morry

Thanks guys. @mikeyhwk - good to hear your experience from a similar position, and looking at your photos it seems like you got an excellent result which is very encouraging. Hope the second procedure turns out just as well. Interested to see now what meds might do for me. @Mikey1970 - sounds like you fell into the unfortunate 'small risk' category - sorry that happened. As you say, I will be very careful who I select to go with..

Thanks for the replies - it is really useful to hear some other perspectives and you all make very valid points, particularly around using finasteride. @Shera - using Fin to help prepare the hair against loss after a procedure is not something I had considered, and makes a lot of sense - good advice. Thanks also for explaining the situation with possible native shockloss. It sounds like if I prepare properly then there will still be a risk of permanent loss, but a small one..? I will raise this with any doctors I consult with and see what they say. Glad you had such a good outcome yourself. And no, I'm not considering a buzz cut any time soon! I was thinking of much further in the future, and only as a last resort! @Swooping - thanks for your input; I definitely feel more comfortable getting a live consultation before committing to anything, so I'm going to look into arranging that soon. @gillenator - doing my best to be informed! This is a great resource, and I plan to also document my process here so that others can hopefully benefit, whatever I decide to do. You make a very good argument about the crown - it's not my biggest concern anyway, and I don't want to waste a lot of donor hairs so I will back off that area for now. You have convinced me I should try medicating, at least for a period of a few months, so I will see what happens. And yes, I am planning to be quite conservative with any procedure - I don't think I need a dramatic change, and I am still optimistic I might turn out like my father, who has around the same amount of hair as me at 70. As you say - prepare for the worst and hope for the best! Thanks everyone - any other input welcome, otherwise I will update the board when I am further down the line.

Hope to get some advice from this great community. Strongly considering getting an FUE procedure, and have started the long research process (with one assessment/quote from a doctor so far) - but still not 100% sure this is the right route, and would really appreciate any help making the decision. I'm 39, and as you can see from pictures below, still have a decent amount of coverage with some receding at temples and fine hair/thinning on the top and crown. Most of the loss occurred over a period from my late 20s - early 30s, although I have only noticed very minimal change in the last 5 years. (For anyone interested, my past hair loss seems to correlate quite closely with a long period of taking creatine, in both small and moderately high doses. As soon as I realised there might be a connection I stopped taking it altogether, and haven't noticed much change in my hair since. Obviously hard to know for sure, but the correlation does seem striking to me..) The biggest issue for me is that my hairline is very different on each side, with a very thin, almost bald area around and behind my right temple. I am extremely self-conscious about it, and everything I do with my hair is aimed at concealing this area, which otherwise looks (I think) ridiculous. Of course I would love the rest of my hair to look thicker, and to cover the thinning in my crown a little - but in general I manage these areas quite well with thickening products and careful styling. I am not taking any meds. I am concerned about the side-effects with finasteride, and I am not currently noticing any significant hair loss, so I am very reluctant to start taking medication - perhaps indefinitely - that is anyway unlikely to solve the main issue of my hairline. Family history: the men in my mother's family went bald at a much younger age than me, while my father has a very good head of hair at 70. So... The reasons I am considering a transplant are: - with the amount of hair I currently have, I feel like a fairly small procedure to fill in the right temple and have my hairline match on both sides would make a big difference. If I am going that far I thought I could also have a light amount of filling in across the scalp to give me a little more density and slightly reduce the appearance of the crown. It's a big area, but I'm not necessarily looking for a drastic change. If I'm lucky, a single procedure now could give me a really strong look for years to come, and make me much happier! The reasons I'm not sure: - I have read a couple of comments suggesting that placing grafts into an area with existing hair has a risk of causing shock to, and possible losing, the native hair. I can't find that much information around this, but I feel fairly lucky to still have the amount of hair that I do, so I would obviously be devastated to come out of a procedure in a worse state than I went in. On the other hand, I have seen a few examples of similar operations that seem to have been really successful. Also, the first assessment I received suggested 2500 grafts, which is a little more than I was hoping for. Was I being over-optimistic? One other point - I do like to cut my hair very short at the back, and would like to keep the option of buzzing everything down at some point in the future if everything goes downhill, so I'm really not keen at all on an FUT scar. And lastly, if anyone has any particular doctor recommendations to help narrow the field I'd be very happy to hear - I'm in the UK, but happy to travel. Thanks for reading, and I greatly appreciate any opinions or advice!