mattj

You make no mention of medication. Have you considered taking propecia?

If a patient smokes and is going to continue to smoke after the procedure, then it doesn't make much sense to prohibit them from indulging their habit during breaks from surgery. In fact it's probably best that a patient with a heavy addiction is not getting antsy in the chair. I know from personal experience that cigarettes are very bad for the circulation, so my main worry would be the issue of scalp vascularity and possible effects on yield.

It seems that you're at roughly 5 months post-op, right? Once your growth is complete and the hair has matured your hair should no longer be such an issue. I do think it's an age thing. When you reach your mid to late twenties you'll find young women of that age much more tolerable. Personally, I don't have much time for under-twenty fives. (and I'm 29)

I would say that taking the medication, unless it's going to be a significant financial burden for you, would be the most sensible course of action. Can you honestly say that you wouldn't regret allowing yourself to progress to a genuinely bald state, perhaps even a NW6, when it was potentially avoidable? It's one thing to be accepting of a very small amount of loss (which your friends and family probably don't notice), but you might feel differently if things get a lot worse. That said, if you're genuinely alright with losing more hair, then I wouldn't want to talk you out of such a positive state of mind. Just remember, as ScottishGuy said, a transplant is not without risks, and even though they can provide a striking improvement, they are no substitute for a full crop of native hair.

Hair transplants were never a poor man's option, and I guess there are still plenty of people who are financially secure enough (or who can just about scrape together enough funds) for a transplant.

Bill is right, Dr Rahal doesn't perform FUE at this time. He's very busy with strip at the moment. I think Dr Rahal has proven to produce some of the most discrete scars in the business. I have asked him if he has any photos of scar revisions and will get back to you if he manages to find any.

Where did you graft estimates come from?

You seem to have a realistic outlook on this, and to have done plenty of reading on the subject. Looking at your photos I don't think you're 'doomed' yet. Give the medication a while and you might be pleasantly surprised. I wouldn't want to raise your hopes but I've seen finasteride work wonders on hair like yours.

Excellent point, youngsuccess. In fact I don't think it would be strange for a balding man to laugh at this old comedy clich?©, or in fact to laugh at wigs in general.

I have no experience with doses over the 1.25 mg approx. you get from one quarter of a proscar pill, but remember the pill is manufactured in 5mg dosages. I imagine you were just taking the average 1 - 1.25mg daily dosage like most men do. A higher dose is more likely to cause side effects, but if not exceeding 5mg per day then you will be taking an amount which is considered safe.

It looks like it could be fairly recent. In recent years his career picked up and he was no longer the balding bit-part and supporting actor, and I'm certain his new hair was a wig rather than a transplant. Perhaps now he has gone under the knife and hopes to ditch the wig. Personally I don't see the point in doing both.

It would be necessary to see photographs showing what sort of area you want to have worked on, as well as how you wear your hair, before commenting on how well you could hide the transplant. If you only want a small procedure then it might be possible to hide it quite well if you can comb your hair down over the recipient zone. Two weeks isn't long enough for all signs of surgery to fully disappear, and you must remember that it will be longer yet before the transplanted hairs, once they start to grow, start looking normal.

I think it's a mistake to speak of 30 as any sort of real threshold beyond which it is safe to get a transplant. Many men don't begin to lose hair until their thirties and some are older still. Male Pattern Baldness is, after all, something associated with older men. I've lost count of the number of men I've seen who had full heads of hair past the age of thirty and then ended up at the high end of the Norwood scale. I understand that the issue is one of averages and diminishing risks, and you do mention 40 as a better age to get a transplant, but I sometimes think that thirty-somethings who read these forums might be getting the wrong idea that they've reached some sort of finish line.

He says he can't tell between the transplanted hair and the native hair. I think that's a good thing, it means he wasn't butchered. Either the transplanted hairs didn't grow (or few of them did) or the transplant was a success but too few grafts were used (or more native hair has since fallen out.) Either way, oceanblue, I think you could have done a lot worse. You've spent ??3500 but you could have also ended up physically scarred. The transplanted hair on top will make a difference when combined with any new hair that is placed should you go through with a second transplant. I would caution against choosing clinics who don't have a patient presence online. So many clinics do have a lot patients sharing their experiences that it's not worth gambling with your money and your physical appearance and going with an unknown. This Polish clinic might be good but it might also be very bad. You'd be heaping more risk upon the risks already inherent to surgery. You can use the main site here to search for coalition members - doctors whose work has been deemed to be of a high standard. The UK only really has the Farjo Medical Center. Here is the list. http://www.hairtransplantnetwo...nsplant-surgeons.asp

If hairloss is effecting your self esteem as bad as that then a transplant might be a good choice, assuming that you're well aware of what is involved, the time it takes to grow in, the risks, etc. Your hairloss seems to be progressing slowly and you're now on proscar so you might be a pretty good candidate. Just don't be too greedy. Regardless of what the really young MPB sufferers might say, a somewhat mature hairline does look good on a man.

Wow. Do you know approximately how many grafts went to construct the area of hair at the sides, as I noticed that pre-op he had receded back in line with his sideburns.

To be honest, if you aren't a good candidate for a transplant (and I think I'd agree that that is the case) and you definitely won't be able to afford a transplant for a good few years yet (by which time your hair might have changed considerably), then I'm not sure what good consultations would do at this stage. That sounds terribly negative but I think it's reasonable. You should definitely try getting back on the rogaine and see how you do on a slightly lower dose of proscar. I split mine into four, as you did, but I don't see why you couldn't split it down further if you have a sharp enough blade. (I'm sure you have access to unlimited scalpels!) It won't matter if the daily dose isn't exactly the same each time, it's just important that the drug remains in your system. It doesn't sound like you're letting your hairloss interfere with your schooling which is good. I wouldn't blame the stresses of medical school for your hairloss. Lots of guys suffer from aggressive hairloss at a young age without any specific stressor to pin it on. It's likely that you'd be exactly where you are now regardless of what career path you chose.

Just an anecdote... My mother's father was a NW6. She has very fine hair herself and I would say that my hair characteristics follow hers more than my father's. He always had very thick hair with no loss at all. My hairloss is stable but even before I started the fin I had more hair than my mother's father did at the same age, so thankfully I have not inherited everything from him. My brother, who also has fairly minor hairloss, has thicker hair more like my father's. No baldness on that side of the family at all really. So my brother and I are both experiencing hairloss, but we both have differing hair characteristics overall, seemingly passed from both sides of the family. It would appear that whatever genes are involved in hairloss and hair characteristics that are passed down might combine in an unpredictable way.

Why do you want to avoid fin?

I think you have what is termed a 'mature hairline'. It looks good and I wouldn't worry about it unless it changes. It's hard to tell with the crown as it's normal to see a bit of scalp at the whorl as the hairs fan out in all directions. If a flash was used then this can expose more scalp than the eye sees. It wouldn't be a bad idea to consider using propecia/proscar.

Interesting. I hadn't thought about the '50% theory' in the context of FUE donor extraction.

Mattj, What does this have to do with anything? Is this a sign of a future NW pattern? I also have thinning in the same spot so I'd be interested in your answer to this question. Thanks!! Some men's hair recedes upwards from the neck. I'm not entirely sure if this is always a sign of a very advanced future balding pattern, but I do associate it at least partly with the sort of hairloss which leaves a very thin and narrow band of hair around the back of the head. The poster in question does have very aggressive hairloss at a young age so it might be wise to have a transplant doctor examine this area closely. I can't be sure that what I see in the photo is thinning upwards from the neck, but it does look like it.

mattj, I think from what i've seen in my researches, great doctors such as (in my opinion of course) Rahal, Hasson&Wong, Feller makes a great density which gives the best results. Since you're an online consultant , I wanna ask if someone could achieve the same density in transplanted area as same as the donor area? Physically it is possible, but it isn't a good idea as yield can be effected. It would probably be more feasible to attempt that sort of density in a second procedure. I really don't think you need to go that high for good results, though.

The 50% theory does not contradict what Adrian told you. With your transplant you would be aiming for better than 50%, which means that hopefully your transplanted hair would be considerably fuller than it would be at the point where you'd notice thinning. As for the 50% theory itself, I think it's going to depend on a lot of things, including how large an area is thinning (you're probably more likely to notice a wide area of diffuse thinning) as well as simply how much attention an individual gives to their hair. I don't see (as suggested in the first post) quite how the 50% theory could be a gimmick to suck you in. At most it could be a guideline for how dense a doctor plants the grafts, but seeing as how it would result in pretty modest numbers being used it doesn't seem like it would be of much use to a doctor who was trying to squeeze his patients.

I would agree with this. There could be many reasons why you don't want to take the medication, but if you're worried about side effects then I think you should reconsider and give fin a try. The horror stories out there come from a loud but tiny minority. I really think that the anti-finasteride corner must be responsible for an awful lot of unnecessary hairloss.