Henry

Have you been on fin this whole time? Your result from your 1st transplant was great but looking at your hair now, that is a significant difference, you almost look like you didn't have surgery for how thin it is  and considering you had a strip for your first procedure, there should be a low chance of that hair minitiurizing. How old are you if I may ask? 

1 hour ago, gillenator said:

I’ve had miniaturized hair that was 3-4 inches in length in my frontal zone…and some still there.

Are you on meds?

27 minutes ago, gillenator said:

IMHO, there is plenty of room to safely graft between any of the hair you have shown in pics…and yes there is a huge difference between vellus and miniaturized hair, the latter is native hair that is DHT receptive and is progressively losing hair shaft diameter over a period of time.

How do you differentiate them from vellus hairs?

Anyone with knowledge or have experience with the same type of hair. Will surgeons be able to safely transplant in between these native hairs? I don't know if these short hairs are (in the first picture) minitiurized or vellus hair (is there a difference?) but they don't grow long. 

4 minutes ago, BeHappy said:

 

Are you suggesting we recommend or not recommend Drs based on how many people post reviews of them? All you're going to do is make this forum be filled with paid fake reviews to make Drs look good, so they can be on our recommended list. Once that happens this place is useless.

 

Well something needs to change, what's stopping recommended doctors from posting their great results with a good comb over, perfect angles, hair fibres and or photo shops? I'd say that is a useless source of information.

2 minutes ago, Melvin- Moderator said:

It’s impossible in modern hair restoration. You cannot expect someone from the US whose having a hair transplant in lets say Europe or Asia to fly over just for an examination. Some doctors have started placing a mandatory face to face consultation for repairs like Dr. Bisanga. It’s not feasible or realistic for ALL procedures. It only works if you go to a surgeon local to you, but most patients travel for their procedures.

Couldn't surgeons disclose the tests they need to take and let the patients do these tests locally to them and then email the results to their prospective hair transplant surgeons?

13 minutes ago, Fue3361 said:

I personally think a surgeon who is recommended should stay recommended by default, without need of review.

That said, I think that a more serious discussion should be had once 1-2 bad results pop up, and surgeons should be put “under review” and contacted for comment on said cases once this happens.  And if after that, more bad cases pop up, actions should be taken.  In the case of the last surgeon who was taken off, I think it took far too long to actually get a proper discussion started.

 

Edit:  It is also important to differentiate between bad work, and bad outcome.  Some people can have low yield, which is not always surgeon error.  On the other had, multies in hairline, bad angles and direction of grafts, butchered donor, this is always something that should bring surgeon under review.

Let's say a guy goes to an elite doctor, operates on him for 3500 grafts after a consultation, gets a poor yield after 12 months and after a biopsy it turns out that he has some scalp disease that prevented him from having a great result. To me, that's the doctor's responsibilty to make sure his patients has the best chance to have a great yield. Why don't they require a careful examination of the scalp first before operating? 

Edit: A poor yield is always the doctor's fault in my opinion (unless the patient goes out of his way to sabotage his results)

13 minutes ago, Melvin- Moderator said:

Those are just two examples I quickly provided, he has far more results than that, and a long track record of over 20 years.

I'm not talking about him specifically, I'm talking about recommended doctors who only has one or two patient reviews in years. Reviews posted by doctors or clinics themselves I guess helps but isnt this community supposed to be about/for patients, if we search a doctor here and all we are seeing are results posted by themselves, then how is that different from results being posted on their own clinic's website?

24 minutes ago, Melvin- Moderator said:

One case does not define a surgeon. There’s a huge problem with reviewing surgeons based on one case. 

Recent case less than 1k grafts

 

 

We continually evaluate surgeons based on reviews and their results posted here. If there’s a community consensus that a surgeon shouldn’t be recommended, we will take it into account. But going around sharing one or two poor results isn’t enough to warrant a surgeons removal.

If that were the case we’d have no surgeons left and this forum would close down. Believe me every surgeon has at least one or two failed results every year. Furthermore, I contacted @callmebob2021 via pm to obtain his name and date of surgery to confirm he was a patient of Dr. Charles and to get Dr. Charles response, but he never responded. 

I can’t verify or confirm the legitimacy of the claims, or that he’s a patient without this information. 

If this was the case then one or two good results in years also shouldn't warrant a recommendation, don't you think? 

6 hours ago, MM89 said:

I am 33, started with fin 2 months pre-op (didn't see a big change so far)

In your consultation, did they ever predict what norwood you're gonna end up with in the future?

6 hours ago, MM89 said:

2 weeks post-op update while waiting for surgery report (Dr. Turan, 4330 grafts).
Very nice experience overall, good recovery and nice follow-up contacts with the clinic.
Not too much shock loss in the hairline for now, a bit concerned about crown density to be honest (about 1000 grafts there).
Any comments are welcome and happy holidays 🙂

Before:

 

Post-op (1st, 2nd day):
 

2 weeks in:

Looks good, if everything grows well, you'll have a killer hairline and can always get a 2nd procedure for your crown. How old are you if I may ask? Cause we almost have the same exact hairloss pattern. Are you on meds?

10 years later and higher up people are deleting posts and banning people, ohh how times have changed. 

7 hours ago, NewHare said:

Curious as to the outcome of this one ?  Dr. Charles was on my short list, though after this I'm questioning that.

Has anyone had a procedure recently with Dr. Charles after this incident ?  If so how was your outcome ? 

 

The recommended list for this site, like any other lists, do not mean much. It means they had a few good reviews during their screening, but it seems to me like once they have been recommended and pay a monthly fee, they pretty much can do whatever they want with their practice. Like Dr. Diep, who just got removed from the list after years of bad practice. 

Any updates brother?

Looking forward to your journey.

10 hours ago, Archan said:

@Gatsbyam considering dr thitiwat wirarojratchakul ...million hair transplant clinic from thailand ..

Oh yeah that's uneven, but I think it looks natural, your hairline pre transplant on that side looks to be more receded than the other. It's also less obvious from a straight angle you might be fine.

1 hour ago, StillAlive said:

Fin is not known for preserving the hairline. It is meant to stabilize and protect your mid, crown and donor, so that you can do an HT with confidence when the time comes. It may have also really slowed your hairline's recession, which is always a good thing!

Maybe it's time to give dutasteride a try.

58 minutes ago, StillAlive said:

Fin is not known for preserving the hairline. It is meant to stabilize and protect your mid, crown and donor, so that you can do an HT with confidence when the time comes. It may have also really slowed your hairline's recession, which is always a good thing!

What is this based on? I'm not trying to question your knowledge, I'm just genuinely curious if there are studies or reliable doctors who mentioned this.

5 minutes ago, archonlucien said:

Thank you for your response! I'll reply to each of your points below. I also have some questions about your comment, would be very grateful if you could answer them.

Shedding phase: Is this something that normally happens in the absence of any kind of alopecia? Also, the hair on my temporal points looks miniaturized. Is this a part of shedding, if it is indeed shedding?

Barber: Yes, it's the same barber.

Transplant: I'm hoping to fill out my temporal triangles at least, and then bank on Fin/Min for the area above my ears. On your point about lowering the hairline: Noted. Do you think it's fair to just fill the temples for now, and get a hairline restoration in future if necessary?

Yes, I will be finding a different doctor. It's sad, because I literally take 1 hour flights to see this doctor each time, since he's pretty renowned :]

 

Yes, even without anykind of alopecia you usually lose density in your hair. There are rare ones that maintain the same number of hairs up until their 60s but in general, you have less number of hairs when you were 30 compared to when you were 18, it's just part of aging. I haven't done much research about minitiurization in the sides though. You might want to look into that yourself, i have significantly thinner side, and sideburns now that I'm 30 compared to when I was 18 but when i let them all grow out, it's still thicker than what i have on top, and my balding isn't that aggressive, so there's that. 

I can't really advice you to have a hair transplant now since from what I'm seeing based on your picture, i don't see any problem areas. Having a hair transplant with a lot of hairs in between is tricky. You'd have to find a really great doc for that. 

This is just my advice and by no means should you consider everything I'm saying as absolute truth. I hope you can find other knowledgeable opinions as well.

I don't know much about COVID related hairloss but it looks like you're going through maybe a shedding phase? Also, do you always go to the same barber and get the same exact haircut? Maybe your hair was cut differently recently also so it grows differently. How old are you? A lot of people lose density in that side area of the hair but they tend to really not lose all of it. A transplant is definitely possible but where would your focus be? I don't see much thinning really. I would advise against lowering the hairline unless you're absolutely sure that you're not gonna lose all of that hair on top, or if you're taking finasteride or dutasteride. Also, if you think you doctor is stringing you along ( i feel like a lot of doctors do this, they recommend things that they know porbably won't work just to get some money out you, like recommending PRP for diffused hairloss) you should find another doctor. 

On 12/20/2022 at 8:30 AM, webathon said:

Then wouldn't that mean that Dut is essentially no more effective than Finasteride?

Doctor knudsen, who is insanely smart (mediocre ht surgeon though according to some members here) won't just willy nilly prescribe dutasteride since it blocks all dht and, they do not know what other uses DHT is needed for our body, it might have some important functions that they don't know about, and there aren't enough studies to safely prove it doesn't.

I'm looking at this clinic and they just told me via email that they do surgeries 6 to 8 times a month, now they've been around since 2010, would you say that's good enough? 

2 minutes ago, HappyMan2021 said:

names? maybe they should get the boot too.

No no no, lol, I don't wanna get in trouble. They don't have bad reviews, and the clinic posts results frequently enough. The one good result for years that isn't posted by the clinic is what bothers me. 

21 hours ago, g8n2h9k3u7 said:

Well, you should keep in mind that the reputation of Dr. Diep is not the only thing on the line here. The reputation of HRN, or at least the reputation of its list of approved surgeons, is on the line as well. After all, if Diep remains on the list when he doesn't deserve to belong there, then the list loses all meaning.

Essentially: are you willing to risk sacrificing the reputation of HRN to save the reputation of Diep?

This is a little bit off topic but, does the list really mean anything anymore? I've spent a lot of time in these forums and I've seen some recommended doctors have 1 positive review FROM A PATIENT in 5 years and still be an elite coalition member. Now I don't know how administrators do things behind the scenes but, one positive review in the last 5 years doesnt really scream "reliable doctor" to me. I think this whole recommendation thing needs an overhaul. 

From the front it looks good, from the top it looks thin (based from your month 10 photos), I guess that's what they meant about hair transplants being an illusion of density.