Berba11

Yea I completely understand why you'd ask - it's the right question to ask for sure! But you won't get any good answers from photos alone. Your scalp needs to be inspected in person, and that's probably why you only received a generic answer from Eugenix.

This, or take a short holiday somewhere cheap (could you visit close friends or family for a couple weeks?) in order to get through the most obvious phase of the HT (scabbing & so on). You don't really have many other options, and you can only start safely wearing a hat a week or two after the HT anyway (your surgeon will advise on this - each tend to suggest differing timeframes for hats, buzz cuts etc).

Sensible. Also, no one can tell you what your 'life time donor' amount is based on photos. It's need a proper in person inspection by a surgeon, plus, it will always be harder to say for sure when you're younger, as a lot can change very quickly when it comes to hair loss.

@Mggm - do you have a thread of your own progress that we can see? If you haven't done one, it would be great if you started one!

@Luca456It would greatly help people see what has really gone on if you're able to upload high quality immediate pre & post op photos that the clinic themselves took. Do you have those photos/can you get them?

I think key to your receiving some kind of refund here will be seeking professional assessments on the number of grafts that have actually been extracted & implanted. I understand you've started this process already, which is good. You'll want all of this in writing from any surgeons that look over the graft count, and you'll also want any responses to your queries and challenges in writing from the surgery you went to. For example, if the clinic are telling you they put more than one graft into a single incision, you'll want that sort of thing in writing for sure!

Not personally, but from a strictly healing perspective, you're in the very early stages, so any pits, redness, patchiness, lumps & bumps... Nothing to worry about this early in the day. It doesn't look as though you've been butchered or anything too severe like that. You've been sold way short of the grafts you were told you were having transplanted, and the hairline work doesn't look as though it's been refined with any in-built irregularities - looks a little straight & linear (whether this will be a problem in your case will require more time - it may turn out fine!), but these are easily corrected/not the worst problems you can run into with a HT. I do very much hope you can recover a chunk of the funds you put in though.

Timings in that case sound about right, but as you say, the proof is in the pudding. At least the surgery doesn't sound as though it was rushed, which may stand you in good stead going forward.

The redness is something that some people experience worse than others, so don't worry about that too much at this stage. You're seeing hairs start to sprout now, which is good. 4 months is usually the point at which hairs start to emerge, so just hang in there! You're on track!

Ps, your 11 day post-op donor area pics don't look too bad at all. In fact I think they look fairly standard for a donor area that won't have fully healed and may just be suffering a little bit of shock loss. Obviously, you'll have to wait a few months to properly assess that but it's probably nothing to worry about at this stage. My fingers are certainly crossed for you. And frankly if they have undercooked the extraction, that's probably terrific news. I suspect that if this clinic had taken 2,500 grafts from the back of your head, your donor would be in a right state.

@jim_hair - I'd echo everyone else's initial sentiments. One thing that hasn't come up yet... How long (if you recall), were you actually in surgery for? Excluding lunch breaks etc...? Knowing how many hours the surgery took (from administering anaesthetic through to the last graft being implanted) can help give a pretty firm idea of how likely it is that 2,500 grafts were actually extracted/implanted. For a careful, diligent, non-rushed surgery, you'd likely be looking at around the 5-6 hour mark (maybe more) for ≈2500. It's not an exact science - some clinics will be quicker than others, some will split the surgery over two days... But it will allow you to work out to a fairly accurate degree how many seconds it was taking them to fully transplant each graft. When you get down the 4 or 5 seconds per graft range, alarm bells should probably start ringing.

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!