JohnBob

Browsing another thread I saw amazing, perfect results with SMP, like these ones: I assume this can't be the whole story. Could someone please enlighten me of what are the possible downsides of going the SMP route? I imagine at least the color will fade and maintenance sessions will be necessary often? The transformation is amazing.

Sorry to learn about your situation azza. It's so good the other forum members are giving you support and alternative courses of action. Wish you all the luck finding a solution that will allow you to move on with your live. By the way, I always though nature gave bad cards regarding hair but after reading this thread I'm feeling pretty much like a normal dude and thankful of what I have. Everything is relative I guess.

Not a NW 7 but an almost slick NW 6 I believe, procedure by Dr. Zarev

This case looked pretty complex too, maybe not a true NW 7 but very challenging

Where? In the donor or recipient area?

Man your results are awesome, they are responsible for me considering a HT for the first time since ages! Very inspiring. And Zarev only achieved more "complete" results in those patients because he implanted way more grafts. I'm sure if you do another session in the future it will look at least as good too (not that you need it). And I think you put way too much scrutiny to your head, with many different lighting, angles and all, lol In most circumstances your hair looks flawless.

Very good, transformative results. But allow me to be a prick and say that it's impossible to judge if he achieved "completedness" with the different lighting used in the before/after comparison. The after pics have very dark lightning. I would guess that if his scalp were to be exposed to the same scrutiny that @Zoomster put himself we would see a lot of low density areas: BUT I must admit that for the amount of grafts used the result achieved is amazing and yes I would put it in the category of magical 🙂 The patient looks very good from the front even with strong lightning!

True he had a transformation to droll for, but he can still benefit from a touch up session at the border of the area that received the transplants: Zarev's supposedly achieved more complete results (albeit with more sessions and 70% more grafts implanted)

What was the reason for adding Acell into the the mix?

Also, magical transformation indeed but notice the guy still had a lot of hair all over this scalp. I'm yet to see those picture perfect transformation on a slick bald dude. The only doctor that currently seems to be able to pull that is Zarev according to his selected cases in his website and presentations.

Incredible results, doctor. How long between the two sessions?

Cool, what are your other two best results? 🙂

That's so frustrating. What if the patient is 5 and beyond on the NW Scale, slick bald? 2000 grafts won't do much. I understand they want to play it safe to keep the consistency of their results, but they should improve their skills so they can do at least twice than that with the same quality.

Man you got a lot of coverage and density for just 1,800 grafts

One big caveat with Couto is that all the patient reviews and cases on his YT are on men low on the NW Scale requiring low grafts - in other words, simple cases. Never saw him working on a slick bald dude or on a complex case. So he is very good in a very specific niche but outside of it he is unproven. And that's where Konior edges him out and should be ranked higher IMO.

Man I would have totally freaked out

Yea, very strange. What would have caused that? But note that on the 12th day his implanted hairs were looking pretty good already: https://foro.recuperarelpelo.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=78822&start=30

There is a very similar case at the spanish forum recuperarelpelo. Similar pattern of hair loss, numbers of grafts used, similar area (minus temples) and also ended up with less density than desired. The doctor who performed the surgery is Bruno Pinto. Link: https://foro.recuperarelpelo.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=78822&start=600

some parts of your donor area looked pretty much destroyed right after the procedure, but then looks like they recovered? How is that possible

I think a good rule of thumb is to judge a surgeon both by their best results AND worst ones. I was very excited about a clinic because they have on their social media a lot of spectacular work done but then i saw here a user showing a subpar result and this made me think about cutting that clinic from my prospective list. Even if they offer corrective surgery for free, it's not just about money, we're talking about donor area, a very scarce and important resource that is impossible to take back. On the other hand, there are doctors like Konior that have a lot of patient reviews here and not a single one turned out bad (as far as I know), and this speaks a lot about the consistency of the doctor IMO.

Obviously fueshare doesn't want to post the pics and we should respect that. It's not easy to expose your case when you don't like the result and people are expecting so much.

What do you think happened? Maybe they didn't implant enough hairs, or some of the hair implanted ended up not growing?

Good results for what he decided to do, but I think he aimed too conservatively. I would have asked for a lower hairline and improvement on the temple areas as well.

I've been researching the topic of HT for about 20 years (since I was a teen and started to notice my temples getting wider and forehead bigger overall), and back then HTs would look very unnatural so I thought it would be better to assume the "I'm balding look" with pride instead of walking around with something weird in my head that would scream this dude had a HT. The balding look is bad but it has one pro side that it at least looks natural. Then later on I started to notice there was some multiplication/cloning research going on promising a product on the market in only 3-5 years so thought I could wait some years for that and get a full blown restoration. Fast forward to 2020 and all HM/HC attempts miserably failed, and at the same time I learnt that HTs, specially FUE, has evolved a lot in the last years, being able to produce results that I thought would be impossible to ever be achieved via HT. This made me interested in HTs again and after researching about the topic on the Internet for some months I'm now considering having one. So why haven't I decided to jump the gun yet? Well the reason is that while there are clinics boasting excellent results in forums and in social media, I know that these results are the absolute top ones from them, and that the average ones must be considerably worse. Not only that but I'm noticing here on the forum that even when going to clinics with a good track record, there are out of luck people that actually get kinda of bad results. Nothing terrible, but nothing average good either. And I'm afraid I could end up being one of those unlucky people that ends up getting subpar/bellow average results. And this will only makes matters worse for me by making my scalp looking less natural and making me deplete my donor area, while still looking bald. So this is my main reason for not jumping the gun yet. Would love to hear the reasons for the other forum members in the same situation.

Thanks for the answer man and congrats for your amazing results. I read the journal of another forum user that went to the same clinic and he said that his beard transplanted hairs once achieved a certain size would start to get curly and a little different from his scalp hair, but that it would happen just to a few of his beard hairs. So I guess everything was fine.