mikeyhwk

this is laughable, the patient started a nw3 and after 2 ops sits a nw3, he's got near 4500 grafts invested in the frontal 3rd and the doc told him he needed another 1500 and would pay for him to go to another clinic, does that sound like a successful surgery outcome? even the doc seems to be on board with this not being good enough idk how you're defending this.

not enough info to answer, are you on meds, how long have you been losing, is your hair loss stabilized or are you continuing to lose. Do you have a family history of hair loss, how significant if yes? for some 26 years old, surgery can be fine, for others it may be way too early. In general the longer you can hold off and the longer you've been on meds the better

looks great bro, already a fantastic result but it's just gonna keep on getting better as the hairs thicken up. Congrats.

omg how do you guys keep finding these random Turkish clinics, just when I thought i'd heard most of them another name comes out of the woodwork. Turkey has 2 clinics that are respected and trustworthy. Dr Erdogan and Dr Keser. Maybe Dr Demisroy... Everybody else is a shot in the dark. You could end up with a decent result, you could end up butchered. Get in to see one of these 2-3... if cost is an issue save up, if cost isn't then your options open up further . This is not the time to be venturing off the beaten path...you'll probably get some rando poster popping in saying I had a great experience with this doc but don't go off one, you want to see 50 plus, you want a long track record of consistent excellent results...you want to be bored from reading the same rave type reviews over and over...donors are gold, treat them as such.

you're going to come out of this looking better assuming it all grows out. You seem to not have had any idea of what to expect, I don't know how you got thru the consult with not knowing this was going to happen. If he did just your hairline you would have come out looking stupid, there is no sugar coating it, you needed some balance. You are 2 days out from surgery, in 6-8 months you'll be happy you trusted a docs expertise. Don't knee jerk react right now, if you want to laser it out you can always laser it out then, whether you do it now or later doesn't change the process of how it'll need to be removed. 2 days or 2 years later it's not going to come out any differently so why not see how it grows. We're all telling you that it all looks normal, no offense to your parents but they don't know hair transplants.

Remove yes, you can use electrolysis or laser them out Remove and replace yes but you're doing fue again and the removed hair is like your donor, you're getting a circular scar.

How did you want them? can you show us an example of what you think you'll end up with and what you actually wanted because it's hard to figure out what you're trying to say. Your temple points were gone from the pic that Shera shared of you, with just doing the hairline and not addressing the temple points you'd have looked really unnatural, like to the point people would be thinking you were wearing a bad hair system. Your dads temple points look mostly gone as well if not extremely thinned so not sure what you're showing there

what do you mean by side burn cause it just looks like he did your temple points but he did take them pretty far back, but you may have needed it.

Crowns are notoriously slow, many docs say don't expect to start seeing growth until you're 6 months in, crowns are usually a good 2-3 months behind hairline growth so, if they start at month 3-4, that's 5-6 months for crowns.. and that you're here at 5 months, probably has you ahead of the curve.

hahahahaha now that I see how good it can look I change my mind

1. Seeing a doc in the USA has nothing to do with anything. Great docs all over the world. 2. Every good doc listens to their patients but they have to act in the best interest of the patient. There is a give and take with that. Your particular wants may have been realistic given your loss and donor, anothers may not, you pick doctors for their expertise and experience, you are more than welcome to hear multiple points of view but if the consensus is what you don't want to hear, that doesn't mean they are not listening to you, it means you are not listening to them. A respected doc will give you the realities, good and bad...and sometimes that means saying no to a patient.

I agree with Spanker, Lorenzo and the docs, they were being kind, the design is comical and you're trying to bring it down to when you were in your teens which isn't age appropriate. You're going to chew thru you donor supply fast, transplanting into a barren area just eats them up and to get the kind of density I am sure you are going to want, you'll just be pissed that you went down this road. No good doc is going to want to take that on.

if your need requires you to maximize donors then absolutely strip is the first choice and strip out until you can no longer, then move on to fue. In the case of this patient, as was pointed out that you want that even spreading out of the extraction pattern. Donor areas tend to look pretty beaten up post op fue but once healed and grown out that's when the average person can tell what their donor area still has in it. A doc can tell when its shaved down better than we could but if its his first surgery, i'd be shocked if he didn't have at least one more fue of this size left in his donor as Doug said he's got an average donor supply.

What do you base this off of? I can't see enough of his donor to say anything close to that.

Fair enough, as I said, it makes some guys feel more comfortable. I absolutely agree, you only get 1 chance and picking the clinic that has the best track record of consistent excellent results is of up most importance. How much the dr does of that surgery to me is secondary to the results.

NO, don't twist my words. Turkey there is only 2 docs I would recommend, one does it all himself and Erdogan who does not. When choosing a doc who has techs extracting it is of vital importance to know the experience of the techs involved. There are clinics like the ones i mentioned who train their techs properly, keep them in place for years and it's not a rotation of whomever they can find like some of the fly by night tech mills. If you cannot vet the techs, and they are inexperienced then a dr would be the obvious preferable choice no question. When you talk of a clinic like Lorenzos or Erdogans however, a lot of the doctors people are using are learning their extraction technique from these docs, you think they can't teach a tech the same thing...Lorenzos tech was telling me had her training for 6 months on a practice dummy before she could even sit in and watch a surgery so she probably has more repetitions than a majority of the US docs who offer fue. If you look to their results they show that.. Not all techs are created equal, and using a dr for extractions doesn't mean you're going to get better work done, that's all im saying. Do your due dilligence on every person involved in your surgery.

That is a debatable point about which part of the surgery is the most important. I used a doc in Lorenzo who feels that implanting was vitally important and where most of the mistakes are made. I'm not debating that extraction is important but it's that the drs have some sort of special ability to extract over an experienced tech that I question. As Dr Feller has pointed out on numerous occasions, the extraction is a blind process in fue so a dr isn't able to see anything that a tech is not so it comes down to repetition and developing some sort of feel. Just because somebody is a dr doesn't mean that they have the experience extracting and that they have developed the feel a tech has, it is very much a learned skill. It's not a fluke that the docs putting up the best and most consistent fue results delegate that part of the surgery. Erdogan, Lorenzo, Bisanga, Feriduni, Hasson/Wong. Techs aren't allowed to extract in the US or you'd probably see many of the docs go that route as well as there does not seem to be any real upside from doing it yourself, or we'd see a significant difference in results between these docs and their counterparts. It seems to offer some patients some comfort in knowing their doc is doing more and is a good marketing point but and no offense to dr Lupanzula but is there any difference in his results and the other Belgian docs, he's every bit as good but any better? but how many times have you read that I am leaning Lupanzula because he does extractions. How many times have we heard the legend of Dr Konior but have you seen even 5 fue works from him, while Dr Lorenzo and Erdogan must have a thousand between them but we here again he does it all so it must be better than all the real world examples...but of the examples he does have show me works better than those 2 docs... All good surgeons certainly do not do extractions.

clarify ready to shave because once you've had a transplant, you're scarred, even fue, so the option to shave it off disappears.

that's also not true. You can get a tight scar and still have transected grafts around the strip or blood flow around the strip could have been compromised or too much anaesthesia could have been used which can lead to the same issue, there are any number of dr related errors that can lead to a fine strip scar and this kind of shock loss. Permanent shock loss of healthy hair is very rare, again that the hairs most susceptible to loss remained and the healthiest died out is a pretty clear sign of some sort of error.

1. No, you will still need fin and a ht, it may make a small difference but nothing that'll dramatically change where you're at today or will go going forward. For your health they are great steps however. 2. You may not need another huge surgery but hair loss is progressive and very few patients end up only needing one over the course of a lifetime and given that you are only 28, the odds are you would need a touch up somewhere down the road and potentially more than one. Fin will slow down loss and hold off the necessity of a 2nd for as long as possible but once you're down transplant road you're committed to the likelihood of further procedures. Know that going in, if that's not something you want, shave it off now or learn to be comfortable with what you have. 3. Curlier hair can be transplanted, certain hair types, african hair for example tends to be more difficult to work with but even that can be transplanted by an experienced doctor. Choose a good doc and ask them for examples of clients they've had with curly hair and how comfortable they are with working with your hair, and you should be fine. Doc selection is of key importance.

lol so thank you for your advice everybody but im going to do what I want anyway. Good luck to ya but I hope you trust the advice of the ethical docs who tell you, you won't be a good candidate right now and not opt to run for the one doc who says lets do it. You can always find a clinic who is willing to take your money but the great docs look after your long term best interest even when we ourselves aren't always willing to. Shera already gave you im sure what would be Dr Bhattis recommendation, so that's 1 against doing any surgery yet.

I don't buy it. The hairline recovered, that area was more prone than any to permanent shock loss. If he was a poor healer, it was more likely to manifest itself in a poor strip scar, but the scar itself isn't raised, stretched or otherwise bad so healing looks good across the board except that what was cut in the donor never grew back in, that's as clear as it gets that the excision of this strip or the suturing technique caused some sort of issue. If it were just the way he healed it would have presented itself in much more obvious spots, not the strongest hairs on his scalp.

i gotta say you're a lot more understanding than you should be in this case. This is clearly caused by the doctor, the loss is all around the strip, what would cause that if not for trauma and/or transection? The hormones angle was a reach but you ruled that out and now the docs grasping at another straw with maybe it's a weird hair cycle still going on 3 years later?? To offer a discount on prp is rather insulting, first there is no guarantee it'll do anything and if it does it just locks you into a yearly commitment, that's not a fix at best a really shit band aid. That any respectable doc would want his name attached to this work and let it stand is embarrassing, I would have thought Dr Lindsey was better than to wash his hands of this if there isn't more money in it for him.

1. You are a diffuse loss patient 2, Your hair loss is already significant, and you have a lot of minaturized hairs, if you transplant into them you're likely to shock out many which makes your surgery tricky. I would get in front of a top doc and have them assess your hair to see if surgery is safe as is. I went to Dr Bisanga for my first surgery and I was a diffuse patient, he told me if your hair is showing over a certain percentage of minaturized hairs in the area you want to operate, they will not, so have some docs look at your hair and see if it's possible at this stage and how many you stand to lose. 3. Given your reluctance for fin,your level of loss, and that you say your hair is thin, fut is your best course of action. 4. Everybody is waiting for cloning but plan like it's not coming cause you can't rely on it. Going fue severely limits your available grafts. 5. really reconsider your fin fears, the sides are way overstated and affect only the smallest percentage and then usually just short term. Diffuse loss patients have an above average response to fin in terms of regrowth so it would be to your benefit but that choice is yours to make.

there might be some growth still upcoming but you seem to have yielded very well as it is so I wouldn't expect huge amounts anymore, but you should see lots of continued improvement in your hair as density and your hairs natural characteristics improve over the next few months. The hair improvement feels like growth as it takes your result to the next level, if you're happy now you'll be way happier in a couple months+