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Not jumping to any conclusions, not saying it is Eugenix, just had a hunch after he said it's a clinic that comes highly recommended by the site. I said I'm probably wrong and was just guessing. I have no idea who it actually is as he hasn't said

I feel like it's Eugenix based on the immediate post op pics... I could and might well be wrong of course though and I'm not asking you to confirm yet as I know you don't want to say who for now, which I respect. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I actually don't think it's going to come out bad or that they are particularly mis-angled grafts as most others have agreed with so far. I do completely understand your concerns though; it does look a little out of the ordinary, and I'd probably have them myself too, but it also kinda looks like your native hair grows in an unusual pattern of angles/almost like you have a number of big swirly cows licks on top. It almost looks as though they've tried to follow that pattern from your existing hair with the implanted hair to some degree at least to me. Again though, I could be wrong, it's a bit of a strange case really and you could be right that they are mis-angled, I'm just not so sure that they are myself. I don't really know what to make of it at this point, so I definitely do understand your concerns, but I wouldn't count this out yet.

Dr. Glenn Charles? Isn't he one of the coalition members recommend here? Either way, he should be ashamed of himself for his responses to you as he essentially just places the blame onto yourself. It's a bad result, as you already know, which happens sometimes, but the fact he's not really acknowledging that and just playing it off with the whole 'results may vary' trick (after the fact, mind you) and trying to placate you by telling you it's better than before is awful. When something like this happens, the doctor categorically should be on your side and be agreeing with you that whatever hair type or texture you have, this obviously wasn't the intended outcome.... if he thought this would be the result based on your own characteristics, he shouldn't have performed surgery on you. He knows better. To be honest, the work looked crap from a few days post op based on your pics and it's clear to me it's far more likely down to his work than your physiology or hair type. In other words, looking at day 5 onwards of your pics, I am not surprised by this outcome. So to say it's because of you is not true. Beyond this, why on earth is he trying to tell you that a 200 graft top up will set you right? You can times that number by 10 and then you're closer to what you need, but even then, I think a little more would be warranted to make you happy. Sorry about your result, surely Melvin can get involved here some way if it is the same Dr. Charles recommended by the site... although I'm not talking about a free repair - I wouldn't go back under any circumstances. For a 2nd op, depends on if youre willing to travel to Europe. If you'll only stay in NA, I would probably go to H&W.

Looking really good, Gatsby. Missed your thread initially, but very happy for you mate, I have no doubts it will come in very nicely as the months go by and you'll finally be able to put your hair woes behind you.

Yeah, I can tell you now the donor has been over-harvested and that it's not just shock-loss as the sparse area is uniform across the whole extraction zone with a clear outline or wall of hair between thick and sparse hair all the way around. It will improve somewhat as time goes on, and hopefully won't look too bad, but you're going to have a fairly clear disparity between the areas hair was taken from and where it wasn't even when it's fully healed. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, I feel for you, but on the bright side it might still grow in well, you just need to get to the bottom of those wounds ASAP.

Have you shown these pics to any docs back at home in the U.S. yet, or are you waiting to see one in person? It doesn't look great, sorry to say mate, but the biggest concern for now is addressing the infection in the recipient as others have already said.

Cause money talks unfortunately, and the cosmetic surgery tourism industry is a big player in the economy of large Turkish cities like Istanbul. A lot of money is being spent and made from it. Combine this with the fact that they're not really developed enough of a nation or government to have any real ethical qualms about having blatant displays of these sorts of practices if you scratch beneath the surface a little and you birth the development of these sort of 'go-to' destinations for cheap cosmetic surgery.

Looking good man - I started to notice the beginnings of lots of very small fine hairs coming through at a similar timeframe, so it's not crazy

Cheers guys, haha the Elvis pompadour might be a bit too much volume for my liking, but I'll take the option of actually being able to do the style all day!

To be honest, you just come across a bit stand-off ish with the words you choose to use.... I don't believe you work for the company, although I get where Melvin is coming from, but rather I think you've mentally prepared and invested yourself with this clinic, so now all the comments to re-think and cool things down are agitating you and probably making you feel as though you now have to spend even more time researching and waiting even longer to get what you want done. Problem is, you keep saying stuff like 'aggressive cancel it now and don't do it'. It's not aggressive, it's every day people with normal jobs and lives spending their free time to help a complete stranger out on the internet from making a potentially life ruining choice. No one is getting paid or reaping any personal benefits for doing so. It's complete altruismin my book, quite the opposite of aggressiveness. Hence why you come across very suspicious to people here. At the end of the day, you clearly aren't anywhere near as clued up on hair transplants as many of the people trying to help you out, and there's nothing wrong with that, but you're basically refusing to listen to anything people are advising, so why even post in the first place? If you want to go ahead with your choice, you're free to do so. People are just trying to do what's best for you because they know a lot more about this than you do.

Cheers mate - I'm sure you're not far behind me, mine still looks very sparse and thin for the most part if you were stood next to me! Very early days and 14 weeks is just the beginning, your growth has begun too and it will all pick up properly soon

Yeah, genes are complicated, especially in relation to something like hair-loss where there are a whole lot of them. Some research has been done in this very subject and some has come to the argument that lots of these genes come from the inheritance of the X chromosome, and whilst it might have some credibility, the answer is that no one really knows, at all. Quite frankly, it's impossible to predict imo and ultimately any given person inherits a random set of potential genes from each parent. You could inherit MPB genes from both parents, just your father or just your mother. All are definitely viable outcomes to you having MPB. Even if one (maternal) did contribute more to the issue on the whole/on average, it doesn't really matter and it's likely to be a mix of genes inherited from both in most cases. I myself have brothers older than me with much better hair, one is nearly 10 years older in his mid 30's and has a flat NW1 hairline. Same parents, different hair. My dad has a great head of hair with a NW2 in his 60's and all his 5 brothers are bald, so was his dad. My mum's dad had decent hair up until he died I believe, yet I was/am NW3-ish in my late 20's. No idea what combination of genes led to that, but that's the outcome. Family history is a good thing to look at as it's all we have, but it's far from an accurate predictor of where you will end up a lot of the time, you are unique, and you will inherit a unique set or combination of genes from both parents as a result. At the end of the day, many of the genes identified in MPB have been confirmed to exist on and pass down from either side and as such both parents can contribute. If either side of your family has baldness in it, which is the vast majority of people, you can certainly inherit those genes. In my own opinion, the biggest predictor or indicator of how bald you will go is as simple as the age of onset, speed of progression and type of hair loss. I think age of onset alone is less important, but when combined with rate of loss, a good picture can be painted. If you notice hair loss at say 20 and are showing signs of nw5+ by your late 20's, you can assume you'll go pretty bald. If you notice signs at the same age but are only teetering on a NW2-3 by your late 20's which was mostly lost in the first 3-4 years, then it stands to reason that the rest of your follicles unaffected are much more resistant. If they weren't, they would've balded at the same rate as the area's now barren; they've been exposed to the exact same androgen profile in your body after all. Anyway, going off track a bit there, but my point is it's a lot more fruitful to look at your own situation at a certain age, say 30 ish, to figure out where you're headed as opposed to looking at relatives. A lot of the signs will be there at that point in life, especially when examined with a microscope.

Hi man, Yeah, as John says, Bicer is good and I do like her work, but I personally don't believe she's in the same league as your fellow Portuguese surgeons in Dr. P and Dr. F. Imo they are both some of the best in the world and are direct competitors for any of the big names, they're as good as good gets. Dr. P is 2.6 EUR per graft and Dr. F is 3 EUR per graft, so not much more expensive than Bicer who is now 2 EUR per graft and you have the convenience of staying in your own country with a team of native speakers. Dr. P has lot's of results on the Spanish forum, around about 60 patient cases, so you can see them on there, give me a DM if you want a link as I can't post in here. I would cancel and go with either Ferreira or Pinto.

Some more pics without flash as I realised I haven't added any closeups without yet either... really starting to pick up now and I suppose this is a better reflection of how it looks to the naked eye which might help people looking at this in the future. Very happy with how it's going, I'll hit week 14 on Thursday.

These are the guys/clinic (the LA branch) who did that Zac from 'the try guys' on YouTube- his result is shit and their whole set up is an absolute nightmare for anyone who actually knows anything about hair transplants. Firstly, this is clinical and is a surgery, you should actually want it to feel that way with all the proper medical protocols in place and for it to be treated and taken as such by the Dr and his clinic. From what I saw in Zacs YouTube video (he documented it all on their channel), they do haircuts, whatever sort of salon treatments, SMP and hair transplants.... this is a huge no-no. Hair cuts/a barbers and hair transplants should not be marketed in the same sort of offering or even really be in the same sentence. It's bizarre and a huge red flag. Secondly, and most importantly, they use and rely on the ARTAS machine for surgery and hype it up in said video as this ultra precise, modern piece of kit that is top of the line and will essentially ensure a good result blah blah blah. If I recall correctly they even made some ridiculous claims about there being no scarring etc due to their use of it. To fill you in quickly, ARTAS is pretty much awful and 99 percent of surgeons who use it are also going to be awful. Using it is perhaps the biggest red flag of any HT clinic in my eyes, it's an instant no and I would never ever consider a clinic who used it let alone marketed it as this great product. Every world class doctor in the world uses their hands and a punch to extract grafts, ARTAS is massively looked down upon by these surgeons and anyone knowledgeable about HT's. It's crap and a uses huge punch. Beyond all of that... they are not known or respected, have no patient posted cases online and I can't express how much you shouldn't go to them. Trust me, cancel it right away and count yourself lucky. I don't care if your deposit was thousands of dollars, take the L and be forever grateful that you posted this question before going ahead with this surgery. If you tell us your budget and willingness to travel, we can give you a list of great surgeons who are a safe bet and very likely to give you good results.

Yeah, I think a lot of the time there's little point and it overall makes the surgeons job easier to just shave, but when it's a very isolated part of the head like either side of the hairline in my case and they shave a good 1-2cm into the area anyway and are thus able to see the hair directions, angles etc regardless, it can work out just fine.

Cheers John - much appreciated mate!

Thanks man - yeah I think another month it will have filled in more and look a lot more dense and then by month 5 it will probably be hard to tell anything has been done even with my hair slicked back like in the photos above. The no shave did make things a lot easier, have been able to hide it since month 1 (when the top and sides grew back in with each other normally) with a fringe hairstyle and some hair product.

Portugal is Dr's Pinto and Ferreira - both great.

Seeing as I've only posted close ups of the recipient area so far, thought I'd post some of the hair from a bit further back to show the outline of the hairline forming and how it actually looks in normal conditions. Excuse the diamond shaped head - need a hair cut and I'm trying to grow it out a bit on the sides at what will be the new part line/s so I can style it properly sooner rather than later. I normally just brush it forward at the moment anyway, only pushed it back for the pics. (week 13 today)

Looking good - growth is definitely underway now, another month and things will really start to take shape!

😂 Cheers mate - I can think of worse problems to have!

Asian hair is actually usually quite a bit thicker or coarser than caucasian hair is in terms of its individual characteristics. By that, I mean each hair strand itself is usually a lot thicker in diameter than caucasian hair is; it's usually very straight and thick. Caucasian hair usually has a higher density though, so whilst it might be thinner in diameter in more cases than not when compared to Asians, there is usually more of it on the head and thus the overall donor supply is greater (but this is obviously balanced out to a large degree by the fact that you will get more coverage with less grafts if the hair itself is thicker). These are all generalisations though, and white people from places like Spain and Italy will usually have pretty thick hair and good density along with it. Similarly, I believe people from SEA Asia usually have thicker hair than people from other places in Asia, so it also varies within its own sort of ethnic group just like it does with say Northern vs Southern Europeans.

Have a look on Recuperartupelo as well as Recuperarelpelo (I assume you found the second forum I've listed there, as it's the main one, but the first one has all Pinto's cases organised in a neat section). Dr. Ferreira is also a great choice.

Would be good if you could create a thread to post some pictures of your situation so we can advise on what you likely need. Dr. Pinto has lots of patient posted reviews on the Spanish forum, around about 60 of them last time I looked, and is very popular in Spain and Portugal and their respective forums. As @JC71says, these people don't really come on here just as we in the UK, US, Canada and Australia etc don't really visit their forums as people like to post in their native languages for the most part for obvious reasons. As far as English speaking posters/forum members, I'm pretty much the first one to post a pinto case, hence why you won't find much in the way of reviews on here or say the UK forum for him. If you want, I can DM you the links to his cases on the Spanish forums so you can look for yourself and decide if you think he's a good fit for you, just shoot me a message and I'll send it over to you.