even met him. Nor have I ever been a patient of either of the clinics for which he's worked. He's never made a dollar off me, and I've never made a dollar off him. Despite this, whenever I've written to Joe, he's written back with honest, unbiased information and opinions. He's never tried to sell me on any procedure. Not even once. That alone distinguishes him from many people in the industry. Moreover, he's worked at two of the better clinics in the world, one a top strip-surgery outfit; the other, one of the most progressive clinics in the world, so he knows what he's talking about. Last, he's had firsthand experience with hair loss. And by "hair loss," I don't mean Norwood 3. For those who don't know, Joe was once a dead-end Norwood 6. Make no mistake: he knows what it's like to be bald; he knows what it's like to undergo multiple procedures; and he knows what it's like to navigate the ugly-duckling stage. Of course, I don't mean to imply that there are no other honest or knowledgeable people in the industry, but I can't think of anyone who brings the full spate of qualities that he does. After all, how many people in this business (a) have been slick bald; (b) have undergone multiple procedures; © have worked at two of the best clinics in the world; and (d) provide honest, unbiased advice?

Respectfully, I think it's a modest improvement.

I've said this over and over: the current state of hair transplantation is not sufficiently advanced to produce cosmetically acceptable results on the vast majority of men who are beyond NW 4. If you're beyond NW 4, it's highly unlikely that you will realize a cosmetically acceptable result unless you have extraordinary hair characteristics.

Incorrect.

Ding! Ding!

The problem with crown restoration is two-fold. First, because of the position of the crown, the way light falls on it, and the angle of the hair, it's much for difficult to conceal baldness there than in the front. Second, crown balding usually signals advanced loss to a much greater degree than isolated frontal loss. From your pictures, you seem to have acceptable coverage, but there appears to be miniaturization across the scalp. Obviously, that's bad. You're fairly young, so I think you will benefit greatly from coming advances, but I don't think you're a good transplant candidate at the moment.

The hairline doesn't quite pass the smell test, but it's only five months out, so we'll see where he is in a few months.

Front looks great.