asterix0

@washingtondc What did Dr. Wesley tell you that you needed in terms of grafts per cm^2 in order to achieve good visual density with your hair caliber?

An update would be appreciated here 🙂

In my opinion this is not true, finasteride definitely helps transplanted hair.

Understood, look I also don't mean to be cynical. I want you to have a successful procedure and I hope everything turns out well. Nothing is guaranteed for anyone. Generally speaking though, the higher Norwood you are, the greater your DHT sensitivity is, even for supposed "safe" hairs. There's no need for added pessimism in your thread so I'll graciously bow out as I don't want to contribute any negativity, that was certainly not my intention 🙂. What's done is done now.

Not a candidate in the sense that, it is unclear if you have a truly stable donor region. You may be one of the people who's transplanted hair thins. But yes I agree, having some hair on top is better than no hair, so it was certainly worth a try.

Don't share the name if you don't feel comfortable. The point is that it doesn't really matter where it is, because it falls under the umbrella of places to never go, namely, most of the clinics in turkey except for the few recommended on here. If it is one of the recommended clinics here then yes it would be very valuable to know which one, to save future patients potentially.

Yes, it is criminal what was done to you, unfortunately it happens all too often because people get fooled by false advertising/marketing.

@general-etwan The reason for that discrepancy in color in your donor area is because you are headed to norwood 7, and that lighter area will eventually be bald. This is why the grafts were not extracted from that region, because it is not a stable donor area suitable for hair transplantation. SMP may be an option there but ultimately it is best to do nothing now and wait for your hair transplant to grow out for the full year. In my opinion considering your donor area and status I am not sure you were quite a candidate, at best I would recommend that you get a suitable hairline to frame your face from the hair transplant and combine it with smp eventually to go for the buzzed but 3D look that the transplant would allow you to have. For Norwood 7 patients with weak donor it is very, very difficult to achieve a good result, it is not your fault, it is just a physical limitation of transplantation at this time.

@PreviouslyAFool You weren't over-harvested in the sense of too many grafts were taken, but what they did was they caused significant trauma with their method of extraction to your donor. Thus, your donor "appears" over harvested, in fact it is the same end result of a donor that was probably of 4000 grafts from such a concentrated area from a competent surgeon. Of course, a competent surgeon would never extract in such a narrow pattern for such a large number of grafts, but I am only using that as an example of what the equivalent over harvested case would look like. In your case, whoever was doing the surgery did not know how to use the tools properly, assuming they were about a 0.8mm punch size, in which case there is no way the scars should be that big if done correctly. They have caused shock loss to the other parts of your donor that unfortunately will not grow back because of the trauma to the extraction site. You absolutely have less available grafts now unfortunately. However, you have picked an excellent list of doctors to repair you, I wish you success in choosing one of them and hopefully fixing your situation.

Hmm, you had a lot of miniaturized hairs which were probably lost due to shock loss, which may explain why the visual density appears less.

I think 8-9 months is pretty close to the end result and only in extremely rare exceptions will you see significant improvement after that. You are right that he is well recommended in the north east, but in general hair transplantation in North America is behind compared to the best European doctors, and I would say be a fairly large margin. I say this as a person in the US who traveled to Europe to an elite FUE surgeon. In my opinion I would recommend you look at the best FUE surgeons in Europe for your next procedure. Look at Spain/Portugal/Netherlands/Belgium.

I would advise you not to go back to the same doctor after this procedure, it does not look like the procedure was successful. Yield looks definitely lower than 80%, probably around 50-60% even I would say.

In my opinion there is no need to tell them. We tend to notice our hair loss much more than other people notice it, unless you had some drastic transformation like Norwood 6 back to Norwood 1 I bet that no one will think any different at all. Remember, for many people the difference between a single Norwood level can be no different than a bad haircut. Certainly before I started balding this is how I thought of it, I remember thinking hmm it's weird that some people have bigger foreheads than others when I looked at a Norwood 3 guy vs a Norwood 1 guy.

Gotcha, sounds tough haha that's why I avoided finance and went into engineering. My point is just be prepared to be surprised how tough the post-op recovery period can be. Really it is just that first week, by days 8 and 9 you are close to feeling back to normal. For a large surgery, which you will have, you can expect the following in the first 5 days: 1) swelling in the face, potentially severe. Your eye may even swell shut, making it almost impossible to see. I'm not even kidding it. 2) Headaches, muscle weakness, low fever, sweats. 3) Nausea, you may have diarrhea due to the antibiotics you will take the first few days. Traveling in these conditions would be very tough, perhaps in business class it would be endurable but I just want you to have the most successful experience possible, which is why I recommended to just wait out the toughest initial period and then travel afterward.

Well, how is possible you have so little PTO? Unless you are a top level executive, in which case, do not skimp and go to Dr. Konior in Chicago if you're in the US because you should be able to afford it easily.

Hey, I strongly, strongly recommend you wait a little bit for your return flight, preferably 10 days so you can be sure your grafts are secure. Here are the reasons why: 1) As a norwood 6 you can potentially anticipate massive swelling. Meaning, black eyes swollen shut, huge forehead, swollen mouth. This is normal in some patients (it happened to me and I was also a high norwood with 4000+ graft procedure). I would be in no condition to travel during this time, as I was also experiencing a light fever, body aches, and generally feeling very tired. It was essential that I took the full 10 days to recover from my transplant, and I want to an elite surgeon as well. 2) It is easier to bump your head than you think, particularly in crowded quarters like an airplane. In the early stages it is absolutely essential you do not bump your head, as you will lose grafts it this happens. 3) Out of principle, there is no need to rush this. If you have already planned this huge trip, are ready to spend a large amount of money to get this right, play it safe and stay in a hotel for another week to make sure things go as smoothly as possible.

Dang hope you can recover it, you never really know how it will respond but usually if you responded well once, it can be regained.

@Falconary Hey man how's your hair been holding up after quitting fin and min?

Great result congratulations, would expect nothing less from Dr. Konior 🙂

Dang I am sorry to hear that man, do you have a thread posting your experience?

Yes, that is expected. He gets hundreds of e-mails per day, unfortunately it is not that chooses to ignore patients, it is just simply overwhelming.

The look can certainly work for many guys, it all depends. As a general rule of thumb shaving your head is always a good first option, you never really know how it'll go until you do it.

Indeed, a little research will show that Konior is choice number 1 here, and it's rather obvious as well.

Yup exactly. The only cure I could see would be a somehow very efficient localized topical finasteride. Of course you would have to keep on using it. In addition to that continuing improvements in transplants (FUE).

Dr. Konior and Dr. Zarev have the cleanest post op appearances out of any surgeons I have seen. Not out of coincidence they both do all parts of the procedure themselves. You're in good hands man enjoy the process 🙂