NW8

This pic was taken at 15 days

This one at 23 days. 

So I think my shedding has already started. 

On 9/14/2021 at 11:06 AM, spacemanspiff said:

Can you please post about your experience going to HLC , the clinic, and how the doctors treated you?

Very curious. IMO you didnt need a HT at this point but good job going ahead anyways

I live on west coast so basically I had to travel a long way and there were two stops on the way. Communication through the clinic is through email and whatsapp they give you your drivers number and someone else's number that you can call and ask questions or message them if you have any questions. More often than not I would just email the clinic as I would receive longer answers to questions and the time difference between me and them is a lot. 

I tried messaging the driver that the flight was gonna be 30 minutes late but it didn't go through and he was waiting at the airport for like 1 hour he said, but he picked me up grabbed my bags and went straight to the clinic. He was nice and glad that I made it lol he didn't speak English too well there's also another driver that speaks a bit better English but I don't think he drives as often due to health problems. 

HLC has two buildings, one floor of the left building is the 'hotel', it's basically a normal hotel. I think this floor was probably new as other reviewers talked about sharing rooms or staying at hotels across the street but this was literally next door to the clinic and you eat breakfast and lunch at the top of the building which is provided. They also have room service but I never got this.

So when I arrived at the clinic the girl that shows you around was there she briefly talked to me and showed me my room and told me to get settled. I wanted to ask more questions but it's alright she always seemed busy. There's always 1 person that is at the hotel area and the guy that I talked to there was nice.

At this point it was basically 5-6pm so I decided to explore the city I walked to the nearby park and it was filled with people on a Saturday, the area the clinic is in is nice it's mainly taxis or Mercedes Benz driving around it's close to where all the embassies are in Turkey. From the park I walked down the street and basically just followed the crowds and explored. I'm 6'3'' white guy wearing shorts so I probably stood out a bit but nobody bothered me or cared, I just went along my business. I don't think there is a huge tourism aspect to Ankara so you're not gonna get people trying to sell you things etc.

The next day my plan was to go to the city. The guy I met from the day before was outside and he was really helpful he helped me exchange some dollars for Turkish Lira and he showed me this taxi button that is outside the clinic that you can click anytime if you need a taxi real fast. I go to the city see a few museums, the Ankara Castle, parks, and the mausoleum. I walked to everything didn't take a taxi until I went back to the clinic. The city seems safe everywhere that I went to. There are actually security guards and police everywhere around the city, they are in the parks just walking around at entrance, etc. 

Now the surgery. You eat breakfast at like 7:30am and right after breakfast at the same table they bring in all the paperwork that you need to sign basically telling you the risks and all that stuff you should already know about. There were 2 other guys getting surgery with me that day, and one guy brought his sister. We all go to the main clinic that is also about 4-5 floors tall. The clinic building is very nice, it looks extremely clean inside and organized.  We go to the 3rd floor and just chill for a second in the waiting area, talk to the others getting their surgery that day. They have a TV and video playing in the background that shows all the procedures they do. HLC does A LOT. They do all kinds of lipo suction, rhinoplasty, fillers, prp injections, breast augmentations etc. Actually the first day I was there I saw a girl that I believe got rhinoplasty done at the clinic. 

After this they send you in the 'surgery' area of the clinic you put on plastic sheets on your shoes so that this area doesn't get dirty, they do the blood tests on you and you wait a bit outside this area again. They call you in again, I was first and this time all the doctors were there. Ozgur asks me questions about my balding what I want done etc. I tell him this stuff and he warns me of future hairloss etc. He measured my facial thirds and made 2 dots on my face how low I can make the hairline. I went with the lowest one and then he did the corners and I could hardly tell a difference in that one so I went with the more squared one. Then they shaved the hair again lower so they can fix the hairline easier as the first time they buzz you it isn't all the way down. At this point I mentioned that I wanted my temples also done, but he told me it was too late as we shaved the second time, I think it would've been hard to see how to design it I guess, I was a little disappointed that I wasn't getting temples done as well but it's not the end of the world. So he fixes up my hairline as it's easier now that the hair is shaved more. I forgot to mention but throughout this process all the other doctors are watching and they're saying stuff to each other. So I had like 5 doctors looking at my hairline design and commenting on it. So he fixes it up a bit and I mention that one corner is not completely symmetrical, I actually correct it twice and after the second one it still isn't and he says don't worry we're going to look once more at the hairline before we do it. 

So they measure how many grafts and have two options for me. One with just hairline one with hairline 1350, one with also further back at 20g/cm2 at 450 grafts. I do that one. After this you leave the room and pay so that you can get started on the surgery. 

I pay and then wait a little bit for the next girl to check out my hairline and finalize it before going in for surgery. She immediately sees whats wrong instantly and fixes it. I was happy with the final hairline design and ready for surgery. I think I waited a couple more minutes and then got started on surgery. They give you sedatives and I was out of it. I think Ozgur was there in the beginning in the room, there were like 2 nurses always there, and I think Dr. Akin did all my extractions and Dr. Umut did the implantation. I fell asleep through most of it I think. In the beginning actually when they extract your hairs from the back and have your face rest on their chair it was pretty uncomfortable because the chair presses into your forehead, but after that it was fine. I didn't even feel the anesthetic injections. Towards the end when anesthesia was wearing off in my donor I could feel some discomfort because your donor that just got surgery is laying on a towel. 

They did two sessions. With a break for lunch in-between. After this you're basically done.

The next day they take off your bandages take more pictures, and you speak to your doctor about what your after surgery care is. They give you some pills to take, some spray to spray your grafts every 2 hours and some lotion. Taking off the bandages hurt more than the surgery tbh. 

I did hit my head the morning I left at the clinic because the shower door is too small for me to leave without ducking. Thankfully I just barely missed most my grafts I got extremely lucky. I think I actually damaged a graft by hitting it with the top of the door as it was bleeding after this, this was at the back of the hair so I wasn't stressing about losing a couple grafts in the very back. I also very slightly touched my grafts in the car on the way to the PCR test I needed to do. I told Dr. Umut about this and he looked closer and said it was fine.

Overall it was a good experience, if you have anymore questions I can definitely answer them.

4 minutes ago, MachoVato said:

HLC has the approach to treat your thinning area as if it's going to go bald in the future. At your age, that's probably a good idea. They did the same to me. I thought they would go with a lower density behind the hairline, but they said it's better to treat that area as if it's going to fall out. So they went to 40 grafts/cm2.

And HLC has a bias towards dense packing. And it looks like they harvested a lot of multis (triples and up) grafts. I would fully expect a great result!

That makes a lot of sense. They were worried about future balding which is why they suggested the 450 grafts as well in the area in the back at 20 g/cm2. My hair looks perfectly fine in the pics I posted but there is definitely thinning throughout my hair that reaches pretty far back. Hopefully finasteride continues working throughout the years, but in which case it becomes less effective, I can see how I will need this extra density definitely and this could've prevented a touch up hair transplant in the future. I wouldn't want to go bald for another 6 months again! 

Thanks for the advice!

4 hours ago, Andrei said:

Again hlc used a way to much grafts for such a  tiny area, not good. 

What is curios they impanted a lots af grafts in a area where you do not have any problems, but i think money are very important and the gratfs count will fill their pockets. Happy growing , will be definetly a good result , your starting point was almost no bald.

I do agree, it seemed like they lowered my hairline not that much for the amount of grafts. About 1350 was used in the first section of the hairline and 450 in the back. I wonder if I should've gone with a lower hairline, this is as low as they recommended so I went with this. I will wait for the final results before coming to a personal conclusion. Right now I just hope it looks good when all is said and done, which should be the case.

Which is the area that has no problems did you say?

On 9/14/2021 at 11:06 AM, spacemanspiff said:

Can you please post about your experience going to HLC , the clinic, and how the doctors treated you?

Very curious. IMO you didnt need a HT at this point but good job going ahead anyways

Yeah I'll make a more detailed post in the next couple days.

19 minutes ago, Gasthoerer said:

Congratulations for taking this step and great that you keep documenting your case. Do you have pics before the surgery with the drawn hairline? 

Happy growing and stay strong during the waiting. 

Yes I forgot to add it. It's not very good I will ask the clinic for some of the photos they took of me before and after the transplant. 

Update:

So I had my surgery on Monday with a total of 1809 grafts. I will post a few update pics and some more pics in the coming days. 

On this last one you can see how much lower the hairline is from the mole on the left and I think I got the red dots in the middle the same based on skin quality around the area. 

Overall I'm very happy with the process and I'm happy with the hairline. Ozgur measured my face and decided how low I can go for facial proportions, I decided with the lower one. 

They said 1350 grafts will go into the front hairline with 50 g/cm^2 and if I want to I can go with about 450 grafts behind the hairline at a density of 20 g/cm^2, in case of future balding which I decided to do. 

Here is the graft types used. 

This one was taken Friday and surgery was Monday. 

On 9/7/2021 at 8:37 AM, JTM said:

How did you do your morph photo? 

For that one I used faceapp to combine my face with another persons and then I over layed the original and the edited and I erased the originals hair on the pic so it exposes the edited version that is layered underneath it.

On 9/1/2021 at 12:14 PM, Gasthoerer said:

This "round" hairline seems to be your normal one, therefore a standard hairline for the average AGA patient might be not the right way. On the other hand: The aggressive design you have shown looks very pleasant (but would require profile pics too for final judgement). Also, it requires a lot of grafts and high density to pull it off.

I did not want to criticise HLC hairline process at all. I have no doubt that they are great. My point is: There are objective topics like facial structure, guidelines, donor availability compared to amount of loss etc. but in the end there is also a "design" aspect to it. This is really subjective. It is a tough decision to make at the day of surgery and we have quite some examples here of users being unhappy with the decision they made. If you have a chance to shift this part earlier (maybe even only a day) it might help and ease your mind.  

There is no reason to believe hair would not grow in the the bald spot in the center of your hairline. It is just the point of most aggressive balding so FIN does not grow anything back. 

That is good, I was thinking maybe my hair isn't growing there due to some other reason besides MPB like maybe an immune disease but I have no confirmed immune diseases, and because my hairline improved on finasteride I know that my balding is definitely at least partly due to that. 

On 9/1/2021 at 7:14 AM, ML488 said:

Who gave you this number? That would be with the absolute most dense packing possible which I would imagine isn't really necessary (or worth doing) in most cases. In this guys case however, I could understand it given how his hair is very strong other than the area of loss and it doesn't look like he'll need any other surgeries anytime soon.

Yeah they told me they will do 50 g/cm^2.

On 9/1/2021 at 7:48 AM, MachoVato said:

6 inches would be about 760 grafts. Add a few more if you close your temples, too. My hairline is 7 inches. But it just goes to show how the number of grafts can change a lot based on where you draw the line. 

My hairline is less than 6 inches, but the middle part is more bald so some more would need to be added there. Do you think that with my hair quality 50 g/cm^2 should look natural?

9 minutes ago, JohnAC71 said:

F2F = Face to Face.. 

Ahh ok. I've drawn a hairline with a pen before but its not that great, what do they use to draw the hairlines on?

The thing I am most concerned of is the bald spot in the middle. Seems like it didn't improve as much on finasteride as some other areas but looks like it did improve somewhat. My concern is the ability of transplanted hair to grow in this region. 

2 hours ago, Gasthoerer said:

1. Yes, your hairline shape (besides the similarity) in the middle is totally different than mine, and with its round shape a little uncommon for an Caucasian male. It would be good to see some pictures from the side and also some when you where younger. It appears to me as this (round) shape is just your normal hairline, and it also suits you well IMO. Maybe a "conventional" hairline doesn't suit you...I would try to get a F2F with a drawn hairline prior to the transplant and have some nice pics from all angles. Good to think a little bit about the hairline you will have for the rest of you life. 

2. You do and did your homework and therefore maximized your chances 🙂 

Hi, thanks for getting back to me.

I don't know what an F2F is? 

Yeah hairline design is very complex imo. I've done morphs of myself with all different kinds of hairlines and I do think a straighter hairline suits me better but it would require of course more grafts as my corners are low. I don't think its possible to get a hairline as good quality as this morph and also its most likely too aggressive, and would be risky going that deep? But here is one example. 

My hairline has basically always been uneven as far as I can remember and did recede slightly during high school. 

At 14 years old, I wouldve had a pretty straight hairline if the left side was the same as the right side.

At 18 years old

These two here, first one was a year before finasteride the next one was a couple months ago almost 2 years after finasteride. It's short hair but I think some regrowth is visible from the moles on my head. 

Bisanga has this hairline design video that I haven't analyzed my hairline using. I was actually just thinking that HLC's hairline design would be good enough? Not sure. 

What are your thoughts? 

13 hours ago, Egy said:

You start from an good situation, you will surely have an excellent final result, you are entrusting yourself to one of the best clinics in Turkey.  Good luck

I really hope so!

13 hours ago, JohnAC71 said:

1500 grafts would definitely be enough to tweak/reinforce your hairline. Already on meds you are in a perfect position going forward ! Can’t wait to seeing your result posted 👌 thanks 🙏 

Yes I don't think I need many grafts either, I will definitely post updates.

10 hours ago, Gatsby said:

@NW8I have to be honest. I don't think you even need a hair transplant. Not at this stage. I don't know how old you are but I truly think that two years of finasteride has been a success! I would continue with it. All the best.

I'm 28 1/2 years old, I am very grateful that finasteride works for me, as it doesn't work on some others. I've experienced some hairline regrowth, much more hair quality gains and density. I like how my hair looks now compared to before but I don't think my hairline is aesthetic with how it balds down the middle, slightly uneven, combined with my forehead not being the best for rounded hairline look. 

9 hours ago, Legend007 said:

I wouldn’t trade the natural hairline u have now for a manufactured one . 

If my hairline was a normal V pattern I wouldn't even consider hair transplant but it balds down the middle. I do hope my results aren't noticeable unless someone is really looking.

8 hours ago, Newyear newhair said:

I have to agree, your hair still looks great. Plenty time in the future for HT, try meds for now

I've been on finasteride for 2 years now, I don't use minoxidil because of the chance it effects my skin quality. I have a derminator 2 but don't really use it as it hurts a lot. 

8 hours ago, rob7331 said:

I'm usually in agreement with other posters on this board, but for once I disagree. Op is 28 - you have a pretty good sense of where your hairline is headed at that age, especially if you've stabilized on finasteride for 2 years. If OP is unhappy with the current situation and believes they have "maxed out" per say on non-surgical options, then a conservative hairline restoration from a reputable surgeon is absolutely a feasible choice. It's reasonable to want to spend your late 20s and 30s with a full head of hair.

The recession in the hairline is clear in what is otherwise an immaculate head of hair. Get some more opinions OP.

1mg finasteride seems to stop my balding. I tried switching to .5mg finasteride and 2 months later the difference was noticeable in loss of hair day to day. 

6 hours ago, MachoVato said:

Congrats and best of luck!

Keep us up to date with your progress!

Thank you!

4 hours ago, Gasthoerer said:

Just to give perspective. Looking at your pics you might start by only fixing the center of your W-Hairline with 400ish FU: Low risk, big reward.

Little things can go a long way with this hairline type, I know it personally 😁

I saw your thread you have an amazing donor area, and your conservative approach is ideal. Your balding down the middle and the results you had make me a little bit more comfortable, I'm glad everything worked out well for you. My hairline is balding down the middle but also rounded on the sides, so to fix my balding down the middle it will probably be necessary to have grafts in approximately 50 percent of my hairline (my guess) and these will be front visible hairs. So with such necessary, I guess I may as well fix the entire hairline is my thoughts. With 1.5-2k grafts they want to add hair in the temples as well. My temple corners are lower than the middle of my hairline. 

*I think* I have an ok donor though it was never checked, I shaved my head bald 1 year ago and the difference in density between the top of my head and the sides was, concerning to say the least. I will see what HLC says about my donor area, if I have a couple thousand spare grafts after this surgery that should hopefully allow me to fix it if something goes wrong, I pray everything turns out great tho. 

Been on finasteride for about 2 years now. I have a hair transplant with HLC next week. They quoted me 1500-2000 grafts, Hasson and Wong quoted me 2000 grafts, 2500 if i wanted to go aggressive. I hope everything goes well. My hair has gotten a lot better on finasteride the past 2 years, but I think a successful hair transplant can make me look better. I'll be posting update pictures. Here is also a video of my hair under my bathroom lights which are 5 light bulbs https://i.imgur.com/yZyJoco.mp4