Berba11

That’s legit some of the worst work I’ve seen in a long time. Pure cowboy stuff. The good news is that it’s an easy fix. There’s enough space between each implanted graft to punch them all out in one session I imagine without causes any scarring or trauma (if it were more densely packed it would take two or three sessions). Feriduni, Bisanga or Hattingen would nail this.

That’s around £5 or €6 per graft assuming you do in fact only need around 1,500 grafts which opens you up to most of the best surgeons around. Everybody will have their own favourites from the top guys for hairline work. Dr Munib in Holland is unquestionably excellent but his pricing is dubiously vague and often ridiculously & prohibitively expensive (imo). I also really like Dr Feriduni’s hairlines. Seborrheic dermatitis is usually not something that will prevent you from getting a HT. It’s probably advisable to try and keep it in check with special shampoos and the occasional use of steroidal treatment like Betacap solution during flare ups but I’m sure you’re doing that already.

There’s no use anyone talking about punch outs & laser at this stage. For starts, no respectable practitioner of either modality will do that to a patient before the 12 month post op mark has been hit. Secondly, it’s more than possible the OP will come to like to result or at least feel ok about it when everything starts growing in and looking less wild than the post op period. And lastly, we’ve seen no pictorial evidence yet of any of the issues the OP describes.

I’ve studied his cases on Instagram very carefully and while he does seem to achieve good density & growth, there is a lack of refinement with his hairline work. Some cases are better than others but I’m seeing a lot of hairlines than need to be much more irregular and with more soft single graft hairs placed in front of the hairline to create a softer & more broken up transition into the multi graft hairs behind. He might do a pretty good job for midscalp & crowns but from what I can see, I’m not impressed by the hairline work.

So, this picture doesn't tell us anything. You've said the hairline is too low but haven't given us a frontal picture where we can see your whole face. Without that we can't see the proportions between chin & nose and glabella & mid-frontal point. We've also got no pre-ops pic to compare anything to. We can't even see any details of the work really. Of course, that shouldn't be happening. I have a very, very tiny number of grafts myself that move when I do the same (my hairline is also a bit too low). How much of an issue this is really depends on the extent of the movement. Who was the surgeon/clinic? No, unfortunately. No more of this sort of thing please mate. A bad HT can be fixed, but not by you doing harmful things to yourself in the meantime.

You’re not understanding my point… None of the best clinics in the world are in Turkey. There being Turkish staff at this clinic means nothing at all and people from all over the world (including Russia) go to Turkey because it’s cheap. That’s it. The clinic has a good reputation according to who? What *independent* reviews can you point to? Are they using microscopes? Are their hairlines soft and irregular for naturalness? This clinic could be a hidden gem that we don’t know about, but it’s unlikely. What is the name of the clinic/doctor? Surgery or minoxidil are not your only options. One option is to buzz everything off and move on with your life. Another option is to try and stabilise your hair loss first with finasteride. If you haven’t tried a buzz cut and haven’t tried finasteride then you shouldn’t be getting surgery really. Meaning what exactly? If it doesn’t grow it doesn’t grow. There are no guarantees. And just because it grows it doesn’t mean it will be good. A good hair transplant isn’t just moving hair from point A to point B. It’s about how refined and artistic it is for naturalness. It seems to me that you haven’t yet done the proper research needed and might end up at a clinic that are doing poor work by the standards we would expect & recommended.

Stop. Just cancel that immediately. Who is the doctor? What work of his can you point to that shows a high level of refinement and naturalness? Why is the nationality of the technicians relevant at all? It sounds like you’re about to get yourself into a right mess.

Extractions from the beard - whether it be neck, chin or cheeks - usually heals very, very well and quite quickly. It's extremely unlikely you'd have and scarring.

I don’t like to alarm people right after surgery but you’ve come here for a reason so to be honest, I’m seeing work that is poor. Hairline looks a bit too low and aggressive, density is lower than what you’d hope to see and the placement of the grafts along the frontal hairline looks amateur and unnatural. That said, Afro hair can be a little more forgiving bad HT-wise compared to fine hair found on Caucasian & Asian men etc… Your hair will be naturally thicker and curly, which helps with coverage, and soft single graft hairs and irregularities in the hairline are slightly less of an issue. Hopefully this ends up at least passable until you can get a repair job on it, and this forum can be a sounding board for ideas & support for you throughout.

My honest best advice in your specific case would be first to establish your key priorities. As I see it: 1. Reconnect the frontal third and the crown by covering as much of the midscalp and frontal third as possible. This will take a fair few grafts to achieve. A combination of FUE and FUT could work in your favour given the second priority below... 2. Excise the scar rather than put grafts into it. Graft survival rates into scars vary, and your scar is quite wide - there's a risk you'll waste grafts when a good FUT specialist could cut the scar out and make it much narrower. You then have the option in the future of putting grafts into a much small scar, saving you grafts in the long run. It may also be beneficial to utilise FUT to help cover the areas of hair loss over the scalp and maximise your remaining donor capacity given that as far as I can tell, you've never had FUE before. If you'd already had FUE then reverting back to FUT becomes a less attractive proposition. 3. A very distant third I should add... Your crown. Personally, given the existing hair loss you have, I'd have the crown miles down the priority list. To cover a full NW5/6/7 area of hair loss will require some compromise on some part of the scalp, and it seems to be to be unwise to use grafts on your crown when your crown already looks good, natural and you can use a bit of product to boost its appearance. At the very least, sort 1 & 2 and then assess the situation afterwards. If your donor will allow for a session on the crown then happy days... Slow and steady wins the race at the end of the day. The only exceptions to the above are if you were going to someone like Pittella or Zarev who's approach and scale of restoration in single passes is bigger than anyone else's. Expect to pay a lot and wait a long time for consultation and surgery though. So could I recommend a Turkish clinic in your specific case? In all honesty I don't think so. Dr Bicer is a fine surgeon but if I were you I'd want someone who does both FUE and FUT as well as a track record of success with larger NW cases. Dr Wesley has a good reputation I believe, but I'm less familiar with the North American market other than a few of the really big names so couldn't say. I'm sure other posters will be better placed to say in his case.

Planning/operational issues is something that many patients have remarked on with Eugenix across all packages/doctors, so is definitely an issue to be wary of. And certainly the OP's left temple hasn't been treated with the care it should have and the donor is uncharacteristically patchy (whatever Eugenix's faults may be, donor management is very rarely one of them). Luckily the OP's problem temple looks perfectly fine when the hair is grown out a bit, albeit that's obviously limiting and not ideal. I should add that even nicely done temple points will start to reveal themselves at shorter buzz cut lengths due to the implanted hair being thicker than native temple point hair, but that's part of why getting the directions and singles right is so important. I think the word "botched" is a bit up for debate here (I'd probably just about agree with you based on your definition) but "butchers" is way over the top. Bear in mind I say that as someone who has documented some issues with their own HT by the same clinic and doctor, so could hardly be accused of "running cover" for Eugenix (and I don't think Melvin can fairly be accused of that either to be honest).

Hi @track_rat, hope you're well mate. How are you doing?

"We didn't schedule a long enough surgery" is one of the more baffling things I've come across to be honest. Most surgeons understand and expect that sometimes a surgery will run on longer than imagined for a multitude of reasons. It's why every top doc has cases that ran late into the evening or ended up taking place over two or even three days. The point is they get the job done for the patient regardless, so you do seem to have been short changed in that respect.

It would be insane to lower the hairline of a 23 year old, and if you think otherwise, then you’re walking talking proof of why 23 year olds are not candidates for surgery 99% of the time. That said, you’ve not actually shown us the hairline work. It seems those spots in the midscalp should have been addressed and I can’t see any good reasons why they couldn’t have been, especially if it had been agreed in advance. Equally you could probably restore them non-surgically with oral minoxidil.

Doctors don’t simply stump up money and get on the list. They previously had to be voted for by the posters on this forum in order to be accepted. That’s changed now that there’s a consul of experienced posters who oversee the recommendations, but just to clear that up. But you are right: the recommended list is a tool to use, and shouldn’t be taken as gospel. No list will ever be perfect of course - there will be surgeons on the list that are not in favour of some posters, and there will be excellent surgeons out there who are not on the list at all.

He’s doing a very nice job documenting his cases himself in quite a transparent way. I think we’ll start to see more independent journeys pop up now he has his own clinic. As for the questions in the OP… 24 is going to get a HT. Personally I’d echo some of the other sentiments in so far as trying 2.5mg of oral minoxidil in combination with either finasteride or dutasteride and give that a proper 18 months minimum to really assess things. At the end of the day, it’s just hair. Better to wait a few more years for surgery and really make sure you’ve got a proper handle on your existing hair loss than to potentially get yourself into trouble. You never know when you might suddenly have to stop the meds…! We sometimes see younger guys pass through who are desperate for a HT right now, as though life ends at 30 or something. You seem more level headed than that which is good. Take your time, don’t rush and keep trying to improve your situation through adjustments to the medical intervention you’re already doing. You can use that time to save more money for a top surgeon and to research more and more. Most top surgeons won’t take you as a patient at 24 anyway, so you’ll be limited in your options.

That’s pretty minuscule. I’m wondering if you’ve recently had a HT and have a little buyers remorse given your photo choice? If so you may find that once everything grows in and the redness subsides the temple corner will appear softer and slightly more angular than they do currently. Plucking would be another option of course, but you certainly have a minor punch out session.

Thanks for sharing. Personally I think your crown looks great. It looks age appropriate and naturally thinner but not “balding” per se. The salt n’ pepper works in your favour as well. And as you say, a little magic dust will give it a nice boost if desired. Obviously you have a large disconnect between the hairline and the crown that will require a pretty decent amount of grafts. Given that you need a larger session to sort the frontal third & midscalp, and you need a scar revision, one option would be to choose an FUT & FUE mega session specialist like Hattingen (they’re worth a video consultation at the very least). Another option might be to get on the waiting list for some of the big FUE specialists like Pittella, Zarev or Sethi and look to have the FUT scar filled in with some grafts placed into it. Your donor area looks decent which is good. You’re not going to get a super dense result across your scalp but you look like you could easily achieve a slightly thinner, full coverage look that connects everything and enhances your hairline a bit as well. €40K is, imo, an insane price, but expect to pay around half that number for most top surgeons charging more reasonable and transparent per graft prices around the €4-5 per graft mark in your case. On the more budget end of the spectrum you’d have good options in Cyprus, Thailand and India with good experience and result for higher NW cases/larger sessions. The sticking point will be how you choose to approach the FUT scar (revising it versus covering it with FUE implants).

Nothing looks out of place from these photos to my eye and the design looks nice as well. The 2-3 months will ultimately reveal a lot more as things should start kicking off over the next few weeks. How is your donor area looking?

Punchouts are increasingly common. Ultimately it depends on your case as to what the best options will be. Can you share some pictures?

Nice! It would be useful to see the post-op photos so we can better see the recipient area (and the donor area if you're still concerned about that).

If you did understand perfectly then I'm confused by what you said: What AB2000 said was: But in any case... Everything will have shed by 3 months, so it's not uncommon to see nothing there - some people shed more than others (and some people actually don't shed very much at all). This varies wildly from patient to patient. I do understand that you'd not seen any initial growth immediately post-op and before the bulk of the shedding kicked in. It's difficult to say whether this is something to be concerned about as, again, immediate post-op growth of the recipient grafts will vary from person to person. It might be more instructive to see the high res post-op photos Eugenix would have taken so we can see things in better detail.

By the way @Noble001, do you have the immediate pre and post op photos that Eugenix will have taken? If not you can request them and they will send them to you. Three months is way too soon to have any concerns about growth, but it would be good to see some proper high quality pictures of the work as the ones you've posted so far aren't particularly great.

I think that's a misunderstanding... You shouldn't expect to see anything before the 3 month mark. 3-4 months is when things should start to grow in, so you're right at the very end of the ugly duckling phase and about to begin the growth phase.

Then your two best options are probably Dr Zarev, or Dr Munib. Personally, I think this criteria you've set is unnecessarily limiting but if that's what you feel comfortable with then fair enough. The best option, I think, is a surgeon who has a very small, dedicated team that is very experienced and skilled at their role within the surgery. You eliminate variables at a surgical level by having the same people in the room every single time, performing the same tasks every single time. It's always struck me that having one person do everything - potentially fatiguing themselves through overload - is as much of a variable as anything else in the long run.