HairRun

I have a very robust beard, and I would like to see if they can be used for donor restocking and perhaps scalp as well. 

Right now I have some FUT scars that I think would be a great area to see if beard grafts can grow in it. 

From reviews, it seems that Eugenix and Dr Mwamba have the most reviews with using beard grafts, but I would like to expand my options. 

After that, it seems maybe dr Bisanga has a lot of experience with beard grafts.

I am in the US, so it would be great if I can go to a US doctor. I saw Dr Josephitis has a video on beard graft, he said he has 80% yield, which seems to be what other top doctors experience with beard grafts have. 

Is there anyone else who should be in my Radar? 

Fit farming is when you have a FUE procedure and during the same procedure, you use beard grafts in the FUE punchouts. 

Donor restocking is when you create an incision into the FUE scar and plant a beard graft. 

Which has better survival? 

Grafts may not grow as well in scar tissue. But with fit farming, there is a void of material, vs a incision with donor restocking, where you can press the skin back together to hold the graft in place. 

Which may result in better survival? 

1 minute ago, RTC said:

To the best of my recollection, temples and the front were implanted (and the hairs extracted) at the same time.

Did you get you surgical report? I got mines, and it said that I had a high number of weak grafts and telogen phase grafts. Mine mostly seemed to turn out ok, except so for a few dozen grafts that seem to be frozen as stubble. 

On 5/6/2023 at 6:49 PM, SXP92 said:

Appreciate the update. I'm curious to know why the implants grew well in the donor area and temples, but not in the front corners. After all, it was the same surgeon, same operation, and (presumably) same technique..

Def let us know what Dr. Mwamba has to say. Do you think you will attempt another procedure to address that area? 

Maybe that area was done last, and the grafts were out the longest? 

I haven't done a consult with him yet, it great to hear he is looking for a new clinic space. I wonder what happened to this old clinics in New Jersey and Atlanta? 

I was hoping to see him for beard graft stuff, but he doesn't have prices in the US anymore, I would have to see him in Brussels. I noticed Dr Bisanga is also there, who is the other top beard transplant guy. 

I've noticed neck beard grafts are in a very vascular area at the neck, and then maybe less at the chin and jaw. 

I wonder if there's some sort of correlation of how well they would do on the mid vs vertex/crown. Another area I see them being used is in the FUT scars and FUE scars. Maybe it would be aesthetically optimal to use them in the FUT/FUE scar, but since it's scar tissue, and beard grafts already have a 80% survival rate (vs 90-95 with scalp hair), maybe it's best to use them in mid scalp since that's the most vascular (assuming the frontal region is out of the question). 

Though I have seen them being used in the crown and FUT scars. Perhaps the survivability is not dependent on the vascular-ness of the area? 

On 4/14/2023 at 5:39 PM, Navthedon said:

I made the mistake of going to him. Was not happy for the hairline he created (far too conservative and high) - eventually I got so frustrated I ended up going Turkey to have it done right. The fact he charges per hair rather than per graft should've sent alarm bells but I didn't know any better back then. Never again. 

On 4/23/2023 at 1:12 AM, Nelly said:

Looks great excellent choice of surgeon. He is super conservative. Not always highest levels of density in his work but seems to get great graft uptake from what we’ve seen on here, and ultimately creates great outcomes. 
 

I had a consultation with him in 2019 at the Private Clinic. 
 

at the time it wasn’t right for me but no doubt he is an excellent doctor. 

This is interesting to read because when I did hairline design with him, I think it was too juvenile for my preference. He seems to follow the 1 finger above the frontalis muscle rule, but I felt that for my head and face shape, I thought that it would be too juvenile.

I think if you're going below the 1 finger above the frontalis muscles, it would maybe be pretty juvenile, but the 1 finger can vary. I think it depends on the face and head shape, for me I felt going well above that would be ideal for my head and face shape. I think for a guy like Paul Rudd, who has a big forehead but no hair recession I could notice, for sometime like that going near the bottom of the 1 finger would be ideal. 

update, it looks like a final result a while back, especially in the front, the mid has caught up

Regular light

high light where you would see the scalp of no hairloss people

It's denser in the front than mid to create the illusion of density, interesting to see how it works, he's the mid with my front hair down

Pretty good result, I think. Not yet a year though so bonus if it keeps going. No update on the stubble though. There's stubble that was always there or grew in pretty early, but haven't grown out, I think it's a small percent of the total grafts though. 

Skin quality in the punchout area I think also improved. I think it might look 100% the same as my regular skin. A few months ago there were subtle differences but it's really hard to find them now. Pretty impressive because I think I scar easily. 

Some of the punched out hairs grew back but that's normal since sometimes they grow in tricky ways and it can be hard to figure out where the root is. But I'm planning on building upon the base which would cover them. 

Which clinic did you go to? Beard tends to have a low survival rate and needs a lot of expertise 

Does he do body hair?

I have seen some threads including myself where some stubbles grow out pretty early after a transplant, but don't grow. One user recently said it's the same 11 months post op. Has he ever seen this? What might be the issue? 

I posted one too

5.5 months for me. For me it's maybe like 25 stubbles while overall had a pretty good yield. 

If you're in San Diego I would recommend checking out Timothy Carmen. He's on the elite surgeon panel here. I had a consultation with him and was impressed by his knowledge. Unfortunately he didn't have many recent reviews. 

I just reached month 5, but I think these were here pretty early. Not sure when, at most week 6, at the earliest week 2 when I started feeling around my hair. 

I have some hard stubble on my scalp post-op. They seem to be make a small percent of total grafts but I'm still curious about how they'll end up. 

I don't remember if these are grafts that were implanted and never fell out, or just grow out early and never grew after, I wasn't keeping track. 

These stubbles are hard, like beard stubble. 

I searched this forum for 'stubble not growing' and found a bunch of threads, but none gave any conclusions. Trying in case someone can give some info. 

You can click on the pictures and then zoom in. 

4 hours ago, HappyMan2021 said:

all the image links are broken

They work for me. Perhaps you are using a VPN ip that imgur is blocking? Try clicking on the link. If that works, then it may be an issue with how your browser is reacting to the forum's markdown system. 

Month 4 day 25 update. 

Thinks are going great. I didn't update as much as I planned to, but the ugly ducking phase was pretty short. I don't think I experienced shock loss in the front and my native hairs grew back pretty fast. I shed most of the implanted grafts on schedule around 10-14 days. Most were a few cms in length with a 90 degree fold at the end. And a few weeks later I think the new crop grew in. At 3 months my front was already above baseline, and all I had to do was use toppick in the central. I think my front is generally pretty fast, as you can see in my initial pics, even like 2 days post op the grafts were already a little longer. I think I have a really robust frontal area.

Right now the front is looking really good to me. If right now it would be the final result for the front, I would be completely satisfied

Pics of the front, looking really good and natural, though there's hairs left over from my very first procedure with  Dr Diep, ignore those, I'll explain those further below. This is high lighting so not super flattering but wanted to show as much detail as possible 

The Mid section didn't come out as ultra fast as the front, but chugging along

As you can see on the pics, it seems that not all of the weird grafts from my first procedure were able to get removed. For sure that's impossible to do in a single step since some grafts are always in the telegen phase, but a bunch grew out really quickly. I learned that for implanted grafts, sometimes they grow in really unpredictable patterns , so using the FUE method, it might miss the core of the graft. I saw a video from Dr Bisanga where he would kind of fish around to get the whole graft. I don't think I would like to do that to get the rest out, because of the risk of scarring. But very luckily, most of them are more towards the back, and I wanted to lower my corners to below that area anyway, so they would actually help out with the corner filling. There's maybe 2-3 hairs below my final desired hairline area, which I don't mind having to pluck every once on a while. 

#Building Upon
 

I would like to fill up the corners a bit more. I think you might be thinking why didn't I just do that with the first procedure. The initial thinking was that it would initially be two procedures, one for the reinforcement, and then whatever was in front of the hairline would be relocated in the future. So I figured if I am going to have 2 procedures, I rather split up as much as possible. I wanted to focus my healing on a smaller number of grafts. I actually wanted to go lower than the 2000-2500 grafts quoted. 2000-2500 was what most of the clinics quoted me, HassanAndWang was higher at I think 4000, and Dr Nadimi was lower at 1500, so I just went with 1500, but Matt Zupan talked me back to 2000 and I am glad he did. He said that 2000 would be a minimal end of coverage. He also mentioned that it's better to focus on getting the front/mid right than the crown. I wasn't quite on board with that at the time, but looking into it more I am absolutely on board with that, as described blow. 

But anyway, they were actually able to do both the punchouts and reinforcement in the first procedure. If I knew that was going to happen, I still would have gone to the more conservative side and build up on a future procedure because I wasn't ready to think about my final hairline, I was more worried about if there was too much scar tissue in my first procedure to prevent grafts from being implanted [Dr Shapiro said it wasn't a problem]. Also, I think Dr Shapiro knew where I was coming from because at consultation he also said we can always build upon it.

I think even if I did try to finalize my hairline, it would have still be more on the conservative side of preference because at the time I wanted to save as much grafts as possible for in case my crown goes, because I didn't want to end up with a Joe Biden style hair style. Though I'm realizing now that since I'll probably have enough grafts for the mid, it wouldn't look like Joe Biden, it'll look like Jon Stewart [he has crown loss], who looks pretty good and I would be a-ok with that style as I go into my older years.

Also, I'm realizing that if my crown is going, it's going at a really slow rate. I recently did a comparison with my 2017 pics [when I started tracking my crown] and today, and it seems to be the same, maybe a little bit better though that's hard to tell because the lighting, camera, and hair style is different. But it certainly feels that I have to work a bit harder to part my hair to see the crown loss in recent weeks. I started oral minoxidil about 4-5 months ago, and microdosing topical dutasteride about 2 months ago. For sure I am a responder to oral minoxidil at least for body and donor area hair, a bit harder to tell for the top. The microdosing of  topical dut will take longer to tell but  I am optimistic that I was able to find at least some sort of -asteride regimin that works for me. At my consultation with Dr Shapiro, he mentioned that I could try topical dut when he heard that topical fin isn't working, because dut is a higher molecular weight so it doesn't penetrate as fast, as I think it's working. It's not apples to apples because I am only using it on my crown, but so far I haven't felt any side effects. 

During my last phone call with Matt Zupan before the procedure, he mentioned about focusing on the front more than the crown. I didn't know he meant at the time, but doing some background research since my procedure, the crown isn't really an effective place to put grafts. It's less vascular, so grafts my not take effectively as the rest. Also, the curve makes it really hard to get coverage. I've seen it described as a black hole for grafts. Finally, in terms of aesthetic impact, I learned about 'framing the face' and how the front changes the perception of the face, I didn't realize that at first, I thought it was more of a pure older/younger looking thing, but I now realize that the hairline contributes to how the face is perceived, and I want to go all in on that. 

Since the front grow out really fast, it gave me a lot of time to study and think about hairline design. In the pics below I drew a rough idea of how I would like the buildup to look like, I'll definitely have them redraw the the hairline according to their years of experience, right now I'm just going for roughly what would be the optimal mature framing of the face. 

I came across the rule of 3rds and lifting up the eyebrows and + 1 finger distance up for the bottom of the hairline, which is around where it should be, so I won't be thinking about lowering the very front for now. Right now I want to get my corners.  

I drew green dots for a rough idea of the hairline. This one is still maybe a millimeter or two away from what I think might be final one, just in case I end up liking it as is.

More of a nitpick reason, but there's a slight discoloration in the punchout area. This is not from my last procedure, but from my first one. Dr Diep didn't seem to have the surgical precision as Dr Shapiro, and the cuts were bigger. I don't have pictures but to give you an idea, the grafts were looser in the slits. I remember when I went to pick something up, Dr Diep and his two techs freaked out because they didn't want the graft to fall out. Compare that with with Dr Shapiro's implantation, where he told me that if I rub on it, the grafts could fall out. Post procedure with Dr Diep, I could tell the skin quality underneath was different, though it's subtle. Hard to capture on camera since you have light right on it, but there are some moments where you can see it, especially out of the shower. I tried my best o capture it

But yeah the blotchy ness is tricky to capture. Not a big deal, but looking forward to obscuring it when I fill in the corners a bit more. 

#Ungrown stubble

An interesting phenomenon is that I have a bunch of stubble that doesn't seem to be growing. I can't tell if they shed and then grew and stopped growing, or if these were the original hairs that are implanted. I did a search on the forums and this and there was some threads, but with no updates either way. It usually ends up with @Melvin- Moderator asking for pictures but nobody ever doing it. Well, here they are. 

The number of these stubbles aren't a ton. I counted around 40-45 the best I could with feeling around with my finger and capturing on camera. If these don't grow out, not a big deal since it's only 40-45 out of 2066. 

I'm really glad that I went with Dr Shapiro in this instance, knowing that whatever best practices there are in the industry, was used on my procedure. It may have been more with a less experienced surgeon. Or if it was the same but if I didn't go to someone whose considered the best of the best, I would have been forever questioning if they did everything right. If there's anyone who figure out what's up with these grafts, it's Dr Shapiro, since he seems to have the most experienced out of top surgeons. 

I have armchair theory, I wonder if these are from the relocated grafts. The grafts implanted by Dr Diep never completely felt like normal hair. They always hare a rougher and wire-y feel to them. The grafts planted by Dr Shapiro feel exactly like normal hair. But I don't feel any of the wire-y hairs on my scalp. Maybe they haven't grown in yet, but maybe they were damaged in the first procedure and are not as healthy as the rest. I'll get their take next time I visit them. 

Not a big deal either way, since it's just 40-45, though sometimes they itch. I'm tempted to plug them and just wait until they're finally going to be in their growing phase lol. 

#Next Steps

I'll look into when I can start building upon since I know what I would like for the next steps. I didn't get their take on when is the best time to start rebuilding, but before my procedure I also did consultations with a few other places like HassanAndWong and Dr Mwamba and they mentioned like 3 months. 

One thing I am looking forward to is enjoying the procedure more next time. The procedure itself was great and fascinating, but overall was kinda nervous since it was a repair job. Next one I'll allow myself to enjoy the process more. 

I'll do another update soon as soon as I get my surgical record with the graft breakdown 

2 hours ago, AlexMeister21 said:

 

I'd join a class action lawsuit against him for sure. Just don't know how that'd even start.

 

I'm not sure either. I reached out to JimCraig , lopsidedpair on reddit who is in contact with a lot of his former patients. 

4 hours ago, AlexMeister21 said:

I was only offered a repair after I pressed on about the issues that I had with my transplants. On my video call with Dr. Diep, he tried to assure me that my results were great and initially only offered to revise the scar for free and was suggesting I come in and do another paid procedure to increase density. I pushed and kept explaining why I was dissatisfied with my results, which he could see the lack of density through the video call. Eventually he offered me 800 grafts free in addition to the scar revision, to which I declined. It was only after I mentioned how no one here on HRN approved of my results, except for maybe Melvin, that Dr. Diep offered the partial refund.

Then, I spoke with Diep's wife regarding the refund, and any concern I had was met with strong defense or biased justification. I mentioned the wide scar, and she tried to explain the reason why my scar was wide was because I had 4,000 grafts extracted. To counter, I mentioned the recent 20, 21 year old Diep patient who had 500 grafts extracted by FUT and how his scar was almost as wide as mine, and she basically said that the scar is dependent on the individual. What irks me is she even said that that young patient had went into their office and they thought his results were fine and that he just needed to comb it over. Are we paying to achieve an expensive combover? 

I asked them about the experience level of their technicians and she told me their techs have been with them for 5-10 years. I asked them if they all have been working consistently as a team, which she said yes. Then I mentioned how the techs that were working on me were asking each other "acquaintance level" questions, such as how old they were or if they were married, to which she replied that they don't control the conversations of their employees and that even she doesn't ask her coworkers if they're married or not. Huh?

I also mentioned the recent removal of Diep from the surgeon's recommended list, to which I was told that it was their decision to be removed as opposed to being voted off because they didn't want to be associated with negativity.

Oh, I could go on. I was initially just going to take the refund and end or limit my Diep tirades, but this just fueled the fire in me. I'm legitimately pissed.

Perhaps there can be a class action lawsuit? Diep has many unsatisfied patients.

Eugenix does lots of beard grafts. Have you considering not doing a revision but putting beard grafts into it? I would get their take on it when doing a consultation 

2 hours ago, Balding Bad said:

Thanks for the advice! Do you find that you're getting concentrated hair growth while on oral Min or are you finding new hairs where you typically never had or in areas where you never thought would grow? 😄

I'm not sure about recipient area, yet, but I see changes for by body hair, which I think must mean that my donor area is getting stronger too. 

Quote

5. Dr. Hasson was only present for an extremely limited time during both days of surgery. Approximately 29 minutes in the room on day 1, and only about 16 minutes in the room on day 2. 

What was Dr Hassan doing? I think he does the slits? But you can't do all the slits in 46 minutes. I'm sorry to hear about your difficulties with them. I think the hairline looks amazing. What do you mean by too angular? Where the hairline meets the temples? I think so, but I think that's an ez repair. As for the temple, I can't tell why, but it does seem off to me. You analysis of it being due to graft selection makes sense to me. It's unfortunate that they used the thicker ones for your temples, when they should be saved for the mid, vertex, and crown. That will be much harder to repair, because those are valuable grafts and I would recommend saving them. I think the top surgeons for relocating grafts are DrKonior, DrShapiro who is the one I went to for relocating my grafts and Dr Josephitis is the one who does the punchouts, DrBisanga, Dr Mwamba, perhaps DrGabel as well. 

Those looks like normal hair, I think implanted ones have a j shape. I think you were gentle with your head last couple days so when you massage your head to remove scabs, you will get an increased number of hairs pulled.

Ask the clinic for oral minoxidil. I've been using it and wow, it is way more effective than topical which I've been on for over a decade. 

I vote yes, it's the right thing to do. It's unfortunate that some clinics are 'slipping', but we should reward and direct people to the clinics who keeping doing good for their patients. 

On 12/27/2022 at 12:24 PM, RoxyLu said:

It’s been a year since my hair transplant at Dr Dieps office and I am ecstatic about the results! I didn’t realize how thin my hair was on my temple area until I saw the before an after. Wow! The pics speak for themselves! I highly recommend this procedure to anyone struggling with thinning hair.

 

Dr Diep himself is a very knowledgeable hair Dr but he’s also very nice! Best in the business. And his staff is amazing! All are very nice and on top of it! Plus the patience they have is stellar! All such hard workers. They work late to accommodate your schedules so please be kind to them! 

 

The process itself was painless. It’s a long procedure but goes by pretty quickly since you are sleeping majority of the time. 

 

You must follow the post healing properly for better results. 

 

This cost is so worth it. The confidence alone is priceless! I’m so happy!

 

 

 

 

 

Great review! How do you think it looks like from the front under higher lighting?