Hairsome

4 hours ago, sl said:

Hi Hairsome

Redness is part of the healing and as there is neo-vascularity post surgery, new blood vessels connect to the newly grafted follicles and could lead to redness and inflammation which is a normal healing process. The post surgery document will cover this but if you need anything further then please contact your advisor who will be happy to respond to specific questions and I believe there has been correspondence on this so far on this since the surgery.

Usually post surgery there are the initial patient generated questions that are normal and we respond to and then for us minimally 3,6,9,12 months we will contact the patient if they have not been in contact with us. Nothing much usually happens till then aside from healing and repair cases can also follow a different time-line due to the inherent nature of them and the challenges that are present such as scar tissue etc.

Let your advisor know anything needed and you will of course have a timely reply and as said we also do keep in contact periodically also aside from that.

Heal well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks a lot! All good and clear :). 

On 8/17/2022 at 3:51 PM, cg90 said:

I'm also getting FUE with Bisanga later this year and I'm particularly interested in cases where the patient kept their native hair, like this one.
Could you also show us how you're using your native hair to hide your recipient area?
I'm guessing you just brush forward, at least that's how I plan to use it.

Any tips for others looking to keep their native hair? 
I'm guessing you used hair clips for the first week to keep the native away from the recipient?
When did you start washing your hair as you would before the procedure without needing to be careful?

Yes I brush it forward. I did go to the barbershop 2 weeks post-op to cut my native hair a bit shorter, so didn't really need hair clips. About 2-2.5 weeks post-op I washed my hair normally again.

Is it common practice for @BHR Clinic @BHRClinic to never check in with their patients post-surgery? Find that a slight disappointment to be honest. 

8 hours ago, nycshearling said:

I am in a very similar situation where I have scarring from a procedure last year but the doctor is going to fill it in in October of this year. About 1000 grafts. What did your doctor tell you about the graft survival for the scar area?

Survival rate in such instances can be a bit lower but it’s really different for every patient. Hoping for the best.

3.5 week update

A few days shy of 1 month post-op.

I feel like at this point I have already shed a lot of hairs even though I dont'really notice it during the day. But comparing to my pre-op pictures, normally there should be more shedding to come but it seems like a decent amount of newly transplanted hairs simply keep growing. Not sure if other people have had a similar experience?

Recently ran out of the skin care products I received form the clinic so I'm now applying emu oil once daily as per the patient advisor's recommendation. 

Redness has started to fade (though the redness looks worse on camera than in real life). But obviously the scarring from my first surgery leads to the recipient area being a bit sensitive. Hope this will get better over time.

Below some pics from both temples, donor area, and top view. Would appreciate some feedback!

10 days post-op (yesterday)

On 7/9/2022 at 10:59 PM, RTC said:

Hey thanks for sharing your repair case. Where was your original procedure done? And where were the 15 grafts removed - seems they were in the middle of the hairline?

Hi,
My original procedure was done at Kliniek Veldhoven in the Netherlands.

And yeah you're correct regarding the removed grafts. 

Hello all,

Would like to dedicate this thread to document my hair transplant journey. This week (Tuesday the 5th of July) I had an FUE session with BHR Clinic in Brussels.

In February 2021, I had an FUE session of nearly 3000 grafts to restore my hairline + temples, which unfortunately lead to a bad result. In addition to a low survival rate, some scar tissue (ridging) developed in my recipient area which means that the repair surgery is not entirely without risk. 

Now in terms of the grafts:
- Singles: 277 grafts
- Doubles: 543 grafts
- Triples: 637 grafts
Total: 1457 grafts (average of ~2.25 hairs per graft). A further 15 poorly placed grafts were removed.

I plan to share progress pictures on a monthly basis, although it also depends on if there is any progress to report. First few months probably not so much.

I decided to ultimately not shave my head completely but only the areas that were to be treated and the donor area. Looks kind of bad now, so I may still decide to (carefully) shave everything off, but not sure yet haha. 

Would like to add that I've been experiencing quite some pains in my recipient area during the last few days, especially on the outer sides of my hairline (i.e. above the temple points). Also, after my first hair transplant last year my recipient area was red for a long time (3-4 months at least). I hope that the red will fade away sooner this time. Any suggestions on what I can do in addition to religiously following the post-op care instructions from the clinic?

For now, I have added a few pre-op pictures as well as post-op pictures below. Happy to hear feedback from you guys. 

Pre-op pictures in both dry and wet conditions:

1 day post-op:

3 days post-op:

Looks great, congrats!

Any idea of the number of follicular units per cm2? 

Looks great! Could you tell me what the density is that they decided on in terms of grafts per cm²?

2 minutes ago, JC71 said:

Dr Bisanga/BHR don’t beat around the bush, I like that from them. It’s not always good news for prospective patients but it’s needed. 

Agreed.

But I'm confident that they can create a good result for me. They'll probably go for a density of ~40 grafts per cm², which, considering that none of the areas to be treated are completely bald (just low density) should give me a good density up front. 

Have had a good and honest consultation at BHR clinic with Dr. Bisanga this weekend. Unfortunately the work done by the previous clinic where I had my first hair transplant was even worse than I thought, leaving me with limited resources to work with. Both in terms of donor capacity (although I do think my donor is pretty strong still and allows for multiple future procedures if ever required) and in terms of red skin in my transplant region, which may have been the result of wrong or too large sized punches. Will receive a treatment proposal in the coming days, but will probably need about 1000-1200 grafts to restore my temples and some transplanted hairs will be replaced to different areas. Hoping to schedule my procedure for June or July, maybe earlier if the schedule permits. Will also hop on oral minoxidil as per the doctor's recommendation. Thankful that the doctor is willing to treat me given that they typically don't perform surgeries on 24 year olds (or likely 25 at the time of the procedure). 

Looks great. May I ask what you paid? DM if you prefer

Looks good already.

May I ask what you paid?

For some reason I'm unable to upload any pictures on Hattingen's website (says failed to upload file when I try to submit the online form).

2 minutes ago, JC71 said:

Hattingen + @Dr. Felipe PittellaTransplante Capilar are also very good considerations.

Did you manage to get your pics from the clinic ? I remember they were causing a issue when you asked for them.

Cheers, will check these out. Hattingen rings a bell.

I was able to get the pictures when I visited the clinic. Unfortunately they wouldn't send me the pictures directly, but instead I had to take pictures of their pictures, which significantly reduced their quality. So they're not very useful to show here. 

13 minutes ago, JC71 said:

I think I would be aiming for 1500-2000 grafts. Any thoughts on who you would likely chose for your next transplant ? I still think your graft count was around 2k at best but it’s the poor growth that matters. Sad to see it hasn’t improved. If you look back at the implanted  density you can see it’s nowhere near what was promised. Only the first couple of rows of the hairline seemed like it was ok density on the pre op pics. Sorry this hasn’t worked out 😞

Thanks JC for your input.

I agree that 1500-2000 seems reasonable. With approx. 5000 grafts available (maaaybe 5500?) I hope that the 3-3.5k grafts that I'd have left after the 2nd transplant will be sufficient for the future, as I expect the balding process to continue despite taking medications (based on the baldness in my family - although no one in my family ever used finasteride etc., so who knows). But either way, 3-3.5k grafts can go a long way as long as I go to a good clinic :).

In terms of clinics I'm looking at currently, I have requested online assessments from:
Dr Bisanga, Dr Lupanzula, Dr Feriduni, Dr Pinto, Dr De Freitas, Dr Bruno Ferreira, and Fuegenix. Feel free to let me know if I should reach out to any other clinic that you'd recommend. 

Hi guys, I'd like to ask you for your input. Based on the pictures I provided in this thread, how many grafts do you think I'd need? 

I've been following this development and it looks interesting. However what would be the price tag of this drug?

On 1/6/2022 at 7:58 PM, Curious25 said:

This is exactly it - The gold standard the forum preaches is to starting off by doing your research from the recommended list, and then look for patient posted results. The paradox is that the overwhelming majority of patient posted results from this clinic on here are poor, which leads to the elephant in the room question of, why is this clinic on the recommended list in the first place. 

Like JDEE0 said, there is no agenda against this clinic, other than that of protecting new and existing members of the community. 

Hi I'm relatively new here. Where could I find such a recommended list? 

@ OP; sorry to see that the results aren't as good as they should have been. Hope you'll see some improvement in the time remaining...

@Berba11 He means partial shave, i.e. only shaving the recipient area and the part of the donor region where the grafts are harvested - as shown on his pictures. 

Looks great man. May I ask, what did you pay?

Here is one picture from the side that I was able to find. Most pics I made are from other angles.

This is in natural light. In reality, the hair is even thinner when I'm standing underneath the lights in my bathroom. Some areas are just completely bald. Other areas have maybe 10-15 grafts per cm². Far from the 50 per cm².

11 hours ago, Berba11 said:

FueGenix has certainly produced some very good work from what I've seen on this forum.

1500 extra grafts sounds like plenty. Knowing exactly how many grafts a person needs is always tricky. I just had 2800 grafts done a month ago and had/have more loss than you. There's various factors; head sizes, hair thickness, texture, future loss considerations etc... I won't know what my own results will be until several months down the line but if you really did get 3,000 grafts initially (which I simply don't think you did), then it should have been enough to get you the coverage you needed.

I think you'd be fine getting abother HT to finish this up. Your donor looks excellent at that length, and you probably didn't get 3,000 grafts extracted - maybe 2,300 give or take and in reality maybe even less. So you should have another 1-1.5K in the bank that you could comfortably use to fill in the gaps and still have enough in the bank for later if/when needed.

What I would say... Be conservative here & look to preserve your native hair.

Thanks a lot for your reply Berba. I'll discuss with the clinic where I had my first procedure done and see what they say. I hope they can offer some degree of financial compensation given that it wasn't a cheap transplant. I counted the little scars in my donor region and I counted 2500 excluding the hairs extracted from the sides of my head (weren't visible on the picture unfortunately) so I do think it's pretty close to 3k grafts in the end. So a very low survival rate unfortunately. 

Best of luck with your own journey!

Meanwhile, happy to hear the opinions of others. 

Time for an update.

Unfortunately, compared to my last update here a couple of months ago, not much has changed. Arguably the new hairs have thickened up, but there has been no improvement in overall density. In other words, the 50 grafts per cm² promised by the clinic turns out to be a lot less in reality.

I have added pictures of:
- my hair styled
- my hair moderately wet after shower
- treatment areas (temples / hairline)
- donor area

Obviously, I'm very disappointed by the result. Given that I'm still young (turning 25 in a few months), I should proceed with caution when it comes down to future hair transplants. The clinic that treated me, as well as a surgeon from another clinic that I spoke to, estimate that my donor area has about 5000 more grafts available to be transplanted in the future.

Now that I embarked on this journey to fix my hair, the inner me does not want to leave it at this. I have contacted a clinic called Fuegenix (website: https://fuegenix.nl/ and Instagram: fuegenixhaarkliniek) for advice. It's a clinic run by a single surgeon (MD, ISHRS member) who estimates that I'd need about 1500 grafts to fix my temples/hairline. This is in line with my own estimate. From what I've seen on multiple forums (including this one) and Instagram, the results achieved by Dr. Ahmad are generally very good. 

Obviously, I'm looking at multiple clinics and have submitted a request for an online assessment to @BHR Clinic  @BHRClinic (tagging you so you hopefully read this) a few weeks ago. However, I'm still waiting for them to get back to me (takes quite a while it seems...).

I'd like to conclude this update by asking you guys for recommendations on the following:
- Taking into account all my circumstances, should I proceed with a second hair transplant?
- Could you recommend me one or multiple clinics that I should definitely take a look at? I'm located in the Benelux, so anywhere in that region or perhaps elsewhere in Europe is ideal.
Budget is not that much of an issue. I'd rather pay a bit more at a good clinic.

Just tagging @JC71 and @Berba11 since you guys have helped me here before.

Many thanks in advance!

Made a mistake with uploading my progress pictures. I have now uploaded the correct pictures of my 6.5 month progress in the first post.