TC17

HUGE improvement! Congrats!

Just to offer additional clarification regarding free speech, the First Amendment, which is the source of the right to speak freely in the United States, only applies to the government, not private actors.

One of the absolute best results I have ever seen.

Spex, Dr. Konior is one of the doctors that I've had the pleasure of consulting with in person. I was able to see a patient of his during that visit and I was blown away by how natural it looked. And, while we all know that pictures can be deceiving, for what it's worth, the hundreds of photographs he had on his computer were as great as the ones that he posts on this forum.

Any list that doesn't include Dr. Konior is not a complete list.

I like FUE. I think FUE is the better choice for almost every hair transplant patient. I believe that the someday soon we will see large FUE sessions with very good yield. However, I do not believe there should ever be a 5,000 FUE session. There is simply no way a doctor can tell how the donor area will look with so many grafts removed in one sitting. I hope your donor area looks fine when all is said and done, but I wouldn't be surprised if it looks moth eaten.

For a number of reasons I put no stock in the Norwood classification system. I would find the ratio of bald or balding area to donor hair far more valuable.

Dr. Konior's work is amazing. You will be in the best of hands.

Nice result. It's great to see that doctors are performing FUE on men with advanced balding patterns.

Looking great!

Looks wonderful.

I strongly urge you to look into Dr. Konior in Chicago.

Your work never ceases to amaze me, Dr. Konior.

It looks nice and clean, but that is a lot of grafts for a very small area on a very young patient.

Because quite simply, you are too bald and too young to be a suitable candidate for a surgery. Hair transplantation isn't for everyone, and it would be a damn shame if you invested money, emotion, and time in a procedure that ultimately will leave you dissatisfied. I have never seen a person with your degree of loss have anything close to a satisfactory result for a person in his 20's. The only time a person with your degree of hair loss should even consider a surgery is if that person is willing to rock an ultra conservative frontal forelock pattern. Sadly, that would look ridiculous on anyone under the age of 50, at the absolute youngest. If you decide to proceed with Dr. Umar I wish you nothing but the best, but I would see if Dr. Umar is willing to guarantee survival and growth of the body hair.

If your avatar is an actual picture of your hair loss, and you were born in 1984, then under no circumstances should you have a hair transplant.

If you are a diffuse thinner in both the donor and the traditional MPB area, then you're not a suitable candidate for surgery - period. If your donor hair is good shape and you are simply thinning throughout the MPB area, then the doctor might have felt that transplanting you wouldn't be worth it because you could shock out the remaining native hair and what would remain would be transplanted hair at the same, or perhaps even lower density, than what you currently have. Why invest the time, money, and hardship if the end result would not be an improvement?

This might sound like a cop out, but the truth is that a hair transplant is only as permanent as the donor hair from where the transplanted hair is taken. If you look at older men who are bald ,I believe that you will see a great number of them would be categorized as NW 6's and NW 7's, and many of them have poor donor hair. Essentially, if they went to a doctor for a hair transplant, they would be turned down and told they are not suitable candidates. Of course we don't know what those same men looked like at age 30, 40, or 50, but we can all agree that we see far more extensive loss as men get older, thus those older men with really advanced patterns were one day younger men with minor and moderate hair loss. Although hair loss doesn't necessairly progress through NW levels per se, for many men, hair loss does continue to get worse. Simply because one is showing a clear NW 5 pattern at age 35 does not mean that he will retain that forever. For an example, look at Jason Alexander from Seinfeld. When he was in his 30's he was a clear NW 5, in his 40's a clear NW 6, and now in his 50's, he is fast approaching a NW 7 level. Who knows, in time, his sides may drop lower and his donor may thin. As for who the person who had the transplant the longest time ago, I don't know who that is, but it really doesn't matter. Just because Person A had a hair transplant 50 years ago and it stil lstands the test of time does not mean that Person B will be so lucky. Permanence of donor hair and future balding pattern are unique to the individual, and thus it's irrelevant what happens to anyone but you.

The Body Odd - Couch potato voters swayed by candidates' good looks

jessie1, have you considered strip surgery? Perhaps your poor growth stems from the fact that your physiology does not lend itself to FUE. With your minimal loss and thus minimal requirements, you could have a very small strip scar if you decide to go that route. I'm all for FUE, but it's not for everyone. I would hate to see you have another FUE surgery and experience les than optimal results. If you're dead set on FUE and you don't mind traveling, Dr. Bisanga is relatively inexpensive, even with the exchange rate heavily favoring the euro. SMG is also relatively inexpensive and they too have a wonderful reputation for performing high quality work. In all fairness though, SMG has not being doing FUE for nearly as long as Dr. Bisanga, but I cannot imagine they would risk their amazing reputation if they did not feel that their FUE work was on par with their strip work. The next step is yours alone to make, but if I were in your shoes, I would honestly consider having strip performed.

And one more point. The fact that there might be exceptions to the rule that all procedures should stand alone, does not mean that the rule is bad. If one deviates from the rule, it should be an exceptional circumstance that would justify that deviation. If the exception grows to be too large, it will swallow the rule. I'm simply proposing that the standard should be all procedures be able to stand alone, and that deviating from that standard should only occur in RARE instances.

I agree with most everything that has been said, but I want to clarify what I believe are some important points. As aaron mentioned, there is a big difference between a patient wanting a second surgery to add additional density, fill in a crown, lower a hairline, or close in temples, and a patient who must have a second sugery to achieve a natural look. While it is true that the vast majority of extensively bald men will require at least two large surgeries to reach their goals, that does not mean that the first surgery cannot stand by itself. Reaching one's goals and stand alone procedures are not synonymous. For example, if I am a NW 5 and I have 200cm of bald area and my goal is to fill in the entire area with reasonable density, I would most likely need somewhere between 6,000-8,000 grafts. If however, my budget, scalp laxity, or any other reason only allows me to have a surgery of 3,000 grafts, those 3,000 grafts can be transplanted to my frontal 1/3rd or 1/2 and assuming all goes as planned, I will achieve a natural result. My goals haven't yet been met because I want to cover the remaining bald area, but that doesn't mean my procedure wasn't a stand alone surgery. If I cannot have additonal surgeries for any reason, I can walk away knowing that my result will stand the test of time. Let's be clear to as not to confuse achieving goals with achieving a stand alone procedure.

The topic of stand alone procedures is extremely important, and yet it is not often discussed on this forum. Let's change that. Let's have a respectful conversation about the topic. Oftentimes results are posted on this forum that simply do not stand alone. I believe those results fall into two camps. They either immediately require an additonal surgery to look good (e.g. additional density is needed), or the manner in which the grafts are placed ensure that as hair loss progresses, the patient will require additional surgeries to avoid looking like a freak. The former is clearly not a stand alone procedure, the latter runs the risk of not being one. I think we first need to define "stand alone." When I use that term, I mean that no matter what, the patient will never have to undergo an additional surgery to achieve a natural look. I put the emphasis on the words "never" and "have" for an important reason, because to me, a stand alone procedure would never require anything further to look good. That means irrespective of the man's future balding, he will continue to look good. Yet, we see examples all the time of residual tufts being left in place while surrounding hair is transplanted, the hairline only being touched ever so slightly, crowns being transplanted, and a host of other surgeries that can potentially look bad down the road if the patient loses the surronding hair. Are those truly stand alone procedures? I don't think so. Has anyone ever see a NW 6 with a 1 inch hairline in nature? I sure as hell haven't. Has anyone ever seen a man with hair where the bald spot should be, but bald skin around it? Nope. The patient who has a procedure like that will need to undergo additional surgires if he wishes to look normal. Obviously those examples are speculative because the truth is that for some patients it will be a stand alone procedure, but for others it will not be. It will depend exclusively on the man's future balding. However, because nobody can accurately predict future balding, shouldn't the risk of eventually losing the surronding hair be built into the surgery design? By transplanting permanent hair in a pattern that does not appear in nature, the man can eventually look very strange if he loses the surrounding hair. And then there are those instances when a patient has too few grafts spread over too large of an area and is subsequently left with a see through apperance. How does that even happen? Well, usually we hear that the patient assured the doctor that he would be back in a year or two for an additional pass to add density, but for a myriad of reasons has been unable to do so. Assuming that is in fact true, does that change anything? I would say no. Shouldn't a doctor, regardless of what he is told by his patient, transplant in a pattern that will look good regardless of what happens in the future? We all know that the future is unpredictable, so it appears unnecesarily risky to rely on a future event occuring before the result looks good. I welcome all thoughts on the topic, but let's keep it respectful.

I would be upset if my photos were posted, but let's be honest, Dr. Feller made a mistake and the mistake was fixed. Londonlad is OK with everything, and that is what is most important. Questioning a result, the planning that went into the surgery, and finally the communication between a doctor and patient are all valid and important points. Focusing on a collateral matter, in this case the photos, does nothing more than divert attention from the important points raised. If you hang around these forums long enough you will see that clinics occasionally post a photo without blacking out the face. I'm not saying that it's OK to do that, I'm simply saying that mistakes happen, and I highly doubt there is ever malicious intent behind those mistakes. To help bring the attention back to the topic at hand, I wonder what everyone thinks about a hair transplant that cannot stand alone by itself. If a patient tells a doctor he will return for a subsequent surgery, and the doctor plans as though there will always be a second surgery, and the patient does not return for the second surgery thus leaving an unsatisfactory result, whose fault is that? Obviously the patient has personal responsibility, but we also all know that life happens, and sometimes a second surgery becomes impossible. Should a doctor alwaysperform a surgery that can stand alone, just in case? Or, should the doctor follow the patient's wishes, even if that means performing a first surgery that will not stand alone? It's easy to say "take it on a case by case basis", but I think there should be relatively bright line rule that should only be deviated from in rare circumstances. Personally, I believe that all surgeries should stand alone, regardless of what the patient says about his future intentions, because the future is unpredictable.

Dr. Feller, approximately how much surface area was covered, and was the density uniform throughout the entire area?