Berba11

Definitely consult your surgeon, but I'd have thought after several weeks you'd be ok to buzz the hair down, but maybe err on the side of caution and use a guarded buzz, rather than a zero or 0.5.

Surgery is a last resort, so if you feel you have a few options to explore first, then it makes sense to give them a go. Obviously, any parts of your head that are already completely bald aren't going to magically return, but if your hair loss is diffuse then this seems to make sense to me.

This looks outstanding! Really pleased for you.

That's ridiculous for only 4 months!! Amazing!

For the record, Demirosy does the extractions & incisions himself, and only one per day ("getting his hands dirty"!). There seems to be virtually no difference in terms of results or level or service between Bicer & Demirsoy and Demirsoy is actually slightly cheaper. You'd be in good hands with both. That said, given your Norwood level and the fact you've already had a lot of grafts transplanted previously, you might want to consider Eugenix of India, who are specialists in higher Norwood cases and can work with beard/body hair, too (with Demirsoy doesn't, to my knowledge).

Have you asked to see Dr Ball specifically and are willing to go to Portsmouth?

What you do is buzz your hair off and make your peace with it. Simple as that. (You'll look better for it, by the way - as do 99% of balding blokes). You're destined to develop side effects from finasteride. Not necessarily real, actual ones, but the placebo effect. You're coming off as exactly that type of person. If you're this worried and panicked and frantic about a drug that is absolutely un-problematic for most people and totally reversible for those less fortunate, then the very last thing you should be doing to your body is irreversible, mostly unrepairable SURGERY! That's what you should do. As for Dr Ball... If £130 gets you a thorough assessment of your hair in person, and he's able to tell you how many scalp and beard grafts you have available, and it's a good number, then you might be fortunate enough to have enough in the bank to cover you current hair loss and future hair loss. But you'll be committing to two or three surgeries, and there's no guarantee that each will work out perfectly. Dr Ball is a distinguished surgeon. I'd be happy to hand him £130 for an expert, in person analysis and assessment, and indeed I am considering getting such an assessment of my hair from him prior to any surgery I undertake.

My only issue is that my ideal times are just before Xmas, and a lot could change between now and December. I wouldn't want to book flights & surgery only to have the traffic light system change again, and the autumn/winter seems fraught problems as far as possible Covid waves & flu and so on... Might give it a month or so to assess things!

Maybe one of the Eugenix reps here can clarify, but I was sure that the Exclusive package included "Crucial extraction" by Dr. Arika? Has this been changed very recently? @Abhinay Singh

Such a huge difference already! Brilliant. The UK is about to remove India from its Red List (meaning no £1800 hotel quarantine on return to the UK)... I think I need to start looking at dates!

When you say 'temple region', are you referring to the temple points? Because if you lowered the hairline a little, filling in the problem side AND had temple point work done, then I can understand how you might start to get to the 2K range.

As someone has already said, if it's bothering you, there's a reasonable chance you won't let this go. That's fine, but please don't go getting 2,500 grafts. That's a mad amount of grafts for a bit of symmetry work. You can always get more done later, so start smaller and go from there. Also, HLC aren't cheap. If you're willing to travel to Turkey to pay that amount, you might want to also talk to some of the top Belgian clinics and probably Dr Ball at the Maitland clinic as well. You're definitely going to want a few opinions on the graft count because 2,500 sounds absolutely wild.

Mate! Looks fantastic. FANTASTIC! I'm really delighted for you. Wanna swap hair? I'm re-reading your thread actually. Obviously, not enough grafts were implanted to reach the desired density for what you wanted to do, but ultimately, I think we'd all rather a surgery undercook rather than overcook the grafts. This thread should be a valuable lesson; *start with less* - you can always have more work done later. It of course would have been better if you'd had the correct amount done from the start, and I'll be using this thread/journey as a reference for whenever I can get myself over to India. But I've just been browsing Hair of Istanbul's Instagram after my barber told me his Dad is booked in with them in March next year and... crikey! They are mega aggressive with their hairlines and you have to wonder how many of these mostly younger dudes have paid any attention to their hair loss needs 10, 15, 20+ years from now. The result after the the first pass was doubtless frustrating and stressful (but still decent by month 10), but on balance this is the best way a HT can "fail", all things considered. Thanks once again for the updates!

Honestly, if you'd posted this picture in your initial thread and said "this is my 12 month HT progress picture", everyone would have been blown away at the density and naturalness of the hairline design. People would be falling over themselves to learn more about whatever clinic it was that did this! 2,500 grafts is quite a lot of grafts - I've been quoted 2500-3000 by Eugenix in India and I'm a very obvious Norwood 3+!! My hair loss is much, much, much more advanced than yours. We're not even on the same planet... So I'm not exactly sure what or where HLC would be intending to do with/put so many grafts given you've so little loss or issue but I'd be seriously mindful that you may wish you'd better used those precious grafts 10 or 15 years from now. The lack of symmetry is something that literally no one else would ever notice except for you (and us given you've invited us to look closely at it!). If it's *really* bothering you that much, then you'll want to get several opinions and quotes so that you don't end up spending too many donor grafts which you may need later on. Better to use not enough on the first go and then get some remedial work done later, than spunk too many on the first pass and give yourself a problem down the line. Truthfully though... Just don't even bother at this stage. You'd be the classic case of a guy who absolutely doesn't need a HT (at least not yet) who ignores everyone's advice and gets one anyway... Don't be that guy!

Wow! Hadn't seen this thread - amazing result by 7 months so I'm also very keen to see another update.

This is looking great already! So fast! Regarding that bald patch on the top right of the donor area... Hard to say what or why at this stage - you're still quite early into the journey. But to me it looks insignificant and actually just looks like the kind of regularly occurring imperfection you'd expect to see on anyone's head really. It may well resolve itself with a little more time in any case. I'd certainly trade places right now!

Looks great! Are you able to share which package this patient chose for their surgery, @Abhinay Singh? Thanks

It's a great result - incredible actually. But such results are extremely rare and are as much to do with that individual patient as they are the clinic. You should never expect to get a result just like someone else; there's simply too many variables. I would also suggest not picking your potential surgery/clinic based on one excellent result. There's lots of other factors to consider and many, many excellent clinics to consider. Erdogan's clinic certainly used to be considered among the best in Turkey, but there's some doubts about that now. I've personally seen some very mixed results and some poor post-op aftercare for results that haven't turned out so well. Every top clinic on earth has a few mixed results, but what they do after the fact is what sets them apart. It seems that the clinic is maybe a bit more technician led with less involvement in surgeries from Erdogan. If you do go there, you'll want to pay whatever extra it is to have Erdogan himself involved as much as possible. If you do that, I'm sure you'd be fine.

So by my maths, that's an average of one graft fully transplanted (anaesthetic, extraction, sorting, incisions and implantation) every 4.8 seconds. 5 seconds per graft seems to me to be very, very fast. I don't want to say it's impossible (it may or may not be), but at best it seems very rushed. More probably it wasn't really 5K grafts at all. You'd need to speak with a few of the endorsed surgeons on this site about the speed per graft and see what they think is possible and likely. I'm not a surgeon, so I can't say for sure, but I'd well imagine that any top doctor will say that 5 seconds per fully transplanted graft is very, very fast - maybe even impossible. Again, this may well work in your favour; if 5K grafts weren't extracted, then luckily you'll have more left to play with for HT #2. If 5K grafts were indeed extracted, that's more concerning, because it doesn't look as though 5K grafts have been implanted, so something has happened to those grafts.

Not not necessarily, you're still in the phase before most people start to see changes. You should hope to see some noticeable development from roughly 4 months onwards, but as a general rule of thumb, 6 months is going to be a better indicator - so don't worry just yet! Also, if you are a bit worried or you think something hasn't worked, the best thing to do at this stage is seek some advice from the clinic and see what they have to say. I'm pretty sure though that they'll tell you to give it a few more months given that you're still in the early stages. If the transplanted hairs was around the existing hairs then it's certainly possible that some of those native hairs have undergone some shock loss, which might make it look a bit worse than before the HT. Don't worry - that's quite common and normal - the native hairs will grow back as well as the transplanted ones with time. Just hang in there!

Hi @Sbiza, John has given some rock solid advice there. I agree it doesn't look like 5K grafts, and the hairline looks a little pluggy BUT... Four pieces of potentially good news: 1. Regardless of the result so far, there is a positive cosmetic difference now with the framing of the face 2. If 5K grafts haven't been extracted, hopefully your donor isn't too depleted 3. Looks like you've got a decent beard so you'll have some extra resources from which to draw 4. You've done the right thing by seeking additional opinions If I were you I'd wouldn't be looking much beyond Eugenix. Yes, restrictions currently make it hard (I'm myself waiting for India to be removed from the UK's red list - so I fully understand!), but it's vitally important not to rush this - your next move is critical. Take your time! How long did you surgery take from start to finish? We should be able to roughly calculate the grafts per second transplant speed and deduce how likely it was that 5K was actually transplanted.

Bear in mind that you'll not necessarily know if finasteride is/has worked for quite some time - years even! Although you should certainly know whether you can stomach it in that time side effects-wise. I'd personally suggest getting the buzz cut done early doors. If the meds definitely aren't working then remember that a HT becomes two or three HT's in all likelihood, hence probably best to do the buzz stage of your research nice and early rather than go through the rigmarole of hair meds only to discover they haven't done anything and then realise you liked the buzzed look all along. From what I understand, PRP isn't going to do much or anything for the already bald bits, so you might be better off simplifying things down to just finasteride for now, then minoxidil down the line. Seems an unnecessary cost and hassle to me but I'm happy to admit I'm not the most well informed on PRP.

You'll ideally need to post photos for anyone - surgeon or otherwise - to offer more definitive answers to your specific case. What I will add though is that in your mid 20's, your hair loss will be in its more aggressive phase. How aggressive yours is compared to another 25 year old is another question entirely, but that does mean that yes, there is at least some hope it'll stabilise or slow down, but everyone is different. I've been a Norwood 3 since my mid 20's and am now 32. I'm still a Norwood 3, but showing some signs of diffusion on top, but nothing too critical. More of a Norwood 3+! So my own hair loss is gradual. Yours may be more aggressive or a little more gentle - it's really very hard to say what pace your hair will decline at, but your family history is a reasonable indicator of where you'll end up. Also, if you're not seeing any negative sides from the finasteride, stick with it - it may help you further down the line, or it may well have helped slow down the losses you've been getting already. For all you know, your could have shed even more hair without the finasteride.

Definitely what John says above. You aren't going to magically regain the hair that's already gone (you'll need a HT for that), but at least by being on finasteride you can firstly assess whether or not you tolerate it without issue. With more time you'll be able to assess whether it's helping with the hair loss stabilisation. You may want to consider just using finasteride on its own and introduce minoxidil later on, as it's harder to work out what's working and what isn't if you do multiple things at the same time rather than a stagnated approach. It's probably easier to be consistent as well if you just focus on one thing for now and then introduce something else down the line. But with that said, if you can be super consistent and persistent on both for the long haul then I suppose I won't matter, other than the time & financial commitments of being on both (which is another reason you may want to first monitor one on its own rather than both simultaneously). My other personal recommendation is to use the time between now and whenever you potentially get a HT to not only learn & research as John says, but buzz that mop off! If you've done this already in the past then fair enough, but I'm a big advocate of making it an essential step in your research; if you like it, great - you've saved yourself a right load of hassle, worry & cost. If you don't, then you can at least say you gave it a fair crack (3-6 months minimum I would say). Absolute worst case scenario is that for the duration of your buzz (play with different guard lengths) you'll look far better than with patchy balding hair. It'll also make the initial post-HT phase easier if you've gotten used to having short hair seeing as you'll be getting it buzzed anyway. Check out Baldcafe on YouTube and treat it as part of the research and journey. I think most guys skip over this step, but so many blokes look instantly better when they go from balding/covering up to deliberate short buzzed look. So be smart, don't rush and treat surgery as an absolute last resort and if you then decided based on a good body of research and experimenting that you still want a HT... well, you've done it exactly the way it should be done!

Ok so we can at least see where the things were implanted. Sort of looks like you had grafts placed in amongst native hair to reinforce what was already there? Hard to say without better pre & immediate post op photos. But at 3.5 months things look roughly where you'd expect. You could have had a little shock loss to native hairs if you've had hairs transplanted among them which might give the false impression that things aren't progressing but if that's the case, the shock loss will recover with a little more time. I wouldn't worry too much yet!