ciaus

Surprised to see a new member hand on an account with over 300 replies. You started this account 11 days ago and you're already up to 318 posts. Pace yourself there buddy. While there's never been a shortage of questionable or incompetent doctors, there's also no way for this guy to collect or even reference enough patient results to make that statement. Just sensational speculation to keep his audience engaged and entertained. At best its a gross exaggeration that helps emphasize the importance of doing good research for the best doctor. At worst less optimistic guys will hear it and give up on trying to improve their hairloss at all. And suffer needlessly in silence without ever even trying.

The lesson is to stay vigilant my friends, because I'm out there in the crowd doing inspections! How many guys get that one and thinking-their-done while the sides of their heads keep marching backwards?

The ones where the temple points and closure angles on the sides continue to thin out and recede, while the top persists with the strong definition and density from the HT.

I watch MPMD too and link his videos sometimes as well. I don't know if Kevin has tried microneedling himself, but even if he did that would be just one more personal story. Most of the studies showing positive results are also giving the participants minoxidil. And like he says in the video makes sense when you consider the puncture holes from the needles are helping the minoxidil to penetrate deeper into the skin. And that probably explains most of your positive results as well. The real issue here is maximizing the absorption and utilization of the minoxidil. I think a topical cream like tretinoin or stronger minoxidil formulation are better options to try before cutting up your skin on a regular basis. Not just because the long term consequences haven't been studied, but because each day you do microneedle your making your body more accessible to things you don't want penetrating into your body. Now most days around the house or neighborhood that's going to be relatively harmless bacteria, etc. But increasingly with our ever more connected world we're in direct and indirect contact with more than most of us probably realize. With people regularly traveling to/from exotic or less well off places with questionable sanitation; all the things we buy online shipping from similar places; the problem of ever increasing strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria, etc.

I don't have experience to offer, just want to be sure your hairloss is well under control before adding SMP for just density among longer hairs. Like with a finasteride/minoxidil regimen you're responding well to, or at least some years of no detectable additional loss based on taking regular pictures for careful comparison. If you keep losing hair down the road you could find yourself in a bad situation where the SMP doesn't blend so well when you have a lot less hair.

Definitely get your scalp calmed down. If its just seborrheic dermatitis that can often be managed by medicated shampoos. Sometimes more serious conditions like scarring alopecias can present these same symptoms, and because those actually destroy hair follicles its very important to rule them out if you are particularly concerned about maintaining your hair. Thankfully the scarring apolecias are relatively rare compared to seborrheic dermatitis which is pretty common, don't want to cause you unnecessary worry at this point. But if you don't respond to any of the normal treatments for seborrheic dermatitis and your doctor isn't familiar with scarring alopecias you may want to get a second opinion from a doctor that is. I happen to have seborrheic dermatitis and a scarring alopecia called lichen planopilaris, ended up traveling quite a distance to get to an experienced doctor to get it managed and thankfully its been in remission for years now, hopefully gone for good. Back to the seborrheic dermatitis shampoos, that Nizoral is an over the counter shampoo brand with 1% ketoconazole you can get at any regular store in the USA. Your doctor can prescribe the stronger 2% version if that doesn't do much for you. And there are other shampoos in this category made by companies like Head&Shoulders and Selsun Blue with other effective ingredients you may also respond well to.

Kevin from haircafe just posted this yesterday, worth checking out. He's posted about microneedling before and this is a good 15 minute video summary that touches on that history and towards the end goes into the questionable aspects/risks of long term microneedling. Along with some alternatives to microneedling for optimizing minoxidil results.

I'm half way through reading the subject title, pacing myself.

The frontal area looks like a machine did it, or the doc was using a ruler to keep the lines straight. That's not possible right? I've only heard of of robotic machines being used for the extractions. Looking at that again would be curious to see if anything grows in the front. Could be like a scam operation that implants enough real hair so that something will grow, the rest of the incisions are made by some machine and hairs may not even be implanted in those. To sorta cover their butts somewhat and maybe sucker the guy into coming back and doing a 'repair' procedure.

I agree this is possible but its important to stress its for the smaller/smallest procedures. There's a tipping point where clinics charging by the graft will switch to charging by the case. To cover the basic clinic/staff operating costs and a minimum worthwhile profit margin. And if you divided that by the # grafts, say less than 300, it wouldn't surprise me to see the cost ratio come out to be something in the $20s or even $30s. But I would see this as a pretty rare scenario, like someone already had their larger procedure(s) done and now wants to go back and do their temple points, but can't or doesn't want to go back to the original surgeon for some reason.

I don't normally come into this section, but I saw the interesting topic title from the main page about facial masculinization filler. I'm about 10 yrs older than you and the only work I've had done are the hair transplants. And that will probably be about it. I only go under the knife for missing hair or body parts. LOL This got me thinking about the more masculine changes in Zac Efron's face. He hasn't admitted to getting any work done but I think its pretty obvious. You haven't reached the point where anything is obvious so that's good. And I know that's something you're very aware of and trying to maintain, but when I read this quote I took from one of your posts here: I have to say that's a bit worrying. Like others have indicated, you were a handsome guy before you had this done, and you still are. Admittedly more on the boyish side, but I think we can all agree being on the pretty boy spectrum is one of the better problems in life to have. I just hate to see people that are already attractive slide down the rabbit hole trying to improve, or even just hang on, and end up looking weird. So I hope you don't take offense when I say try to maintain a level perspective on this. You seem to have a very critical eye when it comes to honing in on imperfections. As you get further into your middle years and the aging processes accelerate its going to get alot more tempting to tinker even more. Try to get alot of feedback from other people in person and on the forum before you get the work done too. (Maybe you do that already, sorry don't check this section much.) We tend to be 1000 times harder and more judgmental on ourselves than others are, obsessing on things hardly noticed by the people that look at us every day.

Hi welcome to the forum, most shockloss is temporary and starts growing again within months. Without seeing pre-op or immediate post op pics for comparison no one is going to be able to comment on whether there was any areas that were overharvested. At this point in the process the best thing you can do is to not get over stressed to maximize your body's recovery and healing processes. Enjoy time with your hobbies, friends, fulfilling work. I know that's easier said than done, but it is what it is. And disregard what NikosHair commented above about avoiding shampoos and other products the first few months. You only need to be careful about shampoo and styling products the first few weeks after the procedure.

That's interesting and one of the few cosmetic advantages we can look forward to as we get older. Hopefully verteporfin or some other drug gets perfected enough soon to make the scarring variable no longer a consideration.

The only things anybody can know 100% going into any HT is afterwards you're going to have less hair in your donor area and some degree of scarring. You're always playing the probability odds with everything else. Plan for the worse. Research for the best. And keep your fingers crossed until 12-18 months later.

Just adding, looks like he may have had some smp added to his beard area to smooth out some of the patchiness.

Yea SMP, but without seeing the before picture I would have said there's a chance the guy had his front redone with a dense HT and he's shaving it all off now for some reason. And in that before picture his skin in the top front does look a little extra red, probably just the sun, but like it could be the fading redness from a HT done in recent months. Overall looking at the final picture it looks pretty good to me. No one but people like on this forum that are over-analyzing everything for naturalness would notice.

Seeing this topic started yesterday, wondering if the poster got the idea from a youtube video posted yesterday as well. Its by a HT doctor in NYC named Dr Linkov. He's reacting to a guy that is shaving his head after he lost alot of hair behind the frontal area he had work on. At about 7:40 minutes the doctor says the larger mega sessions do leave more visible scarring than the same amount of grafts done across smaller procedures. The numbers he gives as an example is 4000-5000 grafts vs two sessions of 2000-2500 grafts. He doesn't go into more detail at that point in the video, but earlier at about 3:30 minutes he says for this guy his grafts were harvested too close together which lead to some of the scarring merging during the healing processes. In my unprofessional opinion this makes sense. The key factors being 1) Smaller procedures do create less trauma which is less demanding on your body's healing capacities, improving your chances for optimal healing results. 2) The lower the quality and density of donor hair the scarring severity risk goes up. Because the doctor has to do extractions closer together where the scarring has a higher chance of merging together into larger spots. 3)Your Doctor's skill and ethics. You want him only extracting close enough as necessary and not giving into the temptation to take those best hairs when they're too close together. Unless you've agreed to the increased risk of more severe scarring. Here's a link to the original video if its alright to post. If not just go to youtube and search on Dr Linkov

That looks pretty good in terms of naturalness, like he's getting close to needing to do something. It would be really tricky to try to turn back the clock much further. And he'd be wise to still do finasteride and minoxidil to hang on to what he's got left for as long as possible.

Try not to overthink things, dying your hair with a reputable well known hair dye is not going to worsen male pattern baldness.

Any regular shampoos at your local stores will do fine this many days after the procedure. Daily or every other day washings is good. You're past the graft anchoring timeframe, it would take another surgery with the doctor digging the hairs back out to lose them at this point. Give it another week or two before you do any hair dying or hair cuts. Same goes for any medicated shampoos if you need them for dandruff or some other scalp skin irritation condition.

Did they give any excuse like the doctor was ill? Does the clinic have a website with the staff listed and their medical training and credentials? There's probably going to be some legal/licensing variation depending on what state you had the work done in. Just did some quick searches on medical licensing and practice. I'd reach out to the state medical licensing board that you had the procedure performed in and tell them your story and concerns. Even some general google searches on the name of the doctor and the clinic, address of the clinic, see if you get any results for known instances of medical malpractice or scamming. Good luck and would be beneficial for others looking to get a hair transplant to give the details on the clinic and doctor so they know to avoid them. https://www.acf.hhs.gov/orr/policy-guidance/u-s-medical-licensing-process https://www.findmedicalassistantprograms.org/ma-scope-of-practice-by-state/ https://www.chartercollege.edu/news-hub/rules-you-need-know-what-medical-assistant-cancant-do What a Medical Assistant Can’t Do Although your list of responsibilities is long, there are still some duties that you won’t be allowed to carry out. These duties are not within your scope of practice and will need to be performed by medical professionals who have the proper training: Treat or diagnose patients Evaluate patients or their plan of care Interpret test results Advise patients about their medical conditions Administer IV medications or anesthesia Prescribe medication Perform physical therapy Perform invasive techniques such as colonoscopies or spinal taps Operate laser equipment

Its pretty common for guys to get hairs implanted into old hair transplant scars, or even accidental scars caused by injury or burning. Just think about how much more damage is being done during the hair transplant procedure itself when the doctor is making the incision cuts into your head to implant the transplanted hairs. That's far worse than microneedle pricks.

Offering a non-professional reply here, its because when our hairs are buzzed down to almost nothing they all appear to be some lighter or darker shade of gray. The blonde or red or even brown coloring we easily see in longer hairs gradually emerges as the hair shafts grow in length. That's why most people getting SMP maintain a buzz cut style. The relative lack of coloring in those extremely short hairs blends in the best with the SMP ink. For longer hair I've never seen someone with blonde or red hair use SMP for density. I would suppose its possible, but it would be even more risky because the SMP artist would have to use some reddish/blondish/etc shades of ink to match the coloring in the longer hair shafts. That would really look un-natural on another level if your loss ended up progressing more than your donor hair could acceptably cover down the road. And there's no guarantee all the ink could be removed even with multiple sessions. If that ended up being the case you'd always have to worry about keeping your head covered even more. Or learn to accept people seeing you like that when you're not wearing a hat or hair piece. Maybe if you were one of those people that like to get alot of tattoos all over your body, more non-traditional in terms of clothes, styling, etc, in general, that scenario would be something you could better roll with by getting traditional tattoos over the SMP area. But if you are just a regular JoeBob working 9-5pm in some cubicle, probably not going to be a path you're willing to take. With darker brown or black hair, if you have your loss under control with medications and/or transplanted hair, with a decent amount of donor hair in the bank so to speak, it can be done. One of our members below has a topic on how he's doing it.

There's some evidence it could help jumpstart results, since minoxidil effects and extends the growth cycles of all your hairs. But not enough to confirm. This oold study from 1987 with 12 participants that just had transplants had 2 that didn't shed the transplanted hairs at all and 2 others that started regrowing the hairs at 4 weeks instead of the usual 3-4 months. You've got to consider they started the minoxidil just 2-3 days after the transplants. That's still a pretty vulnerable time for the grafts, especially if we're talking about using topical minoxidil. I wouldn't have the guts to be touching that area so soon and applying something that dries out the skin and could potentially create enough irritation to slow healing. Taking oral minoxidil would get around that though. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3558912/

Hi @540Oak I appreciate what you're saying about getting honest feedback, its something we all want after moving our hair around with a transplant or covering the scalp with SMP ink. Hope you don't mind me trying to give you some of that here. I'm looking at your avatar picture and I'm assuming that's a self portrait of you? If that assumption is correct, I find your hair style and length a bit bold for someone that prefers no one noticing that you've had work done or a hair system. It strikes me as someone who is obviously addressing their hair loss and is not concerned with others knowing about it. Seems a shorter length and more conservative styling would probably conceal the work better. But that's just one fellow hairloss suffer's personal opinion. And I think this is also an interesting illustration of how differently we can see ourselves compared with how others see us.