HairRun

wow, all that in 3500 grafts, Do you have thick hair ?

I've been trying over a year to get my photos from Dr Diep's office. During one of my consults, I was informed that they are part of my medical record and I am legally entitled to them. So now I am considering the next step on how to retrieve them.

I didn't interpret his standard being due to anxiety, I interpreted it as it being due to being thorough in his research. How did you end up with the anxiety conclusion? He already had his transplant. For me personally, I wouldn't be particularly suspicious of the reviews. It kinda might be like how if some shop asks you in-person to give them a 5 star review on yelp, you would probably just do it if your phone was out, especially if you think you'll end up at the same place again. I think since Diep asked, they did it. But for me personally if surgeon A has a lot of organic, full journey reviews, and then surgeon B had only a lot of reviews on throwaway accounts, I would learn towards surgeon A.

No I didn't do any blood tests. I should have.

I think Dr Shapiro and Dr Konior are the top USA ones. I went to Dr Shapiro and they were amazing. I didn't look much into the NYC/East coast ones, as for the west coast I also liked Dr Timothy Carmen.

As someone who had a procedure with diep, and then needed to have that procedure repaired, I personally can not recommend diep. There is nobody in the Bay Area I thought was top tier, which is weird, northern california is a very populated area, with a lot of wealthy areas. It's like some sort of hair transplant desert. If I had to get a hair transplant in the Bay Area, I would look up whose doing transplants at the Parsa Mohebi clinic in SF. Parsa Mohebi doesn't do the translant, one of the surgeons he found does it. If I had to do my transplant in California, my top choice would be Dr Timothy Carmen in San Diego. There might be some others in LA and the OC I would look up, only because there aren't a ton of recent reviews from Dr Carmen. I wasn't limited by geography so I ended up with Dr Shapiro in MN.

I do my best to squeeze out half a pump, and apply once a week. It's tricky because with Xyon, 1 pump is the whole application, where as with Italian one, Farmacia Patrari or something, 4 pumps is one application, so you can split it up. With the Italian one, I was able to get to 4 weeks with the half dose applied 1x a week before experiencing side effects. With Xyon, I have a theory that once a week might be enough. I'm thinking back to when I first tried Xyon, and got side effects 6 days post application right after I applied topical min. That means the finasteride was still in my scalp at day 6. Just a thought.

I guess another think to keep in mind is how many patients each one does a day, what steps to day do, extract grafts, slits, and place grafts. Also, what is their surgical team is like? Is it a super tight quality control like Konior and Shapiro? Maybe this is where Couto gets the edge out. Hasn't he been doing it longer? Where as Freitas is new, so maybe he hasn't had a chance to build up a team where everyone he's worked with has at least a decade experience. This information is so easy to look up for English or highly English accommodating clinics, it's extremely hard for Spanish due to translation issues and their search engine doesn't work lol.

Oh yeah, this search engine here works, I was talking about the search engine on the Spanish forum. It doesn't work lol

Yeah, so it's hard to compare. For the first 4 pages Couto has 11 reviews, Freitas has 22, so roughly a 2x ratio. Maybe Freitas does 2x a day vs Couto doing 1x? I've also seen trickier cases with Freitas, some older guys, some with not so amazing density. Though there is a review of an older guy on this forum and Couto nailed it. You seem to have a solid sense of the Spanish doctors, what are your personal rankings of the top 5? I just started looking into Spanish doctors, so still hazy on them.

So far so good. I've never had any cognitive side effects, just sexual ones, but I haven't had any in this trial of Xyon.

The search function doesn't work for me. I came across a handful going back to nov 19 so 15 sounds about right. The thing is, Frietas has loads and loads more. I wonder what's causing the discrepancy.

I'm on oral minoxidil now and so I'm trying it again, about 9 days in, and I have a ball ache, which isn't a good sign, but much better than before. I've also read accounts of being trying fin and they have a ball ache at first and then they don't have any side effects, I hope that's the case with me.

about 9 days in, and I have a ball ache, which isn't a good sign, but much better than before. I've also read accounts of being trying fin and they have a ball ache at first and then they don't have any side effects, I hope that's the case with me.

I got very strong side effects as soon as I tried to use topical min with it. Like, I even waited 6 days after application of Xyon and the sides hit shortly after application. I'm on oral minoxidil now and so I'm trying it again, about 9 days in, and I have a ball ache, which isn't a good sign, but much better than before. I've also read accounts of being trying fin and they have a ball ache at first and then they don't have any side effects, I hope that's the case with me.

Do you have the right link? It's a review of ASMED DR. KORAY ERDOGAN - 3221 GRAFTS FUE (7 MONTHS)

Haha whoops, but I just tried 'couto' and still nothing comes up

I was looking at the top hair transplant doctors for the 2022 and 2020 edition. Couto comes up often as number 1, but then it follows up a discussion of how there's rarely any reviews of him. I'm looking for a surgeon to finish my hairline and been looking at the top docs for that. Couto and Freitas come up often at the top tier of those discussions. I searched on the spanish forum directly, and there's a few but not that much by Couto. I went back 15 pages to where the last response was from november 2019. Just a handful of reviews for Couto. But there are a few that keep coming up that definitely have a lot of wow results. Freitas, Vila, Pinto, Lorenzo, Alvarez and Heinicke. I surprised by how good Vila's results are, considering she's not really mentioned that much. I feel her results go head to head against Freitas and Couto. I think Pinto is among that elite tier too. Lorenzo, Alvarez and Heinicke all have amazing wow factor results. There are a few which aren't as wow, but they are patients with more aggressive hairloss or not a super insane donor density. I'll have to look deeper, but just looking at their top results, maybe they are in that elite tier as well. I wonder if youtube is being a heavy factor in the ratings, I think out all the portfolios, Couto ranks number 1 regardless of skill. I think from the independent reviews, you got to give top spot to Freitas, and then a tie for Vila and Pinto for number 2. Couto just doesn't have that many as far as I can tell, on the other hand that forums search engine sucks so maybe I'm missing something, but I went back 15 pages to where the last response was november 2019

I'm taking close up pictures every day post op and I've noticed there's a few of these. I'm on week 6

Do you have post OP pics? It could be a low yield issue. I strongly recommend Dr Shapiro, I had a procedure with him recently. From my personal research, he's was my top choice for repair which is what I also needed, he seemed to be the most seen-it-all surgeon out there. Since you're in socal, also check out Dr Timothy Carmen in San Diego. I got a really good impression of him during a consult with him, he seems to have a lot of experience in repair, but he hasn't put out a lot of patient results recently, though he started being active again today, posting a new patient result. Dr. Timothy Carman - Hair Restoration Network - Community For and By Hair Loss Patients

Great to see your latest patients.

I would go with Dr Timothy Carmen if you want to do it in San Diego. Though there hasn't been a lot of stuff out lately, he was at one point scouted out by this community and he's on this forum recommended list of surgeons. He also does all his consults himself, for free, as far as I know he's the only surgeon on the list who does that, everywhere else I either paid for a consult or spoke to a patient advisor. If I were limited to California, I probably would've went there.

@parsia totally forgot about this. If you want, you can draw the hairline you wanted, vs what Dr Shapiro wanted. We did this with someone else and were able to point why the surgeon hairline looked better than the aggressive one they picked

Amazing, what was discussed?

Much prefer Freitas' design. I think the issue is that you may not be be strongly imagining hair behind the line. It's extremely tricky. Dr Shapiro went through this with me, he used filler to get me an accurate image, a drawn on hairline may look too high, but once it fills in, it will make much more sense. Maybe this may help, on ms paint or something draw black behind the line up to your current hairline. I kinda just did that with my fingers on the screen for both yours and his, your came across as very juvenile, Freitas made your face pop. But without my fingers, it does seem to me that yours is the more aesthetic choice. One more request. Can you take another picture with your eye brows all the way up? The distance from the top forehead wrinkle to about 1 finger thickness above tends to be an optimal hairline point. It's another rule, along with the rule of 3rds. I think you might see the Freitas has it exactly, where as yours may be too low.