JDEE0

There are of course differences between Dr. P and Dr. F, both are different doctors after all with their own approaches and methodologies when it comes to surgery. With that said, I'll read between the lines a bit to answer what you're actually asking for which is a comparison of their skill and results. In my opinion, not really, they're both on a very similar level and it just comes down to which you get that best gut feeling with (of course in addition to scanning all of their patient results thoroughly and deciding which stylistic outcomes you prefer more, although both approach things very similarly in terms of designs and conservativeness etc). They both actually worked together at clinica ecrilla in Bilbao, Spain for a number of years and it seems developed very similar approaches in their time here. They're also both good friends who live in the same city, they even have shared nurses/techs between each other (unsure if they still do when needed), as Dr. Pinto told me himself. They also are two of the only doctors who take the approach of a few surgeries per week, with everything done by them apart from the sorting and loading of the grafts, so they both have that extreme hands on approach in common. Personally, I chose Dr. Pinto because he has 60+ patient posted results on the Spanish forum(s) and, as has been said already, the overwhelming majority are unquestionably above average outcomes. Dr. F unfortunately doesn't have as many simply because he was working at Lorenzo's clinic for a number of years whilst Pinto had opened his own practice, so he was unable to publish them under his name so to speak. But he's now got a decent number on here to look at. Emilio's was also what sealed the deal for me after this, he's a super nice guy who really takes an interest and has lots of knowledge with all things HT and he really is an asset to the clinic, I've spoken to lots of clinics and consulted with them and it's rare you get someone who you feel is truly trustworthy as I did with him. Hope that helps, but in short, can't go wrong with either, they're two of the best in the world.

Looking good man, now is generally the worst time but things will start to change for the better anytime in the next 6 weeks or so, at least that you'll visually notice in the mirror anyways. Any really short, thick stubbly hairs that are still coming out aren't dead grafts, just shed hairs that got trapped in the skin. Some of them just have a hard time shedding on their own but if you were to take a pair of tweezers and pull on one of them for example, it'd come out with 0 resistance. Happened to me too.

Was watching the UFC last night and noticed Paul Craig clearly had a (not very good) HT, I just googled it and turns out he went to this same clinic.

As good as it gets - looks great. Congrats man.

I think the bigger issue is the type of magnification and the overheads required. Whereas a pair of loupes are cheap, they're really only used to see where you're implanting/extracting as you're going along and doing so. The important part comes when sorting the grafts under a proper stereoscopic type of microscope; whilst these themselves can be expensive (I think the ones my surgeon Dr. Pinto used are about 5 grand each), I don't think that's the main factor behind not using them, but rather that you have to put resources towards inspecting the grafts under it, dissecting them and sorting them properly into groupings etc. Doing this obviously takes up more manpower and time and is less efficient from a purely time or revenue based standpoint; it's much quicker to quickly check them with the naked eye as they're extracted and just roughly guess what each graft is what in terms of FU groupings etc and roll with that. To be honest though, either way, I really do think that Digis issues were more the result of a complete lack of care with planning, even without checking under a proper microscope, there shouldn't be tens and tens of multi's packed into tight areas of his temples for example... maybe the lack of proper magnification would explain a few here and there, but to me it seems like they really just didn't even sort the grafts properly even by eye, they just implanted them however they felt in areas by the looks of it. Dr. Keser in Turkey for example doesn't use microscopes either, just loupes, but he's a pretty good surgeon and has really good results consistently. Sure he might have the odd double here and there that another surgeon who does use magnification wouldn't have, but nothing like this with 20+ in a small area. Btw, looking good Digi, regardless of all the issues that you have every right to be upset with, it's come along well for the most part and it looks good. Once you finish your electrolysis and maybe have a little touch up at 12 months, I think it will be perfect.

Can you post some pics? It's still early and not super unusual to have little to no growth at this point. I would say most people will have something beginning to sprout at this point at least, but it by no means indicates it's going to be a failure if you haven't yet.

No worries mate - thanks for following along

Thanks for the kind words, yeah I will include some profile shots with my head in my next update, no probs

Thanks a lot for the encouragement mate, it's much appreciated. Yeah I know, don't get me wrong, I in no way think that I'm behind or that it's not going to plan, just that I probably intentionally searched out too many cases where people look like they're at month 6+ at month 4 hoping I would be in a similar boat, so probably just a little bit of mild disappointment/paranoia on my part, but that's my fault haha. I am grateful for the way it's turning out so far deep down! Here's to hoping you're correct my friend, would be nice to ditch the cap completely as soon as... Yeah, I honestly thought it would be more like 2300-2700 as a rough estimate before the big day, to be fair though he said the recipient area measured out was 38cm2 I think, and he didn't seem to go beyond it (my hair wasn't really thinning beyond it as he drew it encompassing areas of my thinning hair and then shaved the hairs off to leave just the outline of the marking as can be seen in my pre-op pics), so it is enough for over 50 grafts per cm2... maybe I just have narrower head widthways or something haha. Either way, it is a conservative amount and I agree most would probably have used more. Cheers mate, thanks for taking the time!

True, thanks for taking the time to put em side by side, it does illustrate the difference quite clearly and you're certainly right!

Cheers guys - much appreciated. Yeah, it is quite 'dense' and even already in terms of the amount of hairs sprouted, no real weak spots when I take a pic with flash and zoom in, just all still very short and thin still, I think once they grow out/thicken up and fall flat against my scalp instead of sticking out then it will look fine, but there's also still some hairs sprouting here and there that I can see too, so maybe a few more months for those to also catch up and add effect.

He does do it sometimes I believe, but he's very pro FUT and fairly anti FUE overall, so he doesn't do that much of it. As a result, I agree that you should probably consider someone else for FUE - he's simply not going to have the same experience or hours put in with this technique as other doctors will, so it wouldn't make sense imo.

Adding a few more pictures from today in harsher lighting (daylight stood right by the window), all with my hair completely soaked out of the shower, hopefully shows the situation a bit better. Well, the first 3 are actually just in the bathroom mirror with fairly favourable lighting (window on the other side of the room, not face on) and the face on pic shows that my hair looks decent from this angle, but the next two where my head is turned either side show the weaknesses I was talking about. The following pictures after the first 3 are the ones with direct natural light from the window. Overall though I'm pretty happy with where I am at and think it's shaping up very nicely - I'm confident it will turn out great.

Thanks mate, I'm not sure on the exact number, and it varies from the hairline zone itself to the areas behind it, but I believe the highest density was 55+ grafts per cm2. Dr. P told me this himself as I asked during surgery. I believe the recipient area measured was 38cm2, so with 2000 grafts, enough for an average of just above 50cm2. But, I had some native hairs left still that were shaved down in a fairly decent portion of my total recipient zone (as can kinda be seen in my pre op pics), so it's higher in some areas as there was already hair in some places, which meant that more of those grafts could be used in other areas for higher density, if that makes sense. I've attached some pics I took from day 11 post op that I haven't uploaded before, can try and count the density if you wanna:

No worries my friend. Mr Rolandas did a video on how to get OM (in the UK), but in short, it's probably easiest to ring up a HT doctor and go in for a quick consult where they will write you a prescription. I do have one from Dr. Pinto, but I haven't tried to use it yet, not sure if UK pharmacies will take it or not.

Thanks for the encouragement man. I know, I probably am ahead of schedule, don't get me wrong I do believe it's going to turn out pretty good in the end, it's just a bit jarring when you look at it in one mirror and think wow it's coming along and then you go into a different room with harsher light and catch yourself side on and it looks completely see through! To be expected at this stage anyways, I think I've just looked at too many results where people are rocking full growth nearly at this point, but as we all know, it's not the norm at all.

4 month/Week 16 update (tomorrow) - Day 111: Tomorrow marks 16 weeks since my HT, tried to provide a variety of pictures to show the current situation. Some are in optimal conditions and look better than reality (to be honest I feel like all the pictures in general look a bit better than reality for the most part, it's at the point where lighting and angles make a huge difference in real life and my opinion on things can change by the hour when looking in the mirror throughout the day). As I say above, sometimes I think it's coming along great, for example when I'm facing straight on in the mirror, it looks pretty good, but then I turn my head to the side and its completely see through and I feel like I'm nowhere near where I want to be yet. Some of the pictures are in better lighting than others and look much more full, and I have included some of my hair soaking wet and slicked back out of the shower. Overall I guess I can't complain and it's coming along nicely for the 16 week mark, just starting to get a little paranoid of whether I will be happy in the end or not, but we will see. The hairs are also really short still and just sticking straight out, probably doesn't help that the surrounding hair is so long and dense and makes it stand out more. Let me know what you guys think - cheers!

Thanks man, I appreciate it! Just put it to the back of your mind for now would be my advice, I did that and wasn't really too nervous myself up until the night before when I was sat in a hotel room on the other side of Europe by myself and had a bit of a wtf am I doing moment, but I knew I was as informed and prepared on HT's and my choice of doc as anyone can really ever be, so I just told myself to shut up and cracked on with it. You'll be alright and it will come around quick enough. As far as the fin, I personally recommend everyone to take it or at least try it out - I was also in your shoes once and was scared of taking it, but I just decided to stop being so irrational and fearful of anecdotal extremes and at least give it a go, I've never looked back. If you decide its not for you for whatever reason then it is what it is, but there's no reason to not try it. It will help massively over the course of your life as the years add up. I just use finasteride (0.5mg daily) right now, I need to get some Keto shampoo as Dr. P informed me I have Seb. Dermatitis, but I just haven't gotten round to adding it back into my regimen yet. I used it in the past and it just made my hair feel all dry. I think I'll add in oral minoxidil, never bothered with it before (oral or topical), more of just a me being lazy thing again but I'll get it sorted at some point in the near future.

Well, to be clear, I was basing that on the recipient area - there's no way that's nearly 5500 grafts when looking at the size of the area and the density implanted (which looks fine, my point is that it looks fairly standard in terms of density and for said area it would need to be unusually densely packed to make it the claimed number imo). I can see around about 3000 grafts. As @Gasthoerersays, this would be a good thing as it means you have way more donor in the tank. Only potential problem is that they could have taken 5000+ but not implanted them all due to high transection rates etc, hopefully not, do you have any clear pics of the donor to get a better idea?

I'm no doctor, but it's not eczema, clearly some sort of infection considering the circumstances (i.e. you've just had your head punctured thousands of times). Whether it was necrotic or not, who knows, I would have hoped the doctors/derms you saw at the time would have been able to tell you that. Again, I'm not a doctor, but I would think considering it's a whole month post op now and the infection has clearly subsided that you are out of the woods and you don't have to worry about it spreading or worsening anymore. Although the grafts in that spot might never grow, who knows. You went to a cheap hair mill, so they are likely at fault for having (what I can imagine are) sub standard hygiene practices which led to an infection, but this sort of thing does happen with any clinic from time to time, so it's impossible to tell for sure. Also, you haven't had 5250 grafts, that is a lie, probably 3000 max, but I think closer to 2500.

Haha, it's normal mate. I think we all do it, I certainly found myself taking lots of pictures and comparing them every few days for a while. Once I saw some baby hairs just start to pop through at 6-7 weeks in, I couldn't help myself to see how it was progressing, but now at week 15 and the hair growing in nicely, I've sort of just stopped as I know it's on it's way in now and I no longer have the anxiety of 'will it grow' etc. You'll be there too before you know it, just hold on for a few months and wait it out as patiently as possible.

You're in the middle of shedding, it's completely normal to have patches of hair missing (actually at this is minimal shedding compared to most, including me). 5-6 weeks is way too early for there to be any signs of growth in most cases, no need to worry. As for smoking, I highly doubt it. It's obviously best not to smoke yada yada but honestly it's really not going to make or break your HT. Try to cut back as much as possible, but don't stress about it.

I understand the point you're trying to make, and I agree with it completely; I personally have 0 qualms calling out a result from any surgeon and am the last person to censor my opinion because X doc/clinic performed it. In this case, I just genuinely don't know if the angles are actually off or not. That's the only reason I personally am defending this (for lack of a better word), not because it's Eugenix who carried it out. I'm simply just on the fence; I've seen similar-ish cases on the Spanish forum where I initially thought that the angles were really weird, and then I got to the end of the thread and the results were absolutely amazing. In fact, I could link one right now from my own surgeon, Dr. Pinto, where I distinctly remember saying to myself why the hell are the angles all strange and different to all his other cases and that it seemed quite off, but a few pages later, it turned out really good. It wasn't as strange looking as this one, granted, but it definitely caught my attention and I immediately questioned it. As a result, I really just cannot decide in this case whether I think this is a poor job or not, and I'm impartially just leaning towards that not being the case right now because I have a hunch it isn't. But time will tell.

Haha of course mate, just don't share them around too much. Nah, what can I say, I must have a keen eye for detail - I was around about 60-70 percent sure my guess was correct just based on the very edges of the hairline, the temple points and the fact he said the doc used slits/is recommended here! To OP though since I'm here, like I said initially, I really don't think this is some grave error of misangulation and rather think it was intentional due to your native hair directions and also just the way you healed up which caused some of the grafts (skin itself more accurately) to kinda bunch up in some areas. It's done now regardless, so just try not to spend the next 3-4 months worrying non stop as it won't do anything but send you insane.

Turkey won't be affected at all seeing as it is a NATO member, besides a large number of other factors. Either way, Turkey is actually not a good place to go for HT's despite all you've probably read online. It's a good place to go and get your head messed up by heavily marketed clinics, but in reality you don't wanna be going there for the most part (there are some good clinics, but you're referring to popular hair mills here I assume).