txtransplant

Took some really poor quality shots. But it really illustrates where I am in the regrowth. Striking, isn't it! The first pic is with bright overhead light! Even from the front it looks really thin under this. Even more so than sunlight for some reason. I suppose it really looks this bad from the top down under natural light. Though not many people are looking at the tip of my head under bright light. The second pic is truly how my hair looks under most indoor conditions. That is a huge improvement and the hair on my head is about an 1" long. Last pic is one with a flash from the top. I would say this is is the best to worse on conditions of where my hair is now. It a complete Jekyl and Hyde thing. I usually wear my hair 2 inches long. So I am pretty sure it will look a heck of a lot better with twice the volume of hair covering my scalp. No matter what, for my expectations I think I will have a presentable head in another 4 months between some new hair coming in and my hair just growing after being buzzed for surgery. I still think the small area of the crown that was implanted has not come in much yet. We went for low 40's in grafts per cm2. All my research said that should look reasonably full. So either everything I read was wrong, my expectations of "reasonably " are too high, or we are just not seeing low 40's on here yet. My guess is a bit of all three. Safe to say though that even if I just get a little more growth here it will be good enough to meet my needs in all ways except maybe 700-`1000 additional grafts to thicken the peak area. I could see myself getting that done possibly. Time will tell.

I will try and get some pics in the next few days. At 4 months. The numbness is completely gone in the recipient area now. I would say = completely normal sensation has been restored since a few weeks ago. Also the donor area was a bit irritated and even a few pimples still through early parts of month 3. As for growth. In retrospect I think about 65% of my implanted hair never fell out in the frontal area. In 2 days it will have been a full 4 months. Several things are happening. The hairs that stayed are all healthy now and normal diameter. I am sure there was a tiny bit of shock loss to the little hair I had. Right on schedule wispy very fine hairs are coming in and they get ticker closer to the scalp. So this is new growth from either shocked native hair or grafts. There is not a ton of it and my gut tells me this these new sprouts are pretty much the beginning of the end of the "what to expect" part. I am sure they will make a nice impact when these baby hairs mature the next few months. But reality is that even if they do, the frontal 1/3 will be a bit thinner than what would look good. It has a bit of an unnatural look with thick hairs spaced too far apart and even throughout the recipient area. Also not good are that some of the hairs appear to be growing out of large pores. I think these are grafts that healed a tiny bit below the skin level and it is not noticeable with even my thin hair. Pretty sure it would look a bit off if I shaved my head. Hopefully it will heal better over time. Some of this bumps or pits stuff was noticeable by the temporal peaks where the implants were placed. But in the last month they look 90% better to the point you would just would never notice the temples even if razor shaved it. But for sure some tiny imperfections. Overall I am happy and it is a huge difference. But time will tell if it I truly will get away with only this one transplant.

I agree. Looks like more than 2,300. To that end though even if 3000 were done over such a large area, please have realistic expectations. It will be an improvement for sure, but nowhere near a full head of hair over the balding area. Dr. N is a good guy and might have thrown an extra 1000 in without telling you from the looks of it though. Maybe a Christmas resent.

Oh, also I have a suggestion. Cut some hair off the back at some point and use it in the front in the mirror one day to play with different hairline options to get an exact idea of what would work well for your face. And of course you can shave the temples areas to get an idea what you like there when you are figuring out what looks best for you. I mean it''s your head...don't be a dope and trust other people with deciding that. Try before you buy!

I think it's cool how you have matured and realized hair isn't everything and one can look great without a 19 year old kid hairline. Some guys really loose there marbles here on this. I think you are over complicating this personally. I see a few really good options for you. The problem is not really the new hairline, but the stark contrast where the fake hairline meats your natural one. If you smoothe out that transition by adding hair to the new hairline it will be good. So let's say your natural hairline that looks about an inch back is 60 FU's per cm2. The just add some grafts to the rearmost 1/4 inch to get it to 60cm2. Then the next 1/4" to 40. Next to 30 and leave the last and front edge of the hairline at 20cm2. It looks like 20cm2 is about the density you have there already. BUT I wold only do this towards the center and not fill the temples in so it would kind of create a bit of a widows peak or what we we call a "mature hairline". Guys who loose their marbles over hair loose sight that a mature hairlines looks plain good on a guy after 30. In some people it looks better than a flawless youth hairline. Depends on the guy. But once you hit 30 a mature hairline is a good look on anyone and surgery is silly from an aesthetic standpoint as the world sees you. Basically, nice natural healthy hairline...bam. Nobody notices your hair. Just like if you nobody notices your eyebrows if they are normal. Bit really big or really think they will notice. But once you are in that "normal ideal" range, the human eye moves on. I think something like Chris Pratt's hairline would be a good fit for you now and attainable without much work. I am guessing you have about 20 sq cm of hairline that needs to be filled up. Since you already have some hair there, maybe you need an average 25-30 grafts per sq cm added to what is there if you have another procedure? I think if you just fill the front thickened up, then you will need maybe 1000 grafts depending on your hair characteristics. Don't forget, you want a nice 1/4" transition zone from your forehead to your hairline...so the front 1/4" that you have already needs nothing! Would look pretty natural if he hair is built up behind it. I am not sure how the temples will look. Probably a bit unnatural as they are now. You have a few options there. One being have another 6-700 grafts done and just rebuild your current transplanted zone. I wouldn't do this. Will look too young on you going forward, waste a bunch of grafts you might want and wasted money. And worst, if the temples move back,,,island of hair that looks goofy. For the temples I would either have them zapped off to bring them close to your current natural hairline there, but leave about 1/4" as a transition zone. Plus temples are usually thinner than other areas. If you have them zapped artistically so it transitions from forehead to hairline then it should look good. just have to find that balance point. Another option might be having a good doc use a manual .7mm punch and harvest them out of your temples and replant them. BUT you would have to be sure it won't leave a scar and seems too risky to save well under 1000 hairs. So re-enforce the front into a bit of a peak, but keep the current hairline in the center and bring the temples up and you should have a terrific result, not spend a lot and have enough hair to get it tuned up over the years should you need it. You can always have the hairline selectively lasered in the future if you have a lot more hair loss and it becomes impractical. But for now, I can't see how you can go wrong with what I suggested. Think Dr. Nader is about $2 a graft. But even with a limited budget, some really great doctors in the US can probably do 1000 grafts for an affordable price. I think there is a really good one in Washington that get's around $6 per graft. That should be affordable to most working adults in the US that have an easy enough life to even be concerned with their hairline. lol. I had Dr. Nader work on me. It is too early to give you my result. But it think it would be a pretty good option. You are really in a great place. Just add some hairs to smoothe things out and make a few adjustments and you will be golden.

But he didn't force you. You decided to do it in spite of knowing the math involved. The thing is you looked great before and didn't need anything done. I really think you have a few options, though none are ideal. 1) get the new weak hairline removed with lazer and be back where you started. That way you will look to have a more natural hairline and it's simple and inexpensive. I mean keep the first 3-4mm of the new hairline as that is usually sparse and will look nice and less abrupt...plus still move your hairline a tad forward from where it was and that would still look good. 2) Live wit it the way it is. My own opinion is that if this were my head and face, I would like it a little higher and not want to fight with it, though you are pulling it off okay now. But just because you can work with it, doesn't mean it looks better than if it were a little higher and was more like I suggested in #1. It's not a hair contest and one should go for what looks best when you have those options...and you do have those choices. 3) Say the hell with the future and get another fue done NEVER FUT. Then go through this whole process again and then likely end up a 40 year old with a bazaar looking hairline that lives on your forehead. Jude law kind of has a forelock island and it looks okay. But really think how a really low hairline would look with a bald crown. Nothing worse than unnatural. It is the opposite of what someone who really worries about their hairline would ever want. My thinking is you would look really weird, or end up having too shave it all off. 4) If you don't scar, have the new hairline partly harvested and made into a stronger widows peak kind of thing, or moved into the old hairline. Part of me thinks from what you are saying here you are seriously considering having more work done. I hope you don't. Either way, you are not really seeing reality when you look in the mirror, and it may sound mean, but I am telling you from a normal person's perspective you have lost yours on your hair. It was GOOD before your latest surgery. We all have that a bit. Some part of our face or body we look at and wish were different. But when we ask someone, they say it is absolutely fine. You have to trust others sometimes as the mind has a weird way of making yourself hard to see as a stranger. Great example are the the older guys who dye their hair and have really unnatural looks and sometimes too agressive hairlines for their age. We see them here and they look at best kind of off, and at worst just plain silly. They can't see it themselves though. To them their jet black hair on a 60 year old looks okay. Because they have no self perspective. You are not in a terrible place. You have the choice to have a decent and perfectly fine hairline and a few hairs in reserve. I would say your best bet if you don't scar is find a surgeon who uses are .7mm punch and have your new hair in the temple area removed and inserted in the center. That is if money were not an issue. It this were my head and my budget where money might be a minor consideration, I would have most of the new hairline lasered off and move on with my life from hair struggles and spend your time. money and emotion on more important things. Most normal guys are perfectly okay with some recession and thinning. You were already better off than them and time to let this go where it belongs, in the rear view mirror.

I think month 4-7 are when things seems to really start happening when I see other people's posts. Considering the thin hairs, I would say you are doing good and even a little better than average for where you are time wise. Looks like they did good work and you will have a quality result that looks natural.

Here is the deal as I can see it and a neutral party. Your hair looked perfectly good before you had this last HT in India. Not to sound mean, but I think you might have a bit of unrealistic image of what you are seeing in the mirror if you felt you needed more work after H&W got you a good hairline. It is just not rational when you will probably be a NW5-6 one day to blow most of what you had left on fixing up an already really decent hairline. Then to lower it well past what is even natural? The new hairline is so low it goes beyond any ethical doctor should be doing in my opinion. I was not there in the consult room, but if he readily agreed to do that, or worse, suggested you go there with it. Well that's not right. On the bright side, you look fine with your hair styled. It is not the end of the world. But what was your thinking on moving it forward and blowing all your donor on the very front when you are fairly convinced you will be loosing a lot more? At this point if you don't scar at all, maybe they can harvest the new grafts and move them back farther into the hairline? You can't really ad another 2k to that already too low hairline. I mean I guess you could, but it will be asking for real trouble in a decade or so.

Basics and recovery. Was uneventful and not worth going into detail the day of stuff. I drove 5 hours the night the surgeries were done with no problem. Very little pain, no meds needed. I did take an anti inflammatory as prescribed. Swelling on forehead was kind of not cool and got worse till about day 5 post procedure. No pain, just looked goofy. And my skin on my forehead was really oily too through that and for maybe 2 weeks after. The surface of my implanted area was completely numb for a while. Still is pretty numb right on the surface, but slowly improving and not a really big deal at this point. Got really bad hiccups after the surgery for 2-3 days. Turns out that is a sometimes side effect. Plus lots of dead skin on the surface. Also, even now, the skin that was implanted it very slightly "off" compared to virgin scalp. I am sure a lot of it is just like when you skin your knee as a kid. It heels up pretty quick, but the area the skin is a little different for many months after. Not that extreme, but if I shaved my head now, the recipient areas might be a little different looking at close inspection. I think there are also tiny scars (very tiny) where the implants went in. Small like the pores in your skin, but a little bigger. I suspect that is just what happens when you make tiny holes and shove tiny chunks of skin in them. Not really a big deal, though something you never see mentioned. My guess is over the next year that will become even more invisible. But if I ever wanted to have a shiny shaved bald head, it might or might not be an issue. Biggest issue was my donor area just got really angry! Not pain so much as just raw and unpleasant. Where even a breeze the first 2 weeks was pretty unpleasant. To this day it is still a little irritated and bit sensitive. At week 5 I started getting big pimples on the donor area. I am guessing those were transected hairs growing out. Mostly over now and was maybe 25 of them. Makes sense that's what they were as you always get a few of them in the punch process. I can see Zero scaring from the .8mm punch. So that was a relief and because I went FUE, if all healed well I can buzz my hair down to a few mm and all look good. I never want shiny bald or razor it, so this is all okay with me. I am pretty sure though that the donor area will be so well healed that I could clean shave that area.

So this brings us up to right about two months. I got lucky! A lot of the hairs that were implanted just kept growing! This is a great sign in two ways. One, nice to get some results. Two, you would assume the hairs were handled well and my body didn't go to war with the implants. I can tell exactly what grew and what shed because I still have a few hairs shed if I run my hands through it a few times when holding a piece of paper under it. Usually 2-3 very short hairs will come out. They are all the same 3mm long. All those shed hairs clearly went to the resting phase after surgery like is normal, and are just sitting in holes in my head now. VERY few are left like that as most fell out in week 4. The ones that are clearly growing are now about 3/4 inch long and growing like weeds. A few you can see where the hair follicle thought about taking a vacation (hair gets thin) then thicker again close to the scalp. It's like some had a rough time and got skinny for two weeks of their growing, then back to fat. It actually looks better in person, especially when you are not inspecting hair, but looking at a person as a whole. I have no idea what % stayed and what shed. My guess is a little over 50% the hairs in the front 1/3 stayed and grew. The hairs that went into the crown mostly shed. Would I be happy is this was the final result? Heck no! By my eye, I need pretty much all of the shed hairs to sprout eventually to have a result I like. Reality is if Dr. Nader hit the benchmark of what most quality surgeons realistically do (90%), I think It will get where I can just move on and be okay with my hair. For sure won't be a hair model, but that was never the goal. Worst case from where I am now, even if nothing new grows, I can go anywhere and get 1000 grafts put in and for sure be good. That's a much different place than 2 months ago with a completely bald front, large bill and big unknown surgery in front of me. Also many unanswered questions with a natural fear of disaster. I am happy so far! But feedback both positive or negative is very welcome and appreciated. Ultimately this is for the guys in my shoes a few months ago trying to figure it all out. I was torn for a bit between Dr. K in Turkey (my second choice and was about to book when I found Nader)

Oh, I have a small head. So 3500 grafts went a good distance. I know this will not be a dense head of hair. I see really dense doctors doing 3000 grafts just in the front. I am okay having it on the thin side, but not see through. We shall see. I will know in maybe 10 months if we need to add a bit or we are good. Pic of donor area is about day 7. Last two pics were I think day 7 and day 11.

Here we are before surgery. The drawn on hairline here is my own design while doing math. But is very close to what we went with. Don't laugh when I say this....but I cut my hair and saved some of it to use to design a hairline. It was great being able to adjust it looking 100% real. I was actually surprised that I found a widows peak looked as good on me as a more straight hairline. SO GLAD I did this. Took the guesswork out of designing a hairline or leaving it to decide on a surgery day. In retrospect I would have rather those 500 extra grafts gone to bring those temples a bit forward than gone in the crown. But you do the best you can at the time. First and last pic is the comb over. One pic is me buzzing it all off 2 weeks before surgery to get used to it, Also in case I liked it so much I might choose another option. The middle two are when it got good feedback from everyone. Of course it is a mess and pulled up and back to see the hairline. But was a big improvement over the comb over. Didn't take a pic of the front when I want pretty much clipper bald. But didn't like it. Glad I went with a HT even if it is just to put enough there to frame my face.

57 days out of a so far good experience with Dr L. Nader. This post will have results, experiences, opinions on my procedure and the process in general. 1) Decision. Early 40's male with slow progressing hair loss since early 20's and at time of procedure guessing a NW5 . Still had enough hair growing across the bridge of my head for some passable comb over action. Hair loss comes in waves somewhat. And this last wave over the past 3 years it went from presentable. to really thin and debatable if the comb over was helping frame my face, or looking kind of like I was holding on and trying too hard. Basically that point we can all see in other guys when we can safely say they look better just buzzing it and owning their confidence again. Funny thing is we don't see it easy in ourselves. To that end we have all seen men here completely failing in this department. I watched several guys here who looked really handsome with a little receding hairline rush and get a new one only to look less manly and detract from their looks. Granted, most guys benefit hugely from the front center being there, but sometimes high temples look better with certain guys and they screw it up. Bit the biggest fails I see here are the older guys who overdye and get too aggressive trying to see themselves at 20 in the mirror and it looks BAD. Or the flip side is they get some little tuft of hair three inches too high. It looks good to them, but they would look so much better just shaving it off and waste huge money on a look that hurts their looks. ASK PEOPLES ADVICE. I was lucky that I have a few really attractive female friends in their late 30's and early 40's and got some feedback. All said the same things! First is they really don't look at guys hair much unless it is bad. Kind of like how women notice each others nails and makeup but guys don't really focus on that. But let's also be honest, some people look good bald, but most look better with hair. A HT isn't going to make you go from a 5 to a 10. But like clothes, really bad hair can ruin you. If it is stringy and receding bad. man up and cut it off. Or if you are a good candidate and can really make a nice look, go with the HT if you can afford it. But only if it really can improve your look. Go bald or have it restored to at least a convincing mature hairline. After looking at 10,000 results I can say anything less will only make you look worse! To that end, I gave up the struggle with creative combing, hair spray and shading makeup (works great for once in a while when you want to look your absolute best). I cut my hair to about one inch. I hated it at first. Never had it like that before. Crazy thing is after a few weeks of getting used it it I knew I looked a 1000x better. All my female friends I asked were crystal clear they thought it was great short and was an improvement. I know I looked more bald, but confidence is sexy and I looked more confident . even if I didn't feel it. I always thought I would never have the kind of face or head that looked right buzzed. But turns out it's probably in my head and a lot of guys too. I only cut it short to prepare for the HT and see how I liked it since it was going to get cut off anyhow. I grew to like it. Not sure I will choose to grow it back to the 3-4 inches it was ever again. 2)Decision made, now what? So I am not a rich guy. But I always said when my hair got to the point where I really felt it was an issue, I would look at getting FUE. NEVER FUT. Month's of research and for the life of me, unless you are a NW6 who want's to absolutely push graft numbers to the limits, why would you ever let someone meat clever your head and get a huge scar. DON'T DO IT unless you are in that tight spot going for broke. Even then I think it is foolish. Two big decisions to make. One was what surgeon and two, how much needed to be done with a FUT procedure. I could not afford to use one of the top 10 big name clinics in the world. They have a huge proven track record of a high rate of good results and are the obvious choice if you have $20-40,000usd to spend. And with so many results you can see each doctor has a look that they strive for. Some are dense hairlines, some maximizing donor grafts for the best overall look. All are good, but pick one who's style you like and you have made as safe of a bet as you can. No Dr. hits a home run every time. Even the best. But odds are ever in your favor! HT is not rocket science. I see tons of guys disappointed for different reasons. Sometimes it is a medical failure, but usually an issue of unrealistic expectations, surgeon skill and lack of homework. After having looked at 1000's of results I gained some wisdom. The math does not lie. To get the density I wanted over the area that I wanted with the hair type I have I knew I needed 3,500 Grafts. The numbers are simple really, but ignored by most. The average patient with average thickness hair and average of 2 hairs per FU needs 40-50 follicles transplanted per cm2. installed in mostly bald areas. That is the minimum to have hair that does not look blatantly thin to the average person in front of you. It would probably not look right on a 22 year old, looks okay on a 40y old and up. Now, if you have jet black hair on a white guy, going to need more! It is not hard to measure. I did the math and knew what I needed. Now to find the right Dr. 3) With my budget in mind, I set out to explore the lesser known options outside of the superstars. This is where it gets murky. Even the 2nd tier surgeons in the US are pretty expensive. Some are for sure second tier because they don't do as good or as reliable work. Others are maybe up and coming and making a name for themselves. You can make your own decisions there. Then there are the 3rd tier places. Basically every city is full of plastic surgeons who will do a HT for you. But unless this is what they do, and all they do, STAY AWAY. It is a very skilled thing and needs a well oiled machine of a team. But for guys who are on a limited budget there is another option. Getting your HT done in a lower cost nation. Turkey is the superbowl of that. If you are smart and do your homework, you can get a world class HT done there at a fraction of the cost. But you really need to do your homework and sometimes roll the dice. I mean if you have a 95% chance of getting a best case result at a US superstar, maybe you have a 90% there at a good place in Turkey for 1/4 of the price. On a budget, that is still pretty good odds. I was going to get a HT in Turkey. The risk to reward on a budget was the next best choice to a top doc here in the USA. I was about to book a plane ticket when I caught wind of Dr. Nader in Mexico. 4) Why I went to Mexico. Simple really. I found a doctor I felt confident in who crossed all the t's and dotted all the I's I needed for a practice. His results were good (at least at the time I booked) and of course it was much closer than Turkey. I rented a car and drove there in a day. And of course, cost. I could afford 3,500 grafts there. And more importantly felt confident in his practice. To me it was the next best choice after the top USA doctors. So I booked a 2 day FUE with him. 5) Why Dr Nader. I knew I was going to have to get more creative than booking a bankrupting HT with Hasson and Wong. Having researched tons of doctors, medical journals and message boards, I came to settle on this guy for a few reasons beyond cost and location. He does the extractions and incisions himself. In other words, no technicians who you know nothing about doing the work. Sure, people can be trained and you go with the reputation of the practice. But even better if you know for sure someone who has done this 1000's of times is behind the punch putting 1000's of holes in your head. He has the right staff. Dr. Nader had 5 nurses/techs working with him on my procedure. He used a .8mm punch He limits how many grafts he does a day and only sees one patient a day. Very important and a real sign of quality. His website is lacking and marketing is non existent. But with some real effort you can see he had the important things you look for on paper with a good HT surgeon. At the end of the day I really had to look at results. His results are poorly documented. Considering he does this every day and has for over a decade, you would hope for more to go on. But I really had only about 10 results to see. And to be honest some looked mediocre. On the bright side I never saw any negative reviews or bad results. Then came the real hard looks. I noticed every mediocre result was because of low graft counts. Simply put Dr. N was getting really good results with the actual hairs he transplanted, but often patients were not having enough grafts done to start with. At the time of my booking I only could find one person he worked on that had what I would consider a sub-par result. I figured most of the unremarkable results were due to budget. I mean if the patient only has a limited budget, you do what you can and I think he gets a lot of guys who are on a budget. Armed with that information I felt strongly that Dr. N was a good choice and would be able to get the same graft survival rates as any top doctor should. I will add that right at the time of my procedure several new cases came to light here where his results were week even when the patient had enough grafts implanted. So I kind of got nervous. Though even those results were not failures. But they were not home runs either. One guy may just need more time, the other looks like maybe 60% of it grew. Time will tell I guess. Had I see these before my procedure, I may have gone to Turkey and seen one of the clinics there. It would have been a harder choice. I am glad I saw them after..lol 6)Procedure. His office is 2 miles from the USA. Really no big deal and he sends a car. Nice office. Everything they say about the man here is spot on. He is kind, professional, knowledgeable and you can not help but feel in good hands and like the guy. Very down to Earth. We talked about my goals and what we would be working towards. He also talked very candidly about his own struggles with hair loss and why he chose this profession. Even some American doctors who he knows personally as he is active in the community of HT surgeons. I also learned quickly why many of his results look thin. It really comes down to each surgeon is a bit of an artist too. His aesthetic is very conservative. To say he is NOT money driven is an understatement. He tried to convince me I only needed 2500 grafts even though it would still take up the two days I was booked for. So he would have lost thousands of dollars because he was advocating for me and what he felt. He could have safely transplanted the 3500. He just said it was not needed to have a nice result, and save my money. So two awesome things there, One, you start to realize this Dr. in his mind thinks thin hair looks age appropriate. There is no right or wrong there. Two, he proved to me that he is not money driven, but results and compassion driven. Regardless of my final result, I completely respect and feel confident in his ethics. Ultimately I was steadfast in wanting to get the density I was aiming for and knew I needed to hit for the look I wanted (low 40's per cm2). He agreed to implant to a as high a density as possible where we were still 100% safe and not pushing it. We ended up with about 500 extra grafts since I was insistent on harvesting 3500 and he truly didn't know how dense he could pack safely till implantation started later. So we put the last 500 in the crown. He also ended up with about 100 more grafts than I paid for, but told me not to worry about that. Very classy operation. Procedure was over two consecutive days. Not painful and pretty standard for a HT. Each session of about 1800 grafts took about 6 hours from first punch, till last implant. That's well within the safe zone time wise. He also uses a upgraded storage solution, but only mentioned it when I asked. These are things he could easy market on his website or cheap out on techs. Nope, he just likes what he does and cares for his patients. The first night I took some Advil. Night of 2nd day or surgery I didn't even have to take anything. It was as pleasurable and painless as you can hope for. It is really not fun though and let's not sugar coat it. But not so horrible you can't watch TV or grit your teeth and get through it. At the end of the two days we had implanted 3588 grafts. Nearly all were 2 hair grafts. My hairs according to him were on the thicker side of average. I have average donor density in back, so I probably have 2-3000 or so in reserve for the future. Most of it went into the frontal 1/3 and quick math shows we implanted at a density of about 43 grafts per cm2. We went with a fairly conservative hairline that we agreed looked good. Though he felt I could have left it about 1/3 inch higher on my forehead. I wanted it a bit more forward and that's what he did and I don't regret that.

I agree with Speegs to a degree. MOST of the top transplant surgeons do not use the robot. It usually is a sign of a clinic that is not as skillful IMHO. It is a tool to keep labor costs down and allow surgeons with limited skill to do a decent harvesting job. Usually the top guys use smaller punches than the robot as well. I for sure don't think it is something to be looking for when picking who does your transplant. In fact, it is a bit of a red flag unless you fall for the marketing hype.

Honestly. I think you might be too bald to really be an ideal patient. Looking at the donor area you could maybe get light coverage with a high hairline, or have a huge bald spot on top and some passable thin hairline at the front. But in my opinion none would really be a good look and truthfully you would look better just embracing your baldness rather than a week hairline that just detracts from someone overall look. Now if you have a lot of body hair and money. Dr. U could probably get you some passible looking results. But no hair is better looking than some sickly looking thin fuzz or awkward looking things. Look honestly at what you have...we all kind of have trouble seeing reality when we look at ourselves. Then look at norwood 6-7 results. It is pretty impossible unless you have a superb donor supply and thick diameter hair. I honestly see some of these hairlines they put on guys...you know, with the hairline staring way far back because of too much loss. Why the patient my like it, 90% of the time in the eyes of the rest of the world, these results look silly and he poor guy would be 20k richer and look so much better if he just buzzed it off. Please don't be one of those guys who end up as roadkill on the HT superhighway. I hate to sound harsh, but the good looking results are usually restoring at worst a Norwood 5 to a 2/3. I have learned anyone here can find a surgeon willing to take his money. From the early 20's fool who blows thorough his donor supply to have a goofy looking hairline so low it makes him look feminine to the baldy who ends up wit a fuzzy widows peak 3 inches back from where it might have looked decent. Tread lightly and do your research. Donor, density, caliber, graft survival. Then when you know what is possible,,,,pick a surgeon who might be a good fit.

But I look at this and it looks pretty full at the temple. Is one side not growing? I genuinely can't say anything negative when I look at this series. But the turquoise and white shirt pics showing what I assume is the other side....well that looks pretty thin. I figured maybe it was just a pic where the light and style exaggerated the thinness. Are both sides thin? I am so confused...lol

Looks good. Dr. Nader has had some hit or miss results here lately. Some have been because the patient did not get enough grafts for the density they wanted, but a few just looked like they were getting like 70% graft survival. One good thing about Nader is I have never seen a bad result. Rather we have seen what I would say are typical results you see with any good HT doctor. Few home runs, few mediocre ones and mostly solid results in line with what the actual medical research shows. Average regrowth/graft survival in the high 80% is realistically what I have read. Some doctor claim well into the 90's, but that doesn't seem to be what really is typical, though with any average, some doctors do a little better or worse. Truth is he does not pack hairs dense like some doctors do and less so on budget jobs. Yours does not seem like a budget job. Rather it looks like you got solid graft survival and have thick hairs. If you went to H&W they would have probably given you 2700 grafts and you would have perfect density. Just look at the 2 week post op pics. Your native hairline has at lest twice the density compared to what was installed. We all want luscious thick hair in one shot. Reality is most doctors including this one seem to pack grafts in the high 30's per square centimeter. To me it is a rare patent who has truly thick looking hair even in the mid 40's. I think the reality is most of these transplants when you go in one procedure can take a bald area and make it a thinning. but workable area. Yours looks like a real success from medical standpoint. Unless you see something I am missing. you had great graft survival and will in all likelyhood still see a little thickening. Though the new hairline is about 1/2 as thick as the natural one behind it. Would you agree with that? My personal opinion is like many guys here. To an outsider it looks fine in the pics and the visual impact is your new hairline is just that. I am sure you can find a cut that really works well with it or find one that shows it's shortcomings. But I really think even at this point you have achieved most of the improvement the new hairline could have. Even if you got that density up to double what it is and at PERFECTION...it is mostly something only you would notice. It looks good and as you age, will look more natural anyhow. This is the classic crossroads...go for more density in second procedure because it bothers you. Or just enjoy that it is a nice, even if not a movie star hairline and realize the world isn't looking at your hairline or would even notice it isn't as dense as you would like. It is thick enough to have established a new hairline...enjoy it! I.E. Look at WidowsPeak. Your new hairline is almost as thick as his from what I can see. He loves it and would you notice his hairline being thin in real life on a typical day if you met him?

Don't really see a downside to Monox. Why not try it? So I do have a question. I have looked at some of this doctors transplants and it is a real mix. Some amazing results, some mediocre. None what I would call bad though. Honestly, most of the mediocre ones when you really scrutinize it, the issue is not enough grafts were placed for the area that needed coverage. Probably because the patient was on a budget and the doctor did the best he could with the budget. Those are the kind of cases here where the grafts survival looks good...but just not enough hairs were transplanted. Then there are the top notch cases. I have however seen a few now like your results lately. Granted, it's early. But you don't look like you have thickened much since months 4.5. Is that accurate? I looked closely at your pics. To me it looks like nearly all the transplanted hairs grew, but are rather thin. So I have a few questions. 1) Do you remember what percentage of your grafts were 1,2 or 3 hair? 2) Do you feel the grafts mostly all grew? To me they look like they nearly all grew, just grew thin hairs. So is it one, the other or both that you think are making it look thin? 3) Are your hairs fine or thick naturally? Basically your case is one I can't figure out. The implanted density looks like it was pretty solid. Not over the top dense like H&W sometimes do. But still where patients are getting close to what I wold say the point where it looks pretty solid in most lighting and a little length. Your transplanted areas around the temples still looks fairly thin in spite of what appears to be enough grafts to get you a more solid looking hairline. On the bright side, you have great hair behind the new hairline and honestly, even if it doesn't thicken any more, because the temples are naturally thinner. It looks natural and I am sure it will thicken a bit more at least. In your case it blends naturally with the thick top you already have. It completely fixed the high hairline you have. Now your eye starts at the new hairline even though it is thin there you don't notice. It builds up naturally to the ticker part. And the new hair is thick enough to bring it all into balance and even if it grew 10x as thick, to the rest of the world it would not even make a noticeable difference. To me, honestly your results make you look good and accomplish the goal from this strangers standpoint. But also, for the density you had grafted...looks about 30% less dense than I would have expected. Makes perfect sense if you mostly had 1 hair grafts to work with or your hair is super fine. If not though....what is the issue? Just slow growing? Transplanted hair growing in very thin or did 30% of the graft just not survive? Or maybe my eyes aren't catching it and 1500 grafts just are not enough for the area.

Please, this is a no brainer. The surgery looks like it was dense enough. Assuming they did at least decent quality work, you should have gotten a nice result. HOWEVER. It is fairly obvious you have a lot of shock loss. When the hairs are getting small and sickly as yours were doing before the transplant, they are pretty geriatric. They really can't withstand the trauma of the transplant and it basically knocks them out. Some might get back up to fight another day. But they were on their way out and my guess is many it was their death nail. That is the danger of transplanting into areas that have thinning hair. GET ON MEDS ASAP! It might save some that you have lost. One surgeon told me Propecia works pretty good on the hair that checked out in the past 6months. But longer than that there is no bringing it back. So basically, from my research ideally a patient with an upcoming transplant and defuse thinning ideally should be on Propecia to get those thin hairs thick and ready for the coming war even if you don't plan to use it for years. So get busy using that and monox and maybe you can save some of the sick old native men you knocked of by having this transplant. Other posters make a good point. Turkey is mostly a crap shoot. Every tech has to learn and you really don't want to be one of the practice guinea pigs they learn on. But you really can't do much more than find a reputable clinic and lower the odds of getting a bad result. It truly is a roll of the dice that some research can help with, but not completely prevent. There are a very select few clinics there that have stellar reputations and I am sure only employ the best techs. I looked seriously at Turkey and reality is the top places there are nearly as expensive as in first world countries. Having said that, it seems like most of the decent clinics there get decent results. So most likely you will get a lot of bang for your buck. but bad results are a possibility. Of course the best choice if money was not an option is simply pick one of the top ten surgeons in the world and you have much less chance of a bad result. It is tempting though. Go to Turkey and get say good results 90% of the time. When I say good results I mean 80% graft survival and no surprises. Go to a top US surgeon and pay 8x more and get a great result 96% of the time and 90% graft survival or better. 8x the price for a tiny bit better result on average and a lower failure rate is a pretty steep premium. I can't blame anyone on a budget for doing their homework as best they can and rolling the dice on Turkey for a typical guy needed 3000 grafts on a first procedure. Your results after looking at thousands of pics and a year of study on this subject considering my own surgery. Doesn't look promising man. Sure, growth this early isn't usually stellar. But I have seen very few patients that have less hair than before their surgery at this point. That's the honest answer. Don't loose hope. You might just be that bottom 10% who just regrow really late and will have a great head of hair. You are not hopeless. If it were 12m then you would have nothing to hope for. But you asked about here and now. My guess...and since it is early this is guessing. You lost a lot due to shock loss and probably were balding fast or about to start. Couple that with clearly not being a patient that is responding fast and hard. The really great growers all seem to be great early growers too. My guess is you will get a decent amount of growth over the next few months and some of your native hair will come back too. It will get better and probably look better than before you got the transplant. You might need a second transplant and unless the transplant is a failure, you will be much better off in 2019 then if you did nothing at all. You asked for our best guesses. My best guess is you will have moderately successful results from this transplant, but for sure short of what you were ideally looking for. BUT IT IS EARLY....AND JUST A GUESS. You might just be slow to grow and will have a stellar result 6 months from now! The actual work looks rather good and professional so that should give hope that you are a slow grower and not a guy who got crap work done.

It is great! But I do have to give some thoughts. You're a thinning guy, not at bald guy now. That's a big difference in the snap impression you make. Balding guy isn't the first impression any longer. Actually it is pretty great for only month five. Some people have not really seen much growth yet by then. It will thicken at least a little more for sure. I did some really quick calculations because I am considering getting the same area done and your hairline was similar to mine. Anyhow I am getting about 94 sq. CM. With the total grafts you got, if you were completely bald in the transplanted area you would end up with about 23 grafts per cm2 and that is really low. I would say even maybe slightly lower than your are seeing right now. I know it depends on how thick your hair is. But hair looks pretty see through and wispy in just about everyone until around 40. Then the guys with really fat hairs start looking whatever that stage is where it isn't thick like Stalin. But not obviously thinning. This is a guess...but in the areas where you still had hair on the front 1/3 it looks like you started with around 20 follicles per cm2. If you get really good survival rates you will be right there in the 40 cm2 range. I suppose you can look at the spots in the very front where there was no hair to begin with and get a sense of how much of the transplanted hair is growing now...and assuming you get more growth....and expect you will....where your end results will be.

I am new here and bumping an old thread. But new people here read lots of old posts and this was an important one and has good info from an active and busy Dr. I have been considering a HT in Turkey and all signs pointed to Dr. K being a top shelf choice. I still think he is a great choice today from what I can tell, but things have changed and it is very different than what he posted here. First, though his website AEK says he performs all the surgeries himself, that is simply not accurate. Evidently at one time he did. But now he sees 2-4 patients a day according to the person I communicated with at his office. The price is very reasonable for a technician performed procedure in Turkey by a smaller and higher end operation that I feel AEK is. But don't be confused. When I was about to book, I double checked to make sure Dr. K was doing the graft extraction per his own impassioned words here. I was informed he simply supervises procedures. If I wanted him to actually do the extraction it would be at least 5,000 euros vs the aprox. 2,500 euro price I was quoted. Again, I feel all of these prices are fair (they charge for procedure now, not per graft or hair) Assuming they can do the 4-5k hairs (they go by hairs, not grafts) in one session they claim they can...great prices for an experienced Dr. or a higher end technician done job. I was offered upon expressing my concerns that Dr. K would do the incisions for me at no additional charge and I appreciated that. Maybe he just could not fight the tide of the business model in Turkey. IDK. But he is operating against what he suggested was a bad idea here 4 years ago. I am still considering Dr. K if I do decide to go down the part of a "technician" performed FUE surgery. If you want to go the route I can't seem to think of a better possible value when other top Turkish Dr.s are following the same model with amazing results. With all the great information I have gotten here and still doing research in fact. Actually that's how I found this thread again and thought it was really important to know Dr. K seems to be a solid option. But has a very different business model that may be great for some people reading this. I have yet to decide on a Dr. Communication is great at his clinic and I truly get the feeling he would not hire just anybody. With so many clinics and technicians working in turkey, I would assume there are many experienced technicians and one would think they would be found at a place like this and not the hair mills where I suspect they learn as they go..