Severn

I'LL TAKE 10!! Oh wait, if it grows hair using light and oxygen, can't I just go outside and stand in my yard? I seem to have an ample supply of both out there.

mmm, unless I'm interpreting their comments incorrectly, what some are complaining about is the way the photos are being presenting. Very "Bosley-esq". Wet hair seperated on the first photos, dry and combed over in the after pics. Although it may have been unintentional. IMO the whole industry needs to go to full HD camera closeup work like H&W does. Otherwise people will always be rightfully suspicious. There was a video here from one of the coaltion docs showing footage of work done on the final result of a guy's HT. It was shot in a somewhat dark room at a distance of about 10-15 feet away. That's a huge red flag even though the work might have been outstanding. The PRP may be a huge breakthrough. The guy in question in the above pics may be showing good progress in person. But all we have to go off of are the pics.

Fantastic result. I also like how he kept his original haircolor. When they dye and highlight it blond on the after pics, it's difficult to judge the actual improvement.

I'm sure some of the hair mils will add 5000 grafts between your eyes to give you a uni-brow if you pay them enough.

juan, like spin266 said there will always be unethical doctors more than happy to take your money even if they know it is the wrong decision. The unethical docs rely on the patients' desperation and lack of knowledge about hair loss progression. And as you say, if you really only want to restore all your front hair and tell them you are fine with losing all your hair in the top and crown, the ethical docs might be ok with that too.

He mentioned Bosely, Atlantis, and SMG in his original post. Out of those three choices I will stand by my recomendation of SMG. If he is willing to consider any of the coaltition docs, I would probably tell him to try SMG, H&W, Feller, Rahal, Alexandar, etc. And not necessarily in that order. I was personally willing to go anywhere in the US and Canada. I chose SMG. Will that end up being the best choice? I don't know. I'll find out next month.

yea, I'm flying from the deep south. I would definitely make the drive if I were that close.

the smell?

Well, I consulted with just about every Coalition doctor on this site and I decided on SMG. I'm sure the most of the other docs I talked to could do a great job, but I felt SMG was my best bet to get the result I was after. Oh, and FWIW, I am going to SMG to repair the mess that Bosely did to me about 14 years ago. I wouldn't have a HT done at Bosley if they did it for free and threw in an extra $50,000. Seriously.

I mentioned on posts before that I first got on propecia from 1996-2001. It did a good job of restoring my crown hair but slowly lost its effectiveness. I finally stopped and noticed no difference so the drug had done all it could do. However, I decided to restart again a couple of months ago just in case it might do some good to stave off potential surgical shockloss. But this time I started experiencing a pretty good shed from the medication which brings up an interesting point. If the area you are going to have worked on experienced a heavy temporary shed or recession from the propecia, wouldn't that give a misleading idea to the doc on where to place the grafts?

I mentioned on posts before that I first got on propecia from 1996-2001. It did a good job of restoring my crown hair but slowly lost its effectiveness. I finally stopped and noticed no difference so the drug had done all it could do. However, I decided to restart again a couple of months ago just in case it might do some good to stave off potential surgical shockloss. But this time I started experiencing a pretty good shed from the medication which brings up an interesting point. If the area you are going to have worked on experienced a heavy temporary shed or recession from the propecia, wouldn't that give a misleading idea to the doc on where to place the grafts?

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I've never heard of dye hurting the hair but I'm not sure it can't. Dying it blonde does help a lot with the illusion of density though. You will see a lot of pics after a HT where they dyed the hair blonde so the contrast against the scalp is lessened.

Ah ok, my mistake.

Transection of existing hair has a higher possibility if you don't shave. They typically don't place as many grafts in an existing area too because of the difficulty getting them in there. When I talked to Dr. Shapiro about my upcoming procedure, he said he could leave the area that was about 10 FU/CM2 unshaven but he didn't feel comfortable working in an area 30 FU/CM2.

Crown, do you know how many FU/CM2 were placed?(density).

What was the area in CM2 that was worked on? I'm interested in determining the density in FU/CM2. Also, are you using concealer in that final pic? You mentioned in your comments about still needing use it, but I can't tell if you have some there or not.

Just from that one pic, you have way too much hair on your crown to be even thinking about a transplant right now (IMO). Even if you were a billionaire and money was no object I think you should stick with the meds for now. Just because you've lost some thickness doesn't necessarily mean you are goign to go slick bald. I've seen 70 year olds who have thinned in the crown but aren't bald. For example, my temples receeded fast when I was 24, but it stopped and has remained mostly stable for the last 25 years. You could be the same with your crown. EDIT: Again, all we have to judge from is that one pic.

From the pics, the front and left side look great. The right side looks thinner but still doesn't look like a transplant. But you are committed now. If you frontal core starts to go you would not want to end up with just the corners filled in.

Although my upcoming procedure is not with Dr. Feller, I would have chosen him if I were going FUE. As notjustyet pointed out, there are others performing it for less. But FUE surgery is not very old and Dr. Feller seems to have the most consistant results. There are plenty of people willing to pay $10/graft to have that extra reassurance. I see Armani is running a special for $7.50 a graft though. That sounds like a deal!

It looks like he had a great result! I do have a question about his right side in pic 15/16. It looks like there is a nickel sized hole above his ear where hair isn't growing. Did he experience some permanent shockloss in that area from the strip removal? Thanks ahead of time.

Ha ha! Thanks for the defense M&M, but it's not needed. Bill had a good point. After I entered that post I realized it didn't convey what I was trying to express. It could easily be interpreted that I was disregarding the entire coaltion except 2 or 3 docs. And if I had done the insane amount of work that Bill and Pat have done to provide us with this type of transparency, I think I might be vocal about it as well. As I said, plenty of great docs in the Coalition. It's just a little natural fear kicking in of the "what if's". And I also realized I had mixed up the doctors. I misread the original post as Dr. Rahal instead of Rassman.

Bill: I think my post came out a bit different than I intended. It was poor wording on my part and could be interpreted that I thought the majority of Coaltion doctors were not good. And this isn't true. Most Coalition docs here have presented a ton of great results. As my procedure draws closer, I am just getting more paranoid. Not in the sense that I am having second thoughts but after being burned by Bosely I don't want that to happen again, even if it's unintentional. And my comment about being nervous about the 2 or 3 I would let work on me wasn't meant that I don't have confidence in them. It's more like going into open heart surgery. You can end up with the best heart surgeon in the world but you are still going to be nervous before going under the knife. I will be a repair patient so my surgery won't be about trying to look younger so much as repair the scarring done from the scalp reductions years ago. My appologies for the paranoid post! (And many thanks to you and Pat for all the hard work you guys have done to bring transparency to the field!)

It's either a major screwup on the presentation or a major screwup on the planning and result. Either way, it's scary this is a coalition clinic. That confirms my feelings that there are probably only two, maybe three doctors out of the entire coalition that I would dare let touch my head. And I'm still a little nervous about those.