Swooping

Hey Swoop,

 

Thanks for the reply!

 

Yeah, we are going to present more highly detailed examples of cases. Bigger cases, more details, et cetera. This was only supposed to be our "teaser announcement," but it took on a life of its own! Haha.

 

I've been very surprised by the scarring. Initially, I didn't think we could honestly say that it was cosmetically equivalent to traditional FUE. I thought mFUE would be "strip results without the strip scar." However, the scarring has exceeded our expectations. It's more accurate to call it "strip results with FUE-level scarring."

 

It's been performed on approximately 30-40 patients. I'd really have to confirm with Dr Lindsey and go through our own records to be sure. Many of these were smaller cases, and this is why we're looking for some larger ones now. And yes, they've been very pleased with the scarring thus far -- the ones I've spoken to at least.

 

The procedure is much quicker than traditional FUE. It's closer to a strip case -- time wise. Probably a little longer, but much shorter than FUE.

It sure did lol! It sounds good to be honest. From my point of view at least in theory then this method could have more advantages than FUE. Meaning that mFUE would be basically a better alternative for everyone than FUE. I'm still not fully convinced though and my opinion doesn't matter obviously that's why we need more evidence and case results. That is ultimately what counts.

As the procedure being quicker is only a plus as from patient perspective and practitioner perspective which is great. Plus it would have the advantage of less TOB time which is nice to take along all with it.

I wish you good luck and look forward to detailed cases in the future.

Thanks Blake. Sounds good from what I see. Perhaps this method will indeed cope with the slight less mean yield and more variable in normal FUE at least this is my opinion. Nobody knows how much it really does differ. We simply lack proper studies. There are way to many variables to take into place anyway.

Anyway are you going to present more high detailed examples of cases? I think we all would want to see that as that actually counts not opinions.

What do you think of the scarring thus far? How many patients did you perform this method on approx? Were they happy about the scarring?

Also how long does a procedure like this compare to a FUE procedure in terms of time is what I am curious of?

A portfolio of more cases with proper high detailed pictures would be nice.

Looks great dude. You have awesome hair characteristics too I think. Congrats already!

FUE is not more popular-here or in Europe. It is the popular WISH of the uninformed masses. That is simply a fact.

Dr. Feller I love how you keep speaking of "facts" or the "truth". You are no authority really.. So do you have data to backup this statement?

You keep doing this repeatedly in almost every post of you but frankly said much of you say is just your opinion. And from my point of view you are looking at several points from a (heavy) bias.

Yes the extraction process of FUE is more harsh to the grafts and this will probably results overall in a slightly lower yield. How much? Nobody knows really. Because we lack scientific data about this point. I think this only portrays that the hair transplant industry needs properly well set up scientific studie. They are terribly lacking. Studies like this are extremely hard to set up though for obvious reasons.

FUE does require more skill and time invested to become really good at it. That's why it's so incredibly important to chose a good FUE practitioner. And if we put up a good FUE practitioner vs a good FUT practitioner I believe the mean yield going to be only slightly lower with a bit higher variable overall.

Feriduni states kinda the same on his site;

Generally speaking, grafts extracted via FUE are much more sensitive, as the extraction technique leaves much less protective tissue around the hair follicles. This ultimately leads to a slightly lower survival rate.

Anyway I'm pretty sure that a slightly lower yield trade off is what many people would happily chose for to avoid linear scar on the back of their head. FUT is getting very old fashioned and I believe FUE is getting more popular too. It probably already is. In fact when I at my national hairloss forum (Dutch) I see that hair transplants are pretty popular and the section in the forum is too. I can tell you that 95% of the topics in the section are people who go/went for a FUE. Most of people travel to Turkey for that. Is this a representation for Europe? No, it isn't but in my opinion it is indicative. By the way this isn't only on the Dutch national forum but also on other forums. Jup, I can make screenshots and count the topics for you if you want on these forums.

A few days ago someone made a topic about his donor problems with FUE. You didn't even see a picture yet you were that fast to make a video about the problem of "mega fue sessions" in relation to the donor. Specifically talking about how the tiny little holes in a mega session in the donor area can disrupt blood flow and cause problems. Your whole story is quite incorrect and thus provides as a source for misinformation. I can go into this later. Anyway the whole thing seemed to me like a opportunity to try to bash FUE.

Now you can keep loving your FUT puppy and define it as the "golden standard' for yourself. However consumers eventually dictate the market not you.

About mFUE..... If you will prove that it can prove itself up to FUE then that is great. So if you get the same scarring and the same results as the top FUE practicioners with mFUE then I applaud you. I'm not that excited of another method which doesn't substantially act as a real innovation. However if you manage to get great results with it just as the top FUE guys then I'm sure people will appreciate that. Thus, I'm looking forward to more professional documentation with high quality pictures.

To other people who are reading/watching this topic I can only say that no idea/thing is just true because someone says so. Keep that in your mind!

I am truley concerned about my health and my continously sheeding donor area follicles. I will keep you updated on my progress and post photos real soon. Though its hard to make out the patchy hair loss and the scalling from photos.

Oh, wait so you have 3500 grafts taken out besides that "thousands" of hair follicles fall out of your donor area? Yet it would be hard to see on a picture?

Post detailed pictures so we can see more. No offense but perhaps you are just indeed freaking out. Calm down .

Consider yourself lucky then that it doesn't progress that fast. As seeker2014 mentioned here there is really no timeframe on how fast your hairloss will progress. However you have clearly lost much density already in a diffuse pattern all over your scalp. Chances are that if you do nothing your situation is going to be heck of a lot worse than it is now in a few years.

But how come my hair is exactly the same for almost 6 years? Sometimes even looks better. And this pics, I have not covered anything. Often I hide most of the bald area with styling.

 

And my hair line is exactly the same as teenager...

Do you have a picture then from 6 years ago so we can compare?

Seems just like AGA to me dude sorry. This will progress more and more if you get older if you do nothing. How fast? Nobody will know. However do know that you are in a good position to act now.

Androgenetic alopecia mate. Get on finasteride ASAP and save yourself a hair transplant. Catch it now while you can.

Hasson & Wong.

Much of what he says holds truth yes, although its clearly not that black & white.

Very good for this timeframe , congrats!

Most likely indeed. Will grow back then no problem! You are are still pretty young too. Was just displaying that it's not as black & white that you can't lose some of your donor hair in the long run or quality of your donor hair.

Also read this study; Oxidative Stress in Ageing of Hair.

And this one some more hard data;

http://www.pgscience.com/files/pdf/Dr._Thomas_Dawson/Ch14_Effects_Aging_Flagler_Robbins_Dawson.pdf (Especially take a look here on the Japanese men with their reduction in hair diameter as they age, considering they have godly hair genes.)

To your response btw;

My point being, age is really not a significant factor.

Age is a huge significant factor. Even in the assumption that senescent alopecia isn't a different pathology, age is a huge factor for androgenetic alopecia.

No wonder that AGA is progressive and more prominent while androgen levels plummet as you get older.

I understand that a individual can be 400kg's, smoke 4 packs a day, sit in the sun whole day and be a NW1 at the age of 80 with perfect donor quality. That's not the point. Everyone is different.

Swooping, that doesn't really make sense. Because as they doctors tell us, the donor hairs are coming from an area in back of the head that are genetically programmed not to fall out. The hairs in back of my head are not thinning, even as i age. So, neither should the transplanted hairs that came from the back of my head.

 

If you are right, then what the Doctor(s) tell us is false. They (even my Doctor) say that those hairs are permanent, and should naturally shed, but will always come back. Even if a person experiences higher stress levels; once that stress is gone, the hairs will return. This is in fact what my Doctor told me.

 

So then, what you're saying is... its not where the hairs come from, its where they are placed that will make the difference in future sustainability.

 

Are you saying that cuz the DHT typically accumulates at the top regions of the scalp?

It isn't true the hair at the back even at the donor safe zone never deteriorates in quality as men age. This is not always the case but it can happen in some people. This can happen in all sort of forms just solely thinning of the hair or literally a decrease in follicular count etc.Thinning of the hair only (diameter) can literally give you a less appealing cosmetic difference. Also this doesn't have to be AGA depended it can be SA (1) depended too, or both.

Stress can lead to telogen effluvium. It is marked in a shift to telogen ratio where follicles enter a resting phase. Normally it's around 10-15%, in TE this shifts to a higher percentage. It's more prominent in women than men. It can be acute or chronic. Often you would notice a (period) of huge shedding accompanied with this condition. But you describe it as "progressive thinning".

And, yes when you transplant a graft to the top of the head, you are only transplanting the micro-environment of the hair follicle. Not the dermal macro-environment. In studies marked differences have been shown in the scalp in the back of the had and the top of the head. For instance in 5ar2 expression, aromatase expression etc. So hypothetically your transplanted hair follicles might have a harder time at the top of your head than at the back, especially when you get older. Perhaps this stretches to far ends but it really does get that dynamic. If you need references to studies just shout.

But yeah if it is due to stress then don't worry man. Try to relax and it will all grow back soon :cool:.

Microarray analysis of androgenetic and senescent alopecia: comparison of gene expression shows two distinct profiles.

(1) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23886704

Nice again! You are showing off some excellent work lately.

Agree this seems like the beginning of AGA. You are in the position to catch it early which is very nice.

Im 47

At your age it's more common than you think that the donor is beginning to lose it's strength. Whether that is in the form of thinning, a shift in telogen/anagen ratio or a increase of vellus to terminal ratio or just a decreased follicular count etc.

To simply put it the more older you get the more susceptible your cells get to any stress. This can be from androgens in relation to the pathology of androgenetic alopecia but this can also include a other pathology namely senescent alopecia for instance;

Androgenetic alopecia (AGA) is characterized by androgen mediated miniaturization of the hair follicle in susceptible individuals. Senescent alopecia (SA) is the diffuse scalp hair thinning that is seen with advanced age even in individuals without a family history of hair loss. Differences in follicular counts, anagen/telogen percentages, and terminal/vellus hair ratios have been reported

Recently there was a microarray analysis done in subjects with AGA and SA and a marked difference in gene expression was found.

It's kinda dynamic as you can see, it goes even deeper.

Anyway all this "stress together" may lead to transplanted grafts getting a marked decrease of quality the more you age.

So what can you do? Not much actually, you can look into dutasteride for more DHT inhibition to reduce the stress on your hair follicles. Assuming the current thinning is related to AGA then you might have a chance of doing something good. However if it's related to SA (senescent alopecia) then you can't really do much.

Other then that make sure your thyroid levels are in check.

How old are you?

I think what he is trying to say is that beyond 25 you can study the donor area and have a better idea what is going on (percentage miniaturisation, specific zones of thinning, future NW class).

 

The extent of stable donor area is not known until basically the day you die. On a scale between 18 and 80 years old, at 21 a doctor might have a 20% chance of predicting safe donor, whereas at 79 years old it is a 99% chance, the point being that the longer you wait the better chance you have of making the right call.

Understand, but it's far from conclusive. Let's assume a 20 year old and a 40 year old with both a good donor. Now the 20 year old may still have a excellent donor at the age of 50. While the 40 year old, 5 year later is having a rapid decrease in donor quality.

It is obviously impossible to determine specifically for a individual but;

This data shows that participants who had been on finasteride for 1 year and then stopped would just plummet below baseline (so where they had started) after another year. Assuming you had gains from finasteride you won't lose everything in 1 week or 1 month. I would just try to minimize the off period if you can though .

You made a mistake, unfortunately. It happens to the best of us. Dr Bernstein can put it into words better than I can:

 

Age for Hair Transplant Topic | Bernstein Medical

I laughed a bit at point 1;

In a young person, particularly one younger than 25, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to accurately determine the stability of ones donor area, i.e. to tell for sure if the hair in the donor area will be resistant to DHT over the long-term. If a surgeon performs a hair transplant on a patient who has an unstable donor area, the transplanted hair will disappear over time.

So what does he want to say here exactly? He can't predict donor stability in a young guy but he can predict donor stability in someone who is older?

Unless Dr. Bernstein is a clairvoyant I don't see how he would be capable of that. So that's a very weak argument in my opinion.

Nope it wouldn't affect hair follicle/graft.

Were/are you on propecia?

Btw do you have a post-op picture which shows how much yield you got with long hair (recipient)? Would be nice, thanks.

Looks great man! Happy growing now .

Hakan Doganay/Koray Erdogan/Erkan Demirsoy are very good ones in my opinion.