Tiger2050

Don’t do it yet, you’re too young. Wait another 2-3 years and do more research. You’ve only been on fin for 7 months, I would also consider adding oral minoxidil and switching to dutasteride if you have no sides on fin. You can get back a significant amount of density by combining oral min and dut for a year. I also think FUT would be a mistake, your hair loss isn’t that severe and FUT is only a good option when you need a large number of grafts (over 3000). There are much better surgeons in Europe for a similar price than the ones you’re considering. Most of the elite docs will reject you as a patient and tell you to wait.

Thanks for doing this Melvin, should be an interesting talk. Some questions below:

-Do Dr. Sever and Dr. Laura operate together on the same patient simultaneously? How do they split tasks?

-Which tasks are delegated to techs?

-I’ve heard Hattingen prefers manual punches, is this still true and why do they prefer manual over motorized?

In the UK you can get it from manual.co after filling out a brief survey. Don’t buy it from shady online pharmacies like alldaychemist, there is a difference in quality.

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I've seen a couple negative reviews of Dr.Hasson lately on this forum

You’re in great hands with Dr. Hasson. There is only one recent review from an unhappy patient from Dr. Hasson but you’ll find every doctor has some unhappy patients if you dig deep enough. Unhappy patients are a lot louder than happy patients.

11 minutes ago, GoliGoliGoli said:

You do realize the price differential between Nader and Konior, right? "Improving his front office staff", cmon man. I don't mean to act like you kicked my dog, but please have a basic understanding of how different pricing effects ones ability to "improve front office staff"

Konior doesn’t rely on his staff to communicate with patients, he personally responds to every single email and organizes his own schedule. However, I understand the majority of doctors delegate communication to patient advisors so this is something Nader should consider to help him improve his communication.

19 hours ago, Melvin- Moderator said:

Being part of our community would give members direct access through our link. As a surgeon who does everything himself like Konior, his consultations and surgery take a great deal of time. I believe our link will help him keep track of inquiries. He really is a rare breed of surgeon that does everything himself. It’s a valid concern, and i’d like to think that our link would help a lot.

Sure but the comparison you made to Dr. Konior is not valid in terms of communication. Dr. K personally responds every patient within a matter of hours to 1-2 days max. Dr. Nader doesn’t have to respond to every patient in a day like Dr. Konior but he should definitely consider improving his front office staff so patients aren’t waiting several weeks to never hear back, that’s very unprofessional. Hopefully the forum link helps with organization but I’m doubtful communication will get better until he hires better people to handle his communication. Mwamba has the same issue.

Interesting talk, thanks for the link. @Melvin- Moderator if you are still doing these podcasts I would love to hear a conversation with Dr. Heitmann, he’s a very impressive doctor but there is not a lot of information about him online. Both Bruno’s from Portugal, Cooley, Gabel and Feriduni would also be awesome first time guests.

Looks awesome and very natural. The density will improve a little bit in the next few months but it’s only possible to achieve 50% native density with one surgery. No doctor in the world is capable of implanting higher than 50% density with one pass so you’ll need a second surgery if you want more density. There is a study that showed about 50% density is all you need to not look like you’re balding.

Your pictures are very low quality so it’s impossible to tell how your hair loss has progressed. Need to see high definition photos in natural light.  
 

Also please don’t self-medicate, alldaychemist sells drugs that fail the quality control requirements of the FDA. There is no doctor that will prescribe 2mg of dutastride because its safety has not been studied. You might end with much worse problems than hair loss if you keep treating yourself like a guinea pig. Ask your hair transplant doctor to prescribe you dutasteride and oral minoxidil. People have reported issues with drugs from Strut on other forums, Dutasteride typically comes in a gel form but Strut sells a powdered pill. There was user a who had the Dutasteride from Strut tested at a lab and there were some questionable ingredients. Your best chance at stabilizing hair loss is 0.5mg dutasteride and 5mg oral minoxidil sourced from a high quality pharmacy. Drugs from shady online pharmacies are being sourced from low quality factories in India and China.

There is a study that showed grafts aren’t fully secure until 9 days post-op but most clinic says it’s safe to wear a loose fitting baseball cap about 6-7 days post-op.

Study: https://www.bernsteinmedical.com/research/graft-anchoring-in-hair-transplantation/

This is how you should be wearing the cap:

You sort of answered your own question. You know that Wong is a better doctor and safer choice but Nakatsui is half the price. If you’re looking for a discount, I would look at European doctors over Nakatsui who have much stronger reputations. Hattinggen in Switzerland is excellent at FUT and cheaper than Wong, about $3.5/graft for FUT over 3000 grafts. I personally wouldn’t risk it with Nakatsui, this is a life long decision that you can’t undo once it’s done. I think your best options are to save up for Wong or book a flight to Switzerland. H&W and Hattingen are probably the 2 best clinics in the world for FUT mega sessions. The inconvenience of flying to Switzerland is a short-term problem, a bad hair transplant is much worse long-term problem. You’re a Norwood 5/6 at a young age so you can’t afford to risk wasting grafts on a subpar first surgery. 

11 minutes ago, Melvin- Moderator said:

Yea I’m hoping that the Xyon can strengthen this zone without surgery. But if not I may consider another procedure here. As for shaving my head. Some people say it looks good. I personally don’t like it. It only looks okay for a few days. Then it starts to look off because my density is lower and you can see the horse shoe pattern. 

 

Have you considered SMP? You would get a nice boost from SMP and it will save you the trouble of having to apply dermmatch all the time. I would give the Xyon finasteride at least a year to make sure you can tolerate it and stabilize your hair loss before depleting the last bit of your remaining donor.

I got dark circles around my eyes and definitely had worse skin on topical minoxidil when I compare older pictures. I stopped topical minoxidil and my skin eventually recovered after several months. I got little to no improvement from topical minoxidil but still had a big shed and lost a lot of hair for 7-8 months after stopping. I started oral minoxidil about 6 months and have none of the side affects from topical minoxidil but more hair.

You should also be on a skincare routine if you’re not already. The 2 most important skincare products for anti-aging are prescription strength Tretinoin and sunscreen. Tretinoin is the only medication proven to increase collagen production and sun exposure is a lot more damaging to skin than minoxidil.

1 hour ago, FUE2300 said:

Thank you for the advice and recommendations on surgeons. That's a good point about Mohebi and meeting in person. If I preferred to stay local, would you recommend Mohebi or another California doctor? It seems like Mohebi's name comes up fairly often when I'm looking at recommended surgeons.

Thank you! It's definitely a frustrating situation where many people are telling me to just be happy with my result but when you're the one looking at it, it's not quite the same. I thought I was alone on my disappointment with the straight hairline and follicle direction as many people seem to be very happy with their hairlines at HMR. Would you be comfortable sharing Dr Nader's feedback on correcting your hairline?

I don’t think any doctor in California is very good and I wouldn’t risk it when you’re a short flight away from better doctors like Gabel and Wong. No California docs have a great reputation. Nadimi is also a good option if you’re willing to fly out to Chicago. The recommended surgeons list on this site is just a starting point for research, not all of the doctors are good. Another California doctor, Dr. Diep, was just recently removed from the list because of poor results and questionable ethics.

Consider doing an in-person consultation with Mohebi since he’s local to you. It’s hard to determine if it’s unnatural through a virtual consultation and pictures, an in-person consultation is much better. I think Nadimi is the best surgeon out of the ones you’ve listed. It doesn’t look too bad in the pics you provided and a small surgery will make it perfect. Dr. Gabel in Portland and Dr. Wong in Vancouver are also names to consider that are somewhat close to you and better doctors than anyone in California.

9 hours ago, Curious25 said:

Probably the same doctor then. 
 

Im not saying this is the norm, or is it his rate for larger cases. 
 

But I have interacted with two prospective patients in the last 6 months who’s surgery quotes have equated to $25 per graft. 
 

Edit: I have just read my original post on here and understand how my wording of ‘likely’ can be misleading. 
 

 

Better put - ‘could be up to $25 per graft’ 

 

I still maintain €4 a graft for a top level surgeon is a very good price point. 

If we’re all referring to the same doctor based in Chicago, I’ve recently had surgery with him which involved temple reconstruction and he did not charge anywhere close to $25/graft. I had a relatively small procedure and I know the doctor charges less per graft if you do more grafts. Unless it was a super complicated repair, I doubt he is charging $25/graft. I think he has a minimum 1000 graft limit and will charge a much higher fee if you want to do a small touch up and are a first time patient. Most doctors won’t even take on small cases that are sub 500 grafts unless you are a repeat patient needing a touch up. 

Regardless, one exception is not the same as most American doctors. A lot of the top European doctors like Bisanga (and likely BF) will also adjust their fees based on the complexity of the case, especially for repairs.

Which doctors do the extractions, incisions and placement of grafts themselves with limited assistance from techs? A few of the top of my head are Konior, Nadimi, Pinto and Ferreira. Cooley also does the extractions and incisions himself but techs place the grafts. I think Bisanga also provides an option to do the extractions himself for a higher fee? Which other highly regarded docs do every step of surgery themselves?

16 minutes ago, Curious25 said:

€4 a graft for temple work is an amazing price - they’re the hardest area to get right in hair Transplantantion, so you can’t afford to not choose one of the best surgeons who specialise in this. 
 

For perspective , surgeons in America of a similar level to BF would likely charge upto $25 a graft for a small surgery such as this. 

This is no American doctor recommended on this forum charging $25/graft or anything close to it for temples or any other type of restoration

Looks awesome and it’s going to keep getting thicker in the coming months. Did Feriduni take any sort for measurements to determine your donor capacity of 10,000-11,000 grafts or was it more of just a feel thing? 

OP it does not seem like you understand why finasteride and dutasteride stop hair loss. Both drugs are used to prevent the creation of DHT which is the main cause of hair loss. Seems like you’ve been on both drugs for some time and aren’t experiencing side affects so stopping the drugs would be a very bad idea unless you don’t care about your hair anymore. Raising DHT means you will lose most of your hair.

8 hours ago, Matt3210 said:

Nobody would be looking for problems with the length of surgery, the number of patients per day and ethical issues if Dr. Mwamba produced regular, consistent great results. There are doubts about that.

These are not just my doubts so please don't attack me.

I don’t want to keep derailing RTC’s thread but the majority of your post history is bashing Mwamba and calling anyone who says something positive about him an imposter paid by the clinic. Seems like you’re actively showing up to threads looking for problems. Here’s a recent comment you posted suggesting another conspiracy that multiple Mwamba patients with a good experience are the same person lol.

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 Do you think so too, that HappyMan2021, WhereIsMyMind, and mustang are the same person?

1 hour ago, FITA said:

 

I’ve just pointed out that Mwamba often performs on two patients a day. That information always seemed to be missing from this forum, so I have contributed for balance. Lots of people have seen Mustang list Mwamba in the top 10 surgeons in the world (and say Bisanga is not in the top 10). So there’s a high expectation for solid results (which we have seen on CaptainCalico’s thread).

 

You were not one of the users I was referencing who seem to attack Mwamba in all his posts. However, you did suggest Dr. Mwmaba is running a hair mill because he preforms on 2 patients per day which is very common among a lot of the top docs. Here are some other doctors who preform on 2+ patients per days:

- Hasson and Wong, 4 patients per day

- Couto, 2 patients per day

- Freitas, 3-4 patients per day

All of these clinics produce excellent results and are highly regarded on this forum and other places. Did you ask Mwamba how many patients he works on per day prior to the surgery? Unless you were lied to then I don’t see the issue. It’s documented Mwamba does 1-2 patients per day on this forum, usually split between a smaller surgery and a bigger one. CaptainCalico has an incredible donor and is a top 1% hair transplant result, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment if you go into surgery expecting a similar result. 

44 minutes ago, WhereIsMyMind said:

A bit hypocrite to say after you and the other low-post users speculating bad things or literally claiming bold lies 😅. But yes, this thread got quite intense. I'm not sure if Mwamba deserves that much controversy. I will try to update here after my HT grows in if I am in the happy club or not. Lets keep this civil.

I’ve noticed this on a lot of Mwamba’s posts. There are 2-3 low post users that show up in every Mwamba post to bash him and start conspiracy theories that anyone defending him are paid shills.

57 minutes ago, FITA said:

The reason the surgery takes so long is because he simultaneously works on two patients at the same time. If it was one patient per day then the patient would be in and out in shorter time.

I see Dr Lorenzo get a lot of stick on this forum because he performs on 3 patients per day. Well that’s only one more than Mwamba. So why is Lorenzo’s clinic referred to as a “Spanish hairmill” and yet no one ever seems to mention that Mwamba performs on two? 

Because Lorenzo isn’t involved in the surgeries and has inexperienced techs doing most of the surgery according to the patient stories. Mwamba is involved in every step according to his patients, look at @RTCsummary of the surgery on the first page. @RTCdocumented the different experiences he had with a hair mill compared to  Mwamba. I haven’t had surgery with either doctor so I can’t make definitive statements about either clinic.

36 minutes ago, NikosHair said:

There is a reason working hours are restricted in jobs that require high levels of concentration. Working 19.5 hours after leaving the practice at 12.30am is neither desirable or optimal. It just isn't healthy. I'm quite sure the Doc didn't plan it this way and just made the best of a difficult situation.

I feel sorry for new patient arriving the same morning for their 1st day of surgery😁

I listened to @Melvin- Moderatorinstagram live with Mwamba and his explanation for multi-day surgeries was that he likes to a do a small amount of grafts on the first day so the patient is more comfortable and asks a lot more questions on the second day when most of the work is done. Would you rather have a doctor be involved in every step of the surgery and take his time or rush you though surgery like a hair mill? You can’t have it both ways. 2 patients is very common among elite docs, Freitas does 3-4 patients per days but limits the amount of grafts per day. Cuoto does 2 patients. Hasson and Wong do 2 patients each per day and do a lot more grafts than most surgeons.