Tokoloshe

- Yes, I believe so. Keser was actually top of my list for my 1st transplant but I when I considered his (quite high) cost at the time plus the language barrier, I decided to go elsewhere. - The first HT was with Bisanga. If it would be helpful to other forumers, I could put up a post about it.

7 Months Update There wasn't really anything to report for the first 4 months. But I didn't worry, I just kept wearing my hat. I don't take Minoxidil or anything, so I didn't expect premature growth. But on the 5th month the hair bloomed rapidly. All of a sudden, for the first time in my life, I could go outside without a hat or time-consuming hair styling and still look presentable. It isn't fully grown yet, but to me it's perfect. The hairline frames my face well, and it's dense enough to look OK in sunlight or when wet. This time last year, I was really downbeat after my disappointing, messy result with Bisanga. I've had a bunch of surgeries on my head throughout my life (craniofacial stuff) and I was dreading another poor HT. But I didn't give up my belief in the effectiveness of properly-done hair transplants and now, my hair problem is solved. Happy days! Here are my 6 months Post-Op Photos, I'll get some more recent ones posted soon (Excuse the iffy haircut, I am trying to grow it longer )

No, as I'm the first person from this forum to use him (I think ). He is recommended on the big German forum Alopezie and the Italian forum Belli Cappeli, that's where I found out about him.

Day 16 Post-Op photos

Day 6 Post-op Note: I have a couple of pre-exiting linear scars on the back and a mole where there is no hair. I may have this corrected with BHT in the future.

Post-op photos Note: I decided to keep a little bit of the hairline assymetry. 2 reasons: I didn't want to waste grafts on more lowering. I don't keep my hair short, so at my standard length this is not noticeable.

Some photos from the clinic - hairline planning & graft count per session.

Day Before Surgery As soon as I landed at the airport around midnight, Dr Kaan phoned and told me where to go to meet the driver. I stayed near the clinic at the ridiculously-cheap but pretty good 'Golden Boutique Hotel', in Cankaya. Cankaya is a posh part of Ankara with some nice parks & cafes. There's also a good health food supermarket nearby named 'macrocenter'. I stocked up on lots of snacks, fruit & ready meals here so I wouldn't have to go out with my bandages on tomorrow. The driver Ugur picked me up at 8.15am and took me to the clinic. Right away we started the hairline planning. The Surgery Planning Dr Kaan and I discussed this for over 40 minutes, drawing on different hairline options, erasing them, looking from every angle, taking photos, tweaking the design. He takes a very detailed, careful approach to the design stage. We decided on slightly reducing the asymmetry, and creating a masculine point in the middle of the hairline. Day 1 Then the operation started with 400 extractions - a 10 minute break - then 400 implantations - then a great vegan lunch made by the clinic's cook - then 400 extractions - another minute break - then 400 implantations. All done manually with a small FUE punch. The 5 minutes of initial local anesthesia injections are not fun, but once they are done you don't feel anything. I think I fell asleep 3 times. Dr Kaan walked me back to the hotel with my bandana on, looking a big strange but I felt good. No pain or swelling. Day 2 The next day, I walked (5 minutes from the hotel) to the clinic and the op continued with 500 grafts, lunch, then 300 grafts. It was all over by 3pm. I flew home to the UK the next morning. For my first transplant I was apprehensive about awkward stares from strangers in the airport. But since this was my second time, I didn't care. I just gave them a big grin back:p Review All in, it's been a good experience so far. It was nice to have the full attention of the clinic staff, rather than being one of several patients in a day at one of the big clinics. I was their first patient from the UK (most patients are Germans & Italians), and as a result their website & marketing isn't well translated into English. But the doctor speaks good English, so communication was easy. Below I've attached some photos from during lunch on day 2, with 3/4 of the transplant finished.

Background: In 2015 I had surgery to correct Craniosynostosis (a craniofacial deformity) which was successful, but it did leave a large scar across my hairline. So I wanted a hair transplant to cover this up as well as lower the hairline to camouflage the oddly shaped skull. My First Transplant: I had my first transplant in 2016 with one of the big Belgian clinics. 2400 grafts - manual FUE. The results were just OK, but I still had a few issues to address. - The density of my right temple was quite weak and the design was very different from the left side (the implantations were done by 3 different technicians, one of whom was clearly rushing). - The new hairline was asymmetrical. The right side was noticably higher. - My first transplant was a no-shave procedure, so there were no grafts put behind the hairline, as a result this area was quite thin. 2nd Transplant For my 2nd transplant, after having done a lot of research on here, foreign language forums & Pubmed, I was looking for a clinic where: - All extractions and implantations are performed by the doctor - No mega sessions. (My last procedure took 11.5 hours in one day, performed by 3 technicians & 1 doctor. Exhausting!) - I've read a few studies which say that grafts are more likely to fail when they spend more time outside of the body. So I wanted a clinic where the work was done in small batches of 300-500 grafts. - The doctor must only work on one patient per day. - The doctor must use the 'stick & place' implantation technique. From what I've seen, this creates less scabbing than the standard implantation method. Also, it allows for more density. It is more labor-intensive though. I found only a few clinics in Europe who work like this, and I noticed that one of the top doctors from these clinics (Dr Kaan, who previously worked with both Dr Keser and the Hairline Clinic) has recently opened his own independent clinic. I'd seen a lot of top-class dense-packing hairline results from this doctor before on a German hair forum, so I emailed his clinic in mid-September and booked surgery for early October. Plus his price was quite a bit more affordable than the other clinics who use this protocol. :D I've attached my before photos below

For a while, I've admired the results of DR Keser in creating ultra-dense hairlines. He does manual FUE in small batches of only 500-700 grafts per day - doing all the extractions and implantation himself. I would go to him for my HT, but his city Ankara has unfortunately seen 3 major terrorist attacks in the past 12 months. Not worth the risk in my opinion. So are any of you aware with docs elsewhere who operate with a similar protocol? (small amounts of grafts per day, 100% of extractions + implants done by the doc, manual extraction)

Hi folks, In June I had a hairline lowering op & a craniofacial deformity corrected - hairline has healed up nicely and is 2cm lower than before. . I'm going to have a small number of FUE grafts into the 0.5cm in front of the hairline & temples, as well as some grafts into the scar. My questions are; Is it safe to do dense packing into a scar - or will the yield of this be poor? Also, how long should one wait to have FUE performed on a recent scar? (example of a hairline lowering scar similar to mine)

I'd say the current 'trend' of poor results is down to the increased use of inferior protocol. The small handful of FUE clinics with consistently excellent results do the following: -Use of manual tools -Most of the op performed by doc, technicians handling the forceps -Extracting only small (<1000) amounts of grafts at a time -Splitting larger cases over multiple days to minimize swelling, bleeding etc. Many FUE docs aren't doing the above - they use morotized tools to perform mega-sessions, they over rely on technicians & massively over-estimate the number of grafts to compensate for poor yield. In addition, certain docs with sterling reputations a couple of years ago have experienced massive increases in demand. Clinics (mostly in Turkey) who were doing one patient per day in 2012 are now attending to 3+. This sudden spike has led them to take on more technicians with less experience, leading to the often seen situation where one side of a patient's head looks terrific and the other looks sparse.

That's a really nice improvement! How long after the hairline lowering surgery would it be safe to do additional grafting along the hairline?