tofur

I think Dr. Feller's point was that you can't see through the skin from the surface no matter what magnification you have. Cooley didn't really refute that in that quote. If he punches a 2 follicle graft out and it turns out to be a 4 he could very well have damaged the 2 hidden ones by using too small a punch.

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" "If a thin strip scar appears under a thick head of hair, does it really exist?"

Not even remotely surprised to see you're a shill for a FUE only clinic in Belgium. If FUE was so great why do you have to blatantly lie and exaggerate to make it seem that way?

Yeah this result isn't even close for 2100 considering his hair characteristics and the recipient area, looks like he might have 400 that survived up front, hard to tell exactly but it's not good. He could be one of those guys who gets a late growth spurt but the odds aren't on his side, most guys seem to have the vast majority of growth by 8-9 months and then it's a maturing/thickening from there. To be fair the same kind of risk is present with FUE in terms of donor damage of a bad procedure, HT aren't for the risk averse no matter what method you choose. A bad FUE job rapes your whole donor with scarring/fibrosis and you get that moth eaten sickly thinness from overharvesting/transection, plus you can get nerve damage if they punch too deep and stuff like that. Good news is that OP can get a scar revision with a top doc and most likely shrink it and the rest of his donor is still virgin and thick so he has the ammunition to fix this result. All is not lost OP, keep your chin up! And go to a top doc for the revision....like Konior/Gabel/Cooley/Hasson/Rahal....and if one of those guys did this then we really need to know.

Well you obviously already know this is a bad result on both fronts: bad donor scar (thing is half as wide as the strip itself) and bad recipient yield. Would be nice to know who the doc is so all of us doing research before our HT can be better informed.

Who was your doctor?

You're around 4 months now, how's it going?

How do you put rogaine on through that mop?

Have you been on fin this whole time? This sh*t is absolutely insane!

What we're really talking about is the density of the remaining donor, and no the skin doesn't stretch THAT much, you're just using up laxity by removing a strip of it then sewing it back up. So those grafts are gone obviously but the rest of your donor hasn't been harvested and can still be hit with FUE if needed. Konior told me that the way to max out donor yield is to FUT first until you can't anymore then FUE until you can't anymore.

27 y/o, not taking fin, "most of the top" receded hairline and crown is going too. You probably shouldn't get a HT. You haven't told us what your family history is though. In any event, there are some promising treatments coming. RCH-01 (shiseido) has shown efficacy and is in phase 3 trials right now, we'll know the results around Q2 of 2018. Tsuji seems to have recently successfully developed an expansion method for hair follicle derived stem cells which has been a major stumbling block up until now, he's talking about 2019-2020 but as we all know, talk is cheap when it comes to hair loss treatment promises. If he pulls it off it'll be a functional cure though, we'll be able to implant new follicles that will mature and grow in. If you can't take fin because of legit sides then that's one thing, if you refuse to take it on principle then you'll only have yourself to blame for becoming a bitter baldcel 30 something year old.

I was gunna suggest putting a before pic in there for easy comparison, this is a knockout result I can't even imagine how great it must feel! Congrats dude!

Update?

Don't get scared away from fin, many thousands of men take it for years with no issues at all, you don't hear from them because they're out enjoying life with hair. The ones with sides take to the internet and spread fear. Considering the risk you just took with the HT I think you should go all in and start fin. Do .25mg every other day or even every third day for the first few weeks, slowly up the dose to .5mg every other day (get most of the benefits without loading your system up with fin). I've been on that regiment for 2 years now and have no sides (except the sporadic dull ball ache one for the first week or two while my body acclimated) and loss has stopped, I got scared away from it back when I was 22-23 and I'll forever hate myself for it because if I had hopped on then I wouldn't be needing a HT now at 28.

It's your hair, ultimately your decision! I based my aggressive hairline call on how much the center point was lowered from where the native is right now, should be a huge visual change for you though. Just make sure you use meds to stop the native loss from progressing for as long as possible, that is the most important thing for you to do right now to ensure long term satisfaction. Remember you gotta make it another 40+ years...

Hard to not comment on the age/degree of loss/aggressive hairline lowering/FUE instead of FUT to max out lifetime grafts. Like a perfect storm of long term risk, gunna look great though! Do yourself a favor and get on finasteride and stay on it until either it stops working for you or something better comes along.

Haha nope, kind of highlights the reality of a strip scar, once its done and covered by hair who really cares:cool: Just asking about it in the interest of research/curiosity.

How's the scar? You seemed worried about it early on but never showed us any pics or followed up on it. Otherwise, awesome result!

It blows my mind that people throw down $10-25k USD on a HT and don't take fin Goes without saying this is a massive upgrade in your appearance, congrats!

Yeah 4500 graft donor is pretty bad, not sure I would even get a HT with that limited number of grafts especially if "most of the thinning is in the crown" aka the black hole of hair transplants.

I've been thinking about this awkward ugly duckling stage and wonder if it isn't easier to just own up to the transplant, especially in cases like yours where the before/after is a massive obvious change. Might be liberating to just own it and give no f*cks. Anyway, it's crazy how short you have your hair on the sides with a strip scar and how huge the difference is. This is pushing me towards FUT to be honest, the scar is the main thing putting me off it but the more I think about it the less I care especially considering all the trade offs. It'll be covered in hair so who cares, plus you can do FUE into it or SMP if that fails.

Technically it does thin it out though right? Those 4k grafts are gone from the area and can't be FUE'd out now. The density of remaining hair is obviously unaffected but you still took 4k grafts outta there. I'm in a heated debate with myself over fue vs fut right now, Rahal is in my top 4 short list at the moment. My front 1/3 only needs around 2k grafts but my crown/vertex is thinning and could use 1k grafts. So it's either do a 2k FUE up front then a 1k crown at a later date or in a back to back session, or say f*ck it and carve a strip out and do it all at once. Wish this wasn't such a hard decision

A very critical distinction to be sure. As a soon to be 28 year old who's been losing since 19-20, I semi-agree. There are very good reasons for turning away early-mid 20's guys (aggressive and/or unpredictable loss, not taking fin/propecia, lack of funds for future HTs, etc). I'm 2 years stabilized on fin with no sides, that is a crucial step to making a HT less risky long term but HT are still risky for 20-somethings. But hair is also most important when you're young so it's a trade off. It's important to remove emotion from the decision and go full Spok-logic on it. It's not always about a "dense pack hairline", the issues I highlighted above are what cause ethical docs to turn young guys away. But now I'm looking forward at my 30's and 40's and there is no way I'm doing it without a passable head of hair. You only live once and hair absolutely makes a difference both to women and your overall physical appearance and to your confidence. There's no getting around it imo.

Isn't that the point of fin though, keeps hair loss from progressing? I agree I'm thinning on the whole top of my head but if fin holds it (or regrows some of it which it seems apt to do on young guys with crown/diffuse thinning) then whats the issue? I'd imagine most guys who get HT's would progress to a sad state of affairs if they weren't on fin. Wish I was one of the guys who only has the hairline to worry about, crown/diffuse thinning sucks.