Nebulosity

Looks really good. You already look improved, and now you just need to wait. I'm envious. I wish I had gone to a good doctor.

Hi @abixx, Not to be too negative, but your donor area looks patchy and overharvested in some areas. I can see a kind of "line" across the bottom of the extraction area, and the far left side is overharvested. The doctor could have extracted a bit lower, without getting into the nape hair. If you're not likely to progress to a NW7, he could have extracted higher up. That way, he could have left your donor area overall denser, and blended the extracted area with the unextracted areas so that no macro irregularities would exist. He also really overextracted from the far left side. It almost looks like he took 70%+ of the hairs in a small region, but it's hard to tell. That's not natural looking, but for some reason I guess Dr Bhatti likes to really take a lot of grafts from behind the ears. I can't see the far right side, but I imagine he overextracted from there too, as that's how he did mine and after my procedure I noticed that in patient photos, the areas behind the ears were overextracted. The only positive thing is that I can't see any obvious hypopigmentation. But that may just be because so many extractions were done in a small area, that instead of "dots" there is a "sea" of extraction scars. Scratch that, I can see some hypopigmentation dots along the left side, but I don't think anyone would notice. Say goodbye to ever being able to buzz your hair without a "machined" jagged, narrow, and somewhat horizontal strip across the back of your scalp. That said, I think if you had a few hundred grafts implanted into the horizontal "line" across the bottom of the extraction area, and some more into the overextracted areas, it would really reduce the "machined" appearance. It would look natural then, although still thinner than it had to be.

It's been nearly 8 months since this patient's transplant. Dr Bhatti himself tells his patients that after 6 months, most of the growth will be apparent. Before my transplant, he told me that at 6 months I'd see 80% of the new hairs growing. Is Dr Bhatti wrong? I just don't believe that AltonMeyer was a shill. I think Eugenix is nearly as shitty as Darling Buds, so I'm not picking one clinic over another either.

I'm pretty sure that H&W are better on the recipient side of the transplant and I would definitely choose them if money m were no object. I don't know about diffused thinning or Rahal. More on H&W having learned from Erdogan below. https://hassonandwong.com/our-journey-to-fue/ "In Europe the work of Dr Jose Lorenzo and Dr Koray Erdogan has come closest to the quality of work that we like to produce. With their assistance we have trained already experienced technicians in their manual extraction techniques. For approximately 2 years we have been slowly increasing the number of FUE procedures that we perform ."

@johanchicago, check out the below case, and observe the patient’s donor area after 5000 FUE. If Erdogan can do that, then maybe he can salvage your donor supply and extract more usable grafts than you think. You might want a doctor like Erdogan, capable of predicting which hairs are likely to be basically permanent so that every possible donor graft can be used, and who is able to homogenize your donor area and marry its density with the density on top, in a natural way. Maybe Bhatti estimated the remaining donor supply from only the safe zone, or possibly some areas outside of the safe zone but not every area that is usable. Also, I doubt he even measured your donor density, so I wouldn’t put too much stock in his estimate. Erdogan is known to be good at maximally utilizing every possible donor unit. He obviously measures donor density and methodically extracts a specific number of grafts from well planned and delineated regions of your scalp. H&W learned FUE extraction from him. I think there are other doctors who learned from Erdogan, or who have a similar approach. Keser seems to do extraction really well. There are some doctors who would say that it is foolish to extract from too far outside of the permanent zone, but I think if the scarring is not too pronounced, and the grafts from different areas of your donor are mixed up on your scalp diffusely, then a little thinning later on will only look natural. Lastly, I think someone like Keser or Erdogan can give you a much higher assurance of success. It might end up costing more, but ultimately what you’re going for is priceless.

I think the donor management is as good as it gets and you chose an excellent doctor. The grafts seem to have grown well, although more in the crown will help add the finishing touch. I’m wondering one thing: is the hairline a bit rough from close up? I ask, because I heard people say that Erdogan is good for getting lots of grafts and conserving donor, and that one can go to him first for volume, and then another doc to create a soft hairline. Either way, it looks really good.

I suggest finding a HT surgeon who will help you plan for the future and conserve your donor area and donor supply. Bhatti doesn’t do that, fullstop. Before any shills or mods pop up to tell me that he does a great job: AFAIK Bhatti doesn’t measure donor density. To properly manage donor supply, the donor density needs to be measured. Future loss needs to be estimated to some degree. Extraction needs to be done aesthetically. Bhatti told me that he didn’t need to measure my donor density. He “eyeballed” it and roughly estimated (i.e. bullshitted) my remaining donor supply. He also extracted in an unaesthetic pattern, limiting my future options and leaving artificial irregularities in density that are visible to the naked eye. This is not an approach the OP can afford. I know that Erdogan has a reputation for being very good at managing donor. @johanchicago, you might want to look up Erdogan cases to see how well he extracts from the donor area without overharvesting. Secondly, I think you should find a good surgeon who does BHT. I think there may be a few options in India but don’t limit yourself geographically if you don’t have to.

Before your transplant, all you had available to you to assess Dr. Bhatti’s service were forum posts, brief conversations with him, etc. Now you’ve actually gotten a *failed* hair transplant from him, resulting from his own errors as a doctor, and you’ve been blamed for your own disappointment. Now, based on actual experience, you can really judge and assess his service and decide whether it is worth going back to him and having him cut into your scalp again. I would run for the hills. You’ve only got one scalp, and really only once chance left at getting this right.

After my own unfortunate Bhatti transplant, I asked Bhatti in an email why he had recommended such a low hairline. He said it wasn’t low. Later, in a Skype call, I asked him why he had implanted at such a low density. He said that he did his best given the available grafts. I spoke with another Bhatti patient who said that the excuse Bhatti gave him for his sparse growth was that his head was too big. He also said that Bhatti hadn’t mentioned anything about his head size before the procedure, yet claimed he had. And now we see another patient getting gaslighted with a similar excuse. “It was too much area to cover, what did you expect?” I have a serious problem seeing this form of devastation and gaslighting come up again and again in Bhatti cases. This goes against the ethical principles of medicine, and yet Bhatti is still “recommended.”

Thanks. I appreciate that. I think this is repairable, although the loss of grafts is not reversible. I’m trying to gauge how much I should focus on repairing the donor area, and how much on fixing the recipient area. I’m going to try to get a refund, but based on conversations with past Bhatti victims, they were refused refunds. Also, I’ve been told by others that Dr. Bhatti repeatedly lied about and flip flopped on various issues. Dr. Bhatti sent me an email telling me that I had “grossly misrepresented my experience” or some such nonsense and (long ago) claimed he would reply in the forums. I’m pretty sure he would never refund me, although I do deserve a refund and have been completely honest about my experience.

I definitely agree that @jonnyalex is a valuable member here, not a moron. Group hug?

Hey @jonnyalex, yea there was a misunderstanding, but this is a forum and that happens. If we all met in person I bet we’d generally agree on the relative competence of both of the doctors mentioned. Lets not suggest banning people who are brave enough to criticize “recommended” doctors. We need people like that. Yea at this point I’m certain that Bhatti messed up my scalp. Thanks for making me a repair candidate Dr. Bhatti! (TM) But I value your and and @JayLDD‘s input. You’re both real, honest, and not shills, and so neither one of you should be banned in any circumstance.

Yes. I was temporarily in a poor state of mind when I made the decision to get a HT with Bhatti. He is so incompetent, and yet so bizarrely and annoying arrogant. The Dunning-Kruger effect is strong in him. The way he is pushed on this site as producing “fantastic” results or whatever is just absurd. My donor area is all messed up still, and frankly I don’t believe the doctor’s graft count. I think he lied about that, among other things. Maybe they extracted/transected 2369, and implanted 1800 or so. Sparsely. I think the main reason Bhatti is “recommended” is that the HT business is not very big in India. Objectively, Bhatti is not a competent doctor and no one should even remotely consider letting him cut into them. But he is available and the forum needs someone in India fo recommend.

The point regarding those two victims was that they didn’t have any physiological problems. Their transplants were just poorly designed. The grafts grew. But they were placed too sparsely. So they had to get a repairs. What difference does it make whether we can see the results of their repairs? Do you think that Dr. Bhatti was merely being wise to design sparse and unnatural frontal zones? I’m not entirely sure why the one who already had his repair didn’t want to post his results. What I remember is that he claimed there were legal reasons which I assumed had to do with a disclaimer. This may be related to the jurisdiction where he lives and got his transplant. I don’t want to post the location. But it doesn’t matter. His grafts almost all grew in. The transplanted density was like half of what top surgeons do, and that was the entire problem. Also, I didn’t have to try very hard to find two Bhatti cases like that. I don’t know why Bhatti has so many cases of implanting too low of density. It is very hard to explain. Maybe he is not very good at achieving high densities in as many candidates as are other doctors. In which case, maybe he should advise his patients to look elsewhere or not try to lower their hairlines so much. Whatever the reason, he hasn’t explained it, and none of this leads me to believe he is ethical. Also, I found Bhatti to be dishonest on more than one occasion.

What I’ve understood is that H&W check out their patients and try to discourage them from going ahead with a procedure if there is any doubt that it will be successful, for whatever reason. They take into account physiological differences, and carefully design their extraction patterns and recipient areas to avoid walking their patients off a cliff. Dr. Bhatti seems to have the exact opposite strategy. Lets call it the “fast life” hair transplant surgeon strategy.