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What about shaving/buzzing your hair down? Have you tried that before and seen how it looks? I agree with others, as young as you are and the amount of loss already its very risky to keep doing procedures without trying finasteride.

As long as you've been gentle, the grafts under the skin should be fine. But what kind of shampoo are you using? I've never head of applying a shampoo and not rinsing it off for 30 minutes. That would need to be an extremely mild shampoo to not cause skin surface irritation, if its the kind that still needs to be rinsed off. And did the doctor give you the shampoo or tell you one to buy?

Great topic, and all the luck keeping it on topic! I'd have to say Biden, he knew when to stop -after the first bad transplant back in the 80s/90s. With Trump, the question is what HASN"T he done. -Definitely custom batches of orange dermatch/toppik -he has admitted to finasteride i believe, which along with the concealers probably helps him conceal the Biden era transplants

Hello Dr. Khokhar, I really appreciate your contributions here, great to have a medical professional weigh in on topics. I'm thinking about starting up 1.25mg/day dosage, already saw my doctor and have a script for 2.5mg pills, cut in half per day. There's a doctor clinic up in Canada that has some blog topics on oral minoxidil in the links below, and the dosage ranges for results start lower, even below that 1.25mg. It sounds like from your last reply that you start prescriptions at 2.5mg. Is that based on your patient results not responding to lower doses? or fellow doctor results/literature etc? This is on my radar because I have a scarring alopecia (LPP) that has thankfully been in remission and was pretty mild even when it was active -and some scalp sebhorrheic dermatitis. So I stay away from topical medicines since I can't predict skin irritation flareups. The idea of stopping the minoxidil to deal with sheds while I get things back under control is a non-starter for me. https://donovanmedical.com/hair-blog/oral-minoxidil-topical-allergy https://donovanmedical.com/hair-blog/topical-to-oral-minoxidil https://donovanmedical.com/hair-blog

Sorry for your thread getting hijacked into the side topic on medications. You've heard both sides here and from your doctor, and you have a position. You originally asked about crown transplants results and how they blend with the frontal half, hair styling. (i had to go back and read that) lol

What isn't a click away from being purchased? And you can lie to your doctor about your health situations/history and get a script for stuff alot more dangerous than finasteride. The starting point here is that we are law abiding adults trying to honestly address hair loss, and you can't legally 'jump' without a doctor. I've seen your posts on this topic and they are more anxiety-inspiring than they need to be -that's my opinion and you're not going to change my mind on it. Continue to state your position and I'll continue with mine. From here let's leave the man's thread alone as far as the topic of meds go, he's already stated his position.

Wow that's impressive, your post op pics show a good match between your scalp and facial hair. Nice part is while you wait you can easily just keep shaving them off. Are you otherwise rocking a full head of hair? Did the doc say anything about watching for hairloss on your head more carefully now, in case you need to start fin/min to conserve your remaining donor hair? 2,500 is a pretty big chunk of what you have available.

Been using it for about 14 yrs, stopped and stabilized my crown. Small minority of guys have side effects, millions of others like myself have been taking it over the decades without issues. If you are waiting for something safer than that, it will probably arrive about 10 years after the actual cure for baldness. lol On the internet you pretty much only hear the horror stories, some real, some imagined, some bs. You can't start it without seeing a doctor, then monitor with your doctor, and stop if you get the sides.

I didn't, but I guess it would depend on some factors like how big of a strip they cut out, how much scalp laxity you have, how tight your connected facial skin currently is. Be careful about mentioning that to the doctor, he might try to charge you for the mini lift too

Alot of things are possible, and only time will reveal how much you actually have in the bank, I really hope it works out for you. This is surprising coming from someone trying to play it safe, I completely disagree. Stick with your doctors and get second opinions.

You're just as random a forum member as me, and I have the overwhelming evidence on my side that most guys, myself included for many years, don't have any issues taking the drug. Neither do you. We aren't talking about going out to grab some Rogaine off the grocery store shelf. The fact is you can't get finasteride without a doctor's prescription, which involves seeing a doctor, who is more qualified to give medical advice than either of us, and can make specialist referrals to urologists/endocrinologists as needed. You can't eliminate all the risk in life, and most people do alot more damage and put their bodies at more risk everyday by how they eat, don't excercise, etc., than the risk from possible drug side effects. ---- To the OP, you are betting on the fact that you have enough donor hair to cover all the loss you'll ever have. That's a pretty bold assumption, especially if you aren't going to take the meds. Each hair follicle has a genetically coded level of vulnerability to DHT, some hairs succumb fast, others not for decades, and you hope you have as much donor hair that's immune to it as possible. If you are going to get into the arena, you fight to win -finasteride is an important weapon in the battle, essential for alot of guys if they are going to win. if your doc gives you the ok to take the finasteride and you end up with side effects, you stop the finasteride, and at least you know you tried.

The internet is a wonderful place for horror stories, both real and imagined. The vast majority of guys that take finasteride don't have sexual side effects, and of the minority that do some of those are so stressed out and obsessed about possibly getting the sexual side effects that they psych themselves into actually having sexual performance issues. I don't know how old you are and how much loss you have, or will have, but if you are going to chase the goal of filling in your crown without meds I would advise you wait until you stop losing back there for good number of years. There's plenty of stuff out there on why the crown is the most difficult area, here's a little page summary from The International Alliance of Hair restoration Surgeons https://www.iahrs.org/index.php/hair-transplant-basics/crown-hair-transplants

Haven't had to deal with the crown thanks to finasteride -if you haven't tried it you should for about a year and then re-evaluate -and do minoxidil too. The crown and middle top areas respond the best to the medications and are the most difficult to fix with hair transplants. Usually docs want to wait until your loss has been stabilized with the meds, or the dust has settled and there's nothing left for you to lose back there. But if you are pretty advanced in years and your loss hasn't progressed for years, you might be ready. Toppik and Dermmatch are concealers you apply daily and are great for adding thickness to your hairs and covering your exposed scalp areas to match your hair color. You can get them on amazon and other places. Here's a link to a recent forum topic on dermmatch

Sorry can help on that, not a professional in this area, just a man armed with a little google-fu posting what I found. There are some doctors and clinic reps, senior members that post around here that should be able to give you some ball parks if you provide pics. Just did another search and found this from one of the clinics with an excellent reputation here: At the time of this writing this subject is very controversial but most physicians believe that one can get more grafts with Exclusive use of Strip FUT (6000-9000 grafts) than Exclusive use of FUE (4000-5000 grafts). In my opinion the potential for getting the most grafts out of a patient exist when using both techniques together. http://shapiromedical.com/procedure-page/follicular-unit-extraction-fue/disadvantages-of-fue/

Judging by your pics it looks like you are dealing with more than adjusting your natural hairline, your temple points, like on the right side below looks like there has been some significant thinning and receding. And along your top front further in from your widow's creep there's some thinning as well. Like you said you are very young, but this looks like the beginning not the end or a last procedure - you should see a dermatologist or reputable hair transplant doctor -preferrably not the one you saw when you were 18, research doctors here. Have them do a scalp analysis to gauge how much hair miniaturization you've already had and discuss getting you on finasteride to help protect your existing hairs. The back of your hair from the pics, the donor and crown areas still look good, but you want to conserve and protect as much of that as possible for down the road.

6,000 to 8,000 follicular unit grafts

You If you would have come up with ONE more....you could have made it THE 10 HAIR TRANSPLANT COMMANDMENTS! Which would make you a Moses of sorts.

Looks like they are seeing more male patients being admitted for covid and they also happen to balding. Which makes sense, given that hair loss advances as people age and we know covid more severely impacts the elderly and people with underlying health conditions -the kind of underlying conditions like diabetes and heart disease that usually take decades of bad lifestyle choices.

Ok thanks for the advice about the oral minox, sorry can't be of help with dosage changes and sheds, good luck!

Man the ravages of time, it stops for nobody. Grew up watching Alyssa Milano on Who's the Boss

Whoa, had to stop when I read that and check out Kirkland's Minoxidil label -this image here is from Costco's website, they own the Kirkland brand, read that warning I've highlighted below. Is this what you are drinking? This topical formulation is different from the oral pill. If so I would recommend you stop and check with a doctor, let them know how long you've been taking it, symptoms you've had, and see what they think about any kind of possible permanent damage you may have sustained.

I would say you are on the very front end of some crown thinning MAYBE -you say your family has some pretty good hair, esp if their crown swirls look similar. The catch is you don't want to start addressing the earliest hints of possible loss with meds because it will make it more difficult to evaluate if they are actually doing you any good -and that's assuming you will be a responder to the meds too, they do work on alot of people but not everybody, but that's getting ahead of things. I would start keeping a record of pics, same angle/lighting/combing about every 6 or 12 months, in an album so you have an objective record for you and any doctor down the road should it come to that. And bookmark this site, get back to enjoying life and try not to obsess! ;)

Sorry just noticed your post here, I put your pics into a side by side comparison, on second look this way #1 and #2 you do have your head at the same tilt, so I guess that was the flash. Surprising how much more scalp is visible in the first pic though -in pic #1 your hair looks like its combed down/laying down more, in #2 like maybe you ran a comb through your crown with an upward motion -or maybe just front to back so its standing up more? And your last pic there has more of a forward tilt from your neck so that will make your scalp more difficult to see anyway, but it looks good from that angle. If I didn't see pic#1 I would say you are definitely fine -if you can take some more pics (without the flash) and with your hair combed more down and head in that position, and the crown still looks like #2 and #3, again definitely fine. Hope that helps.

For FUT he's going to start by buzzing down the immediate surrounding section where he cuts the strip from anyway, you don't need to worry about keeping it long to help him with making a decision on where to cut in your donor. You need to worry about keeping it long enough so that the hair right above that cut is long enough to hang down and cover over so that people aren't staring at the back of your head wondering if you had recent near life accident, etc. The guy from this image I found has it a bit shorter than I would.

damn that's impressive. I didn't mess around when I first noticed a little receding in the front and crown and got on fin, never stopped so no dramatic pics of my own. Started with minoxidil too but stopped shortly after due to skin sensitivity issues. Looking at my family history its keeping me ahead of the curve and I've learned about low dose oral minoxidil recently thinking I'm going to give that a try since it won't cause the itchy red skin.