JohnBob

I would easily prefer be a NW6 diffuse thinner with a NW1 hairline like you were than to be a slick bald NW6 obviously. Meds seems to work much better in diffuse thinners in comparison to totally bald scalps. (btw have you tried meds Melvin?) Also, you would still good ok from the front because you still have a hairline and most people will never look at your scalp from the above angle, so most of your hair loss would be unnoticed. And if the person decides to go for an HT, the hair left on top, if at least main tended, will help to make the end result look more dense. I think the only bad scenario for a diffuse thinners are if they are thinning all over the scalp - even in the "safe zone" areas. In those cases you are not eligible for a HT and if the meds don't work you are royally screwed.

• Dr. Lorzenzo (example: 10,377 Grafts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXSg1yeiulg) • Dr. Zarev (example: 12,890 Grafts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QylaivmGvbg) Any other doctors?

double post

Other than Zarev and Lorenzo, who are the other doctors performing 9K+ scalp graft FUE restorations? I would love to know.

Me too, easily!

The scar looks very minimal even when the hair is cut short. Impressive. Thanks for documenting the back of your head as well! Makes me a little less scared of FUT.

So I came across this thread on another forum (thanks to @SLA) showing a guy having 16,500 grafts implanted with 4 sessions over the span of 2.5 years. 12k grafts were BHT! And the end result is amazing! The guy must had crazy quality chest hair, all the implanted follicles in his head looks like normal scalp hair. But also what a great job the people at Eugenix have done. They have lots of well documented cases where BHT hairs were used, they must be the kings in that type of procedure. Bravo guys!

And also important: while most (if not all) FUE doctors won't extract more of 6k grafts TOPS from the scalp of a patient, Dr. Zarev can go double that and still show a good looking donor area post op. How is that possible? I have a guess, but I would love to read the opinion of the other forum members first.

I researched all the cases @Melvin-Moderator posted and all were FUT and bellow 9K grafts (couldn't get very accutare info on Antonio Conte but he had at lease one FUT). @SLA thanks a lot for posting that 16,500 grafts case from Eugenix. That is insane, those guys are beasts and that case deserves its own thread. In total, only 2,500 grafts from scalp were used. Even though Eugenix have done a lot of big restorations, after glancing at all the videos from their YT channel I didn't see any case where more than 6,000 grafts or so were taken from the scalp. What I mentioned above goes to show how unusual is what Dr. Zarev is achieving, because: 1 - 12k graft restorations are very very rare 2 - 12k graft purely from scalp donor like he is doing is even more rare 3 - 12k graft from scalp donor AND performed 100% via FUE (a method they say is not well suited for large restorations) is EVEN more rare. Maybe it's just Zarev going that far with FUE? If you guys know any other doctor doing that please let me know (maybe Lorenzo?) 4 - On top of doing 12k restorations with only scalp hair and 100% FUE, he also shows the post op donor area of his patients looking surprisingly good. This leads me to believe he must have one of the lowest transections rate in the business. It's one thing to mask a bad transection rate with 4k FUE extractions well spread all over the safe zone of a patient. It's a totally different story to mask it on 12k extractions, no matter how good your donor originally was. So if Zarev is doing such large FUE restorations and showing very detailed post of photographs of good looking donors, I will assume he is very masterful in extracting those grafts, and only a very few of them are being lost due transection. And since the end result on the recipient area is also excellent on the cases he showed, I will assume his growth yield is also good. Will Zarev be able to perform a 12k restoration on my if my donor is not good? No. But even if my donor only allows half of that amount to be used, I still will want a surgeon with low transection rates and high growth yield. And because of I mentioned earlier it seems like Zarev has both.

To add on top of that, the other cases posted were all FUTs, while FUE (the method Zarev uses) is supposedly harder to do right on large restorations like he is doing. And good point on his documentation. His pre and post op pictures are the most detailed and consistent I have ever seen. Lot's of pictures from different areas and angles but with almost exact lighting before/after. Very easy to compare and inspect. His videos are also very good. No sound, animations or basically any marketing stuff. Just the head documentation.

Exactly. I don't want to hype anyone. I'm doing my research, trying decide which doctors I'm going to have a consultation and eventually have a procedure done. And as I'm discovering new things I share with other people here.

That Bisanga post was one of the first I read here, very informative and opened my mind on how I should view the whole game plan for my future hair transplants. That quantitative approach is now something I look for with every doctor I consider making a consultation.

To be clear why I'm interested in doctors producing outlier results -- as I said that is an ability that I think it is correlated with top skill. (of course consistency is another aspect I'm looking at, but it goes beyong the point here). A doctor that has the ability to maximize the results of a patient with a great donor area will have a higher chance of maximizing the results of a patient with a average donor too (while not destroying it) compared to a ordinary doctor, IMO. For example, I believe a doctor can only can perform 10k+ FUE restorations if his transaction rate is very low, no matter how good your donor area is. If your donor area is average or bellow average, you will still be benefited from a low transaction rate, so it makes sense to consider that doctor for a restoration.

Wow, do you have a link for that? Was it all FUE and scalp hairs? I believe there is a positive correlation between the ability to produce outlier results (given the right patient) and skill. It's no surprising Eugenix is very well regarded.

"The number of grafts is dependent on the patient, not the surgeon." Isn't both necessary? If you have great donor but the doctor doesn't have the skills, you won't be able to use a lot of grafts without looking depleted. I've seen guys with good donors looking depleted with as little as 4K grafts extracted via FUE. I might be wrong but I've never seen Eugenix go beyond 7K FUE with scalp hairs alone.

Edit: you already asked it in the previous comment.

@Melvin-ModeratorThose are great results, but I assume FUT was used to achieve that? I'm not an expert in HT history, but I believe Zarev is the first doctor to perform 12000+ grafts restorations with FUE alone (and without destroying the donor)? I know his results are total outliers but I'm not using them to gauge my expectations (well, at least not 100%). What is interesting is that he is achieving a level of results that were thought to be not possible with FUE alone until the recent past?

I agree with everything you said, even the hype job part. That's why I'm researching about this doctor, trying to dig up more info and understand his methods. Because you can't dispute that his best cases stand out even when compared to the best cases of the other doctors (outliers vs outliers). There are patients with more than 12000 grafts extracted and the donor looks barely untouched, it's ridiculous.

Guys, thanks to the WayBackMachine I found out that Dr. Zarev used to have a picture of the device behind his "AVA" FUE method in his website (text was originally in Bulgarian - I used google translate to convert it to english): The device is called Punch Matic and it is manufactured by a french company named Medicamat. Here is an Youtube video showing the device being used Basically, the use of suction allows the surgeon so use a smaller punch and to not go as deep in the skin. This results in less transections compared to regular FUE because you don't need get the angle perfectly right, and less scarring because the punch don't go as deep: During the video you can see the extractions happening very up close - you can actually see the grafts being sucked into the device. It's definitely worth to watch it. I know that there are people that believes that the suction damages the FU but let me ask if that was the case would Dr. Zarev be able to show such successful cases of huge restorations performed?

@Melvin-Moderator your hair looked perfect and ultra dense during that session. Were you using any concealer or appearance improving products?

You're right. Just sent you a PM.

Makes sense. May I ask what kind of test are you taking what were your levels before starting TRT? Also what is your the daily dosage of finasteride?

Woa look at those kind of results in only 5 months! People say don't get anxious wait until 10-12 months to expect results but let's be frank in most cases by month 5 or 6 you can already tell with a good confidence if the procedure is going to be a home run or not. I've never seen someone with low growth at month 5 or 6 that ended up with spectacular results later on. Maybe it could happen but I assume those are the rarest cases.

Look at his post history, he stoped posting after that only to post one more time this year (6 years later). He basically said his results were meh and didn't want to post any more pictures so I guess things didn't improve much after those 4 months post op pics. Do you think it's normal for the skin to be that red in the recipient area 4 months after the procedure? I don't think so, not at all. I'm not an expert but that indicates some inflammation/auto immune response from his body, which ended up rejecting the grafts implanted in the crown area.

Also, very interesting that you are doing TRT and your test levels are at 1000! That's some aggressive teenager test levels man, I like it. How long have you been doing TRT? Do you think your transplanted hair is dealing all right with such high levels? May I ask with kind of test and how much you are taking weekly? Did you have to increase the normal dosage of 1mg of fina per day because of that? Sorry for this amount of questions, it's because I'm thinking of having a HT in the future too AND also think about TRT but I would be afraid that extra test would be too much even for the transplanted hairs.