Spaceman

How is your overall health? Medical issues like diabetes and thyroid problems can contribute to hairloss regardless of transplant or finasteride.

Unfortunately you’ll need an in person consultation to properly answer the question. Some people do have three strip procedures. Assuming you have enough donor capacity, it would depend on how much laxity you have left, and you’d have to have that checked by the surgeon.

Agree with posters above. At the same time, many variables affect the length of the surgery, and some would be specific to you and your case.  For example, some people have “mushy” skin which can slow down extractions. Implanting in between long hair can slow things down. Dense, or ultra dense packing takes longer. Also, some people have grafts that are more prone to pop out after placement and need to be repositioned. A clinic may perform a 2000 graft surgery on one patient and it takes six hours start to finish and the same team may take nine hours on another 2000 graft surgery on someone else.

Brahma, some toppik in your crown would go a long way and is the easiest and cheapest solution. You can’t see the scar with the way you wear your hair, but if you plan to buzz it then FUE into scar would probably be a better choice and it would age better than SMP.

2 hours ago, Legend007 said:

u don’t get random hairs falling sometimes?

Everybody has random hairs falling out everyday, maybe 50-100 per day, assuming a full head of hair. But if they are terminal they should grow back. If miniaturized maybe not. 

15 hours ago, Baldrick101 said:

Ok, but at any given time it is widely accepted that 10-15% of hairs on our head are in the telogen phase. So I'm not sure why a strip would be any different. In any case, we can perhaps agree that there is more wastage with FUT. 

Yes, but it’s not as much wasted compared to FUE as you would think. That’s because when you extract a single or double with FUE it may in fact be a double or triple with one follicle in telogen and the telogen follicle can be transected during extraction. No question that FUE does prevent the wasting of one hair follicles in telogen, which is about 1% of the strip according to Bernstein.

On 2/22/2019 at 2:40 AM, Baldrick101 said:

Not quite! At least 15% of follicles in a strip will be in the telogen phase. You can't see them with a naked eye or even under a microscope. So they cannot be extracted and used. As a result, those 15% or so of follicles that are unusable go straight into the trash.  

Not sure about that. Bernstein estimates the number of one hair telogen follicles wasted in the strip to be as low as 1% of all follicles in the strip. Wasted telogen follicles from multis vary from 1%-5% depending on how the strip is trimmed.

https://www.bernsteinmedical.com/answers/telogen-phase-after-hair-transplantation/

Also, during the first week there is often swelling and inflammation in the recipient. The transplanted hair can appear to grow as the swelling and inflammation recedes.

Hair Folicle Banking. I can see why it would be attractive to many HT doctors. It’s another service that they could sell. They’d get paid for extracting the grafts for storage and maybe kickback from HairClone’s storage fees. It’s yet another high margin, generally harmless, but likely totally useless service peddled by the hair restoration industry. Seems only useful for someone at risk of losing every single hair on their head.

No point in getting a consultation from a bad clinic. You can’t trust what they say. Bosley says your safe zone is too small for 2500 FUE grafts. That’s a really small safe zone and it doesn’t match the level of loss you describe. Or they could be wrong. 

I wouldn’t consider Artas at this point either, nor would I recommend it to anyone. 

I do think it is possible, however, that robotic technology will continue to improve and may eventually be better than the human hand. Consider tasks like making incisions. Robots should be able to control angle, depth, and spacing better than people. I’m not saying it’s there yet, but I do think someday it could be.

I wonder which will happen first, robotic technology improves to rival the top doctors, or the development and commercialization of hair cloning/duplication technology? 

I think it’s standard to use such loupes during extraction and implantation. I don’t know if they examine grafts under microscope with DHT. It’s more about minimizing out of body time. Even so they can probably ensure that most grafts are singles just with loupes. You may miss a few multis with follicles in telogen. As you probably know the Eugenix doctors are active here so you may want to PM them about it.

1 hour ago, Markee said:

How does 5x Carl Zeiss loupes compares to microscopes for singling out grafts ?

Anyone care to comment ?

Loupes are used to select FU for excision in FUE and for graft placement. Stereo microscopes (~10x) are used for examining/dissecting grafts post FUE excision or from a strip. Many FUE clinics don’t use microscopes but most of the best ones do.

2 hours ago, Sean said:

If they add singles in and out and behind the first row if will start making it look weak or Pluggy with lacking densities.  

Don’t you think that depends upon the ability of the surgeon to dense pack the hairline area and the patient’s hair characteristics? I say that because in my case, the first few rows are all singles and it does not look weak or pluggy. I’m sure with less density it would.

Very nice six month result. I imagine it will look even better as it matures and the length evens out. 

Upshall, sorry, didn’t mean to redirect your thread.

Most causes of poor growth have been mentioned. Poor growth is caused by poor surgical protocol or execution, post-op care issues (particularly in the first week post-op), and other unknown “x factor” issues that Gas refers to as genetics. 

If you see tiny wispy hairs now, then you are probably on track. That’s what most people would see at 3+ months. 

Great, maybe you can provide a link?

4 hours ago, txtransplant said:

Simply put. A healthy patent going to a top doctor can be about 95% sure they will get 80% growth. That same patient probably has a about a 75% chance of getting 90% growth and so on.  

Where do you get these numbers from?

The first few rows of hair should be singles. Refined surgeons will excise enough singles (or split multis) to create a natural looking hairline. 

It may be folliculitis. An infected ingrown hair that formed a pimple that “popped”. They are pretty common in the recipient at your stage.

As far as concealers go, its going to be some combination of dermatch directly to the skin to color the scalp, toppik fibers (or similar) over that to add texture, and a few spurts of the color spray to blend it all together.  Then some hairspray to hold it all in place.  You may need to blend colors and try a few times to get the best look.  Best of luck!

You might try Toppik Colored Hair Thickener spray.  Like this:  

Great result!  Congratulations!

You should provide more details about the procedure and better quality pictures in better light from multiple angles. One can’t really assess the result with the minimal information provided.

You should avoid neograft as well. It’s a robotic method that does not produce the quality of results that the best surgeons achieve. Dr Vories is legit. Keep doing your research.