Mycroft

Are any of those frontal shots "before" images? Without them it's hard to gauge, but the crown has definitely improved quote a bit.

The questions were not directed at me, but I've been on 5mg a day now for just shy of six months. I discontinued topical a couple of months back. Definitely seeing a bit of improvement beyond what I had with topical, and of course no noticeable shed from discontinuing topical. The changes are a bit more subtle because of course I've been on topical for a while already and had some response, but the weakest hairs on my head have gotten darker and longer, and the overall scalp hair generally feels stronger.

Some minor increase in body hair growth speed. I can't grow a full beard but my stubble is definitely thicker and denser. Much of it is a bit darker as well. It also grows more quickly so I have to shave a bit more diligently than before. I actually consider this a bit of a plus. No other sides.

Sounds like an interesting case. I'll be interested to see how you develop. The good news is as long as your natives tolerate the trauma this number of grafts should give you a very nice result.

13 hours ago, Mark Wolfer said:

From what I understand, proscar and finasteride are the same thing. Unless you changed the dosage there should be no difference with your hair. 

Did I miss something here?

The effective ingredient is the same, but the fillers and incidentals are not, and this can impact the body's absorption of the active ingredient depending on your physiology. I think for many people it might not be a significant difference, but I know a couple of doctors swear anecdotally that patients who started seeing further progression on generic were able to recover and stabilize again on the brand name.

I have no dog in this fight because I use generic myself. Brand is just prohibitively expensive.

How's the crown looking at this point? Looks like you had some grafts placed there as well.

Honestly, this donor area looks fine. I'm not 100% sure what your expectations were in this regard but with hair that short scarring is going to be visible no matter how good extractions are.

Looks like he's seeing some nice early growth based on the added bulk of hair. Shock loss also seems to be minimal. I'll watch for the video on Instagram.

35k USD isn't too bad considering OP got front to back coverage via FUE. I'm not sure he would want to see if he could ever get any more in the future, but he likely won't "need" another surgery in his lifetime.

Someone with a less severe stage of loss might pay half as much, but could just be looking at paying the other half progressively down the line depending on whether they lose more hair. Financially, the safest thing you could do if you're getting a transplant is to assume you're going to have to pay for every donor graft to be moved eventually. Anything else is wishful thinking that may or may not work out for you.

Anyway, I don't know if anyone other than Melvin has ever been to the hair transplant subreddit, but the guys there are always bragging about spending a few thousand dollars in Turkey and showing off results that make me cringe internally. There are definitely some more affordable clinics if you're willing to travel, but even the more cost efficient ones won't be genuinely cheap because the work isn't cheap. If you can't afford at least one of the quality cost-efficient clinics you shouldn't even be looking at hair transplants because you're going to have a bad time.

This is a huge improvement, and honestly a great result for a single pass on such a big area. Very happy for you.

You may still see new hairs popping up for two or three more months. Past that you might not see any new hair but the hair you've already got should start to get a little bit thicker, and if it's feeling a little coarse you will likely start to feel it soften to feel more like the native hair.

This looks like some nice early growth not even six months in. I imagine the final result will be impressive. Congratulations, and I hope you'll share the final result with us.

15 minutes ago, asterix0 said:

Yes, the yield does not look great, but to get some numerical estimates may be helpful. Recall that it's advertised good FUT yields are 95-98%, which I presume was communicated to you that you could expect to get a similar yield.

Looking at your post operative pictures, it actually appears you had hair transplanted amongst your natural hair though, and not only on slick bald areas? If this is true then you may have experienced shock loss. It is much more tricky to implant around native hairs, as in addition to the trauma to the recipient area, your native (mpb compromised) hairs are not competing for blood flow with the transplanted grafts. Using minoxidil and finasteride can help keep them alive/stronger to overcome this shock. 

There's nothing Incorrect about what you've said here, but the spot where he had his native hair (central forelock) doesn't look like it has a density issue. The thin areas that look a bit off are all areas where there was next to no hair present, or at most very tiny miniaturized hairs that were barely visible. I'm not sure I'd really call shock loss a major contributing factor.

The popping is possibly a cause for concern and may have contributed to a lower survival rate. If you go for more I'd ask the doctor what he plans to do differently to work around that.

I'm not the best judge of these things but I'd estimate closer to 1,500-1600 grafts. Grain of salt with that, but as I said 2k is also a bit conservative for the area covered considering you had to rebuild most of the front other than the central forelock. I think it's a combination of the two factors, but definitely not an unfixable situation. I'd just make sure to discuss the previous complications and get some assurance that the doctor has a plan for improving the situation on round two.

Dr. Bloxham's clinic definitely emphasizes the FUT first approach. They have the ability to perform FUE but the strip work seems to represent most of their cases. Not a criticism, just an observation.

I have a couple of thoughts. One is that I may have shot for a slightly higher graft count for this area of coverage, more in the neighborhood of 2,500, but your scalp laxity may have been a limiting factor. The other is that you have definitely not gotten anywhere near 2,000 healthy, growing grafts so I hope Dr.  Bloxham is still working with you on getting this straightened out. 

3 hours ago, follically challenged said:

Looks good. Definitely an improvement. I'm just not so sure about those stubborn looking grafts above the left temple point....those hairs seem stubborn enough that he had to trim them down to make them less visible / more manageable...?

I'm not sure if some of these images ended up being inverted but it looks like he has a similar situation on the right side as well. Since he's sporting an undercut kind of hairstyle I think maybe his stylist just clipped those areas down as part of the cut. My stylist takes the sides and back shorter as well and this same thing happens to my hair in those areas.

Edit: I completely forgot to mention that I do like the result. When you've gone full gray at a younger age the difference between that youthful hairline and a thinning or recessed hairline is even more substantial.

 This was pretty interesting. This was the first time I've heard Dr. Arocha talk specifically about what he tries to do differently with his PRP. We had talked about the usefulness of some other mechanisms like LLLT and microneedling and how these work all alongside more common treatments Minoxidil and Finasteride. His willingness to point to literature supporting positive impacts and interactions of these treatments is part of what got me more interested in them myself.

First patient report from Dr. Zarev I have seen. Even ignoring the outlier high graft cases which are dependent on patient genetics, he seems to be doing good work. This is nice growth for only four months, and I hope you'll keep us updated all the way to the end

Donor looks great with that cut. Congrats.

I've been following your videos as well. The documentation is very thorough. Dr. Panine has been able to do some great stuff with a small number of grafts but based on your latest video it sounds like you have a robust donor and will ultimately be in for a great result.

Definite improvement so far, and 5 months is still pretty early. At this rate I would think the final result will be everything you're hoping for.

That's probably about as good as any FUE donor could look. I doubt anybody would look twice at it unless you specifically asked them to look for the dots.

22 hours ago, UnbaldEagle said:

None of it came back, but I feel like there's a connection. And it makes perfect sense what you wrote, I too think that's the case and there's still hope.

Relative to the growth cycle of a hair, give months is not actually a huge amount of time, although we obviously want to see results sooner rather than later. Sometimes hairs will hang out in a resting phase for a few months, and then after that it can take a few more months before they break the skin and even become SLIGHTLY visible, much less cosmetically so. 

Your redness also looks like it is improved in these latest photos. The scalp looks less irritated in general, so I would say that's a good start. I have no scientific basis for saying so, but it seems to me that hair growth to this point could have been hindered by the inflammation, but as your scalp normalizes the follicles may be able to get back to their typical function.

Very smart use of the crown grafts. Using 300 to round out the "drop" is a noticeable cosmetic impact with a graft count most would have dismissed as insignificant.

The horizontal part/pulldown is very telling. Major improvement in an area that is often less responsive. Very grateful that Dr. Arocha pushed me to try some additional non-surgical options as I've also had a strong result and would not have considered some of these options without him. Even if I chose to pursue surgery at this point I would likely only involve a fraction of the grafts.

What's the status of the shock loss? Have you started seeing any of that coming back yet?

Second procedures can sometimes take a bit longer to grow because the scalp vascularity isn't as pristine as it was on the first round. It's not an absolute rule, but I feel like we see it often.