Fox243

What are his views on FUT vs FUE in 2024, especially for NW6/NW7? Back in the day, the strategy was do as many FUTs, then FUEs once laxity is depleted. Now, we see the top hair restoration surgeons saying pure FUE is better.

@Melvin- Admin Has there been any update from Dr. Mohebi? If he can't do it, that's fine, but would appreciate it if he can let us know either way. A scar revision doctor I'm working with said it was very easy to order via this link: https://www.bauschretinarx.com/visudyne/ecp/additional-resources/ordering-patient-assitance/

On 2/28/2024 at 12:39 AM, MC117 said:

 

This is literally12 hours after 2k grafts extraction haha 😅

He developed the tool with a french start up, based on ava Fue but customized. 

Cleanest donors I've seen since I started browsing HT cases 8 years ago.

I literally see no scars

9 minutes ago, Al - formerly BeHappy said:

@Killian 

Honest question: What made you decide to go as high as 50mg when other tests are using less than 1mg? 

 

 

I think to be fair, other tests used like 0.24-0.8 mg/cm^2, not 1 mg in total. 50 mg is quite a lot though and my only concern is the papers showing a worse effect at higher concentrations on pigs (2 mg/mL > 4 mg/mL), hypothesized by Mascharak to be because of Verteporfin’s off target effects because pure YAP inhibition through a sirna showed better effects the more YAP was in inhibited iirc. It could be different for humans though. It’s an extremely safe medicine though so worst case scar doesn’t heal as well as with a lower dosage. 

38 minutes ago, BackFromTheBrink said:

Wow! You really do seem to have an issue with people who choose to take meds.

I'm wager the average person who suggests shaving your head knows nothing about medication or the potential side effects. They're more likely to consider alternatives such as hair styling, powder, hair systems etc.

I agree with the comments above and that it's brave since it's taking control,  knowledging the situation and accepting it.

lol I don't have anything against meds in particular -- in fact, I'm on several meds myself. I'm only against them being prescribed without considering risk reward. Don't appreciate you bringing comments from other threads here. 

15 minutes ago, Al - formerly BeHappy said:

This is something that's bugged me for years and I think about it any time someone tells me I should just shave my head.

Why is shaving your head seen as being confident? I never understood that. When is giving up and quitting seen as being confident? Imagine anything you ever wanted to do or tried to do. Let's say you want to learn how to play the piano. Of course you suck at first. Then you practice and practice and hopefully get a bit better. Let's suppose you are taking longer to get good at it then your friend is, so you decide to just quit. Are you confident in your ability to play the piano? No. Of course not. I think you can pretty much apply that to anything. If you can't do something you are trying to do and give up, I just can't see how that is showing confidence in yourself. It's always just the opposite.

I'd love to hear what you guys think on this.

 

I think it's because the other options require potentially nasty tradeoffs (side effects of lifelong meds) i.e. people are always like you risk your dick with fin for a cosmetic issue.

40 minutes ago, Killian said:

Just an FYI to all, Dr. Saifi does not offer Verteporfin. This is privately funded by my own pocket and head 😅 

ah unfortunate, but thanks for the heads up.

24 minutes ago, sr1486 said:

Been waiting so long for this and now realize I may be waiting several more years lol. So just started oral minox (1.25mg 2x/day) to see if it helps out.

 

I’ve used it before and it thickened things up a lot, but stopped because I was like “I’ll just get regenerating grafts in a year” lol

I don't understand what you mean by waiting tbh. Like you could probably go to Dr. Barghouthi or Dr. Bloxham or Dr. Saifi right now to get a verteporfin hair transplant. Personally, I'm in no rush which is why I'm fine waiting for the optimal technique, but if someone is in a rush, this is an option available to them.

12 minutes ago, Killian said:

Hey, wow haven't been here in a long time.

Yeah on my YouTube community tab. Been taking photos daily to track the difference in wound healing. I've been taking donor photos and notes from every surgery since 2015, but I'm used to how the donor recovers in FUT & FUE. I might write a few pieces with supplementing photos on the differences noted, I'll see, could be interesting.

Atm I'm just taking it easy in Poland. 

salute

Thank you for doing this man – it means the world to all of us.

18 minutes ago, Nikoni said:

What do you think of dose ? Isn't it too much ?

Yeah, I think its too high but I'm sure he has a reason for it. Let's wait and see what he says.

59 minutes ago, Nikoni said:

Hairchemist did a verteporfin trial. It seems he used very high dose.
https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxPWt1ZGLKViOFgk0-9LkTQ0MKoQ0oCQGA

Very interested to see how this turns out.

6 minutes ago, Bandit90 said:

No drug is risk free. If you looked at the side effects of Paracetamol/Tylenol you would be spooked. Finasteride has been used for decades, as a treatment for enlarged prostates and hair loss, so there should be long term studies available. If it was unsafe, i'm sure we would have seen some horror stories 40 years on. Taking medication though should always be based on an informed decision. I fell a tad emotive towards this, as I was scared to take the medication based on scaremongering stories, as a consequence  I went slick bald, when the reality I tolerate the medication just fine.  

Yes, but a couple of things.

1) Tylenol doesn’t affect the hormonal system

2) Tylenol is not a lifelong medication, unlike fin or oral med, which is building up and affecting your body daily

And I think I agree with your point that medication should be an informed decision. What I'm trying to say is I think the forum is way too pro med, especially when the risk reward doesn't justify it.

I agree that meds are useful, even for a NW7, but nobody has really talked about the trade offs here. Finasteride and oral minoxidil are not risk free drugs, far from it in fact. There’s simply not enough research into long term effects from using these daily. 

I was wondering why hrn has recently turned so pro med. Regularly, I see posters telling NW7s to try finasteride and oral minoxidil, the former which has several labels describing potential permanent sexual side effects and the latter having a black box label for heart related sides. Just more generally, you are changing several hormonal and cardiac biomarkers for decades that isn’t a natural thing to do -- especially when these drugs weren't even intended to treat hair loss, that is just a side effect of which there could be countless negative ones as well.

Granted, both of these are extremely rare and taking meds is all about trade offs, but a NW7 is very unlikely to grow much hair. In regards to the argument about “preserving the donor zone”, I think it’d be quite unethical for a doctor to rely on a patient taking meds for “a donor zone” that can be extracted. The safe donor zone is safe for a reason as studied by Oestrich and the true narrow safe strip doesn’t miniaturize for 99% of men.

I’m all for meds if someone is a NW1-3 but once you get past, especially a NW6-7, you’re really trying to grow plants in a barren wasteland and potentially poisoning the entire soil. Just curious about people’s thoughts on this.

On 2/19/2024 at 1:05 PM, Al - formerly BeHappy said:

Here are a couple of before and afters on the hairline. The "Before" pictures on the left are both from 2014 which was about 20 years after my last hair transplant at the time, but prior to any repairs. The "After" pictures on the right are both from September 2023.

 

 

I know you were hoping to have one or two more sessions. When will you learn how many grafts you have left? 

This is an amazing transformation for the number of grafts used, one of the best I’ve seen. 

9 hours ago, hairman22 said:

Zarev can take more scalp than anyone that cannot be disputed. He has taken 18k grafts on a patient for the scalp often uop to 15k.

Numbers no one else can reach. He doesnt like beard hair in general that would be the difference with Pittella

Pittella is amazing too though. Zarev plans long term he wants his patients to have enough dobor resources in most cases from the scalp.

Thats probably why he is thinks you are not a patient. But im sure Pittella will do a great job if you go with him

Does he use beard hair for patients who could get a good result with it? My scalp isn’t good but beard is quite good.

2 hours ago, Al - formerly BeHappy said:

@Melvin- Admin and @Gatsby and @AB2000

I've been cutting it a little shorter lately and it looks pretty good, but not so short like the picture Melvin posted. I wasn't able to do that before because of the scars, but as you can see in this picture from the last session I had, the upper scars were covered. Now that it's grown in I can cut it shorter without having an issue. At this point I really just need to add density all over. The scars are not as big a problem as they once were. Unfortunately I had to use up a lot of grafts over several sessions to solve a lot of the scar issues, so I haven't gotten as much density over the top as I'd like. Bt overall it's a much better look without worrying about scars.

 

It’s been over a year since your last surgery so would love to see an updated pic of how the grafts finally grew in. I have very strong norwooding genes (NW6 by 23) and grandparent/uncle NW7, so am particularly invested in your case. Thanks! 

22 minutes ago, BaldV said:

Are you happy with the result?

 

I hope you are, but I have to express my honest opinion and say that this is a subpar result in my eyes.

 

 

 

One more example to be added in Dr Das' work

Agreed, happy that OP seems to be happy with his result, but this doesn't look like 5500 grafts even if spread over a larger surface area. For most people at his stage, another 5000 grafts would be full coverage with decent density, but I don't foresee that happening unfortunately. Let's hope I'm wrong.

Just now, Der3k7 said:

I imagine you’ll find some resistance due to liability concerns. But it will be awesome if you can do this.

Regarding question a, All chemicals and compounds have something called a Materials and Safety Data Sheet. I googled this along with the drug name and came across a couple of what look like online chemical manufacturers or online pharmaceutical companies and they have their own data sheet for the drug and have respective sections for safety, handling and storage etc. Here are the first 2 I saw.

 https://cdn.caymanchem.com/cdn/msds/17334m.pdf

https://www.selleckchem.com/msds/MSDS_S1786.pdf

I'd say your best chance is to just contact Dr. Barghouthi for a transplant and request for verteporfin.

Why do people think it was photoshopped if 1) we saw FAKI work as well, 2) multiple other studies have shown verteporfin's results, 3) dr.barghouthi's pics are legit, 4) dr.barghouthi's biopsy was super legit, 5) longaker is not going to throw away decades of respect for some photoshopped results.

46 minutes ago, Hair Tomorrow said:

Results photos are easily photoshopped, and Stanford University faked photos in at least 12 studies

- Does anyone know any forensic scientists who can analyse the animal and human Verteporfin results photographs so far?

None of the scientists at this caliber are going to photoshop results lol. If it were really photoshopped, they would've tried to make money on this asap rather than having gone through a rigorous, slow process over the last 3 years.

Would you consider going to Pittella to see if he can alleviate your situation with beard + body grafts?

26 minutes ago, Wally West said:

@Kacan For me, he recommended pretty much the same;
- Topical Finasteride (As I had sides to oral)
- Minoxidil 5%
- Ketoconazole shampoo
- Anacaps Reactiv vitamins
@mtb Are these the multivitamins he gave to you?

That said, I've now had to stop topical Finasteride because of side effects, and he was surprised that I had sides. I'm trying topical Dutasteride now, but not sure if he recommends it or not.

I heard finasteride was optional though, especially since you're a NW6

24 minutes ago, sr1486 said:

5 month update is out, so about from a month ago: 

I only watched the last couple minutes because it’s bedtime for me. There is obviously some regrowth, but doesn’t seem like a ton. Hopefully much more at 6-7 months 

 

 

Yeah, I just watched this video. As Dr. Bloxham said, something different is definitely happening. Seems to be regrowth but def not as pronounced as Dr. Barghouthi.