mister_25

If I had to say which one look the best/most natural when having buzzed hair. #3 looks like the most natural and aesthetic choice to me.

#5 sticks out to me as very exaggerated and artificially made. I wonder what that would look like a final result with short hair and long hair. Same goes to #1 but on a much less degree of obvious.

#2 looks very conservative and would make sense for people with higher levels of balding

#6 needs some softening and refinement, the curve in my opinion is a bit unnatural, but probably would still look good with your hair grown out.

3 hours ago, Balding Bad said:

If memory serves me correctly, I believe I may have had some minor growth before shedding, but I think the timeframe for when I started shedding was more or less on par for the course.

Growth before shedding is simply the hair shaft working its way out of the scalp.

In no particular order of the 5 I’m currently leaning towards which is always in change.

• Zarev - for NW6+ patients
• Pinto
• Ferreira
• Konior
• Couto

Worst is Dr Diep, the FUT scars are terrible and the placements are awful

Most overrated is a toss up between;

• Mwamba - I believe he does good work, but there are some concerns that I have noticed.
• HLC - When HLC are good they are great especially for how much they charge, but when they are bad I have seen some overharvesting and unethical treatment of patients.
• Eugenix - The inconsistency is something that puts me off Eugenix.

Most underrated is between;

• Laorwong
• Fuegenix
• Nader

Best Value is hard to say, but from the prices I’ve heard/seen it probably goes to Nader

I understand your frustrations and sentiments very well, our situations are pretty much identical and I think your feelings/assessment is extremely honest and comes from a place of education and reason.

I have seen growth similar to yours at the 6/7 month mark make a massive turn around, but these are uncommon.

I don't think 2300 grafts for the area covered was going to give you a solid wall of hair, but it should be better than this, at least that means that it didn't do as big of a dent in donor reserves. Have you been in contact with the clinic? And if you are what are they saying about where you are at this point in time?

Here is a few off the top of my head, I know some more

14 hours ago, Will_the_way said:

I’m not a doctor so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I find it very hard to believe that grafts that died in the surgery process or shortly after would continue to grow post death. One thing to consider though is that your body may be pushing out hairs from grafts that did not survive, which could appear as growth as the hairs push further out of the scalp. 

In my case, about 90-95% of my transplanted hair was growing and then shed at the 1 month mark. However I had a few transplanted hairs that didn't grow at all or shed until somewhere between the 1-3 month mark. I'm just wondering whether one set is "promising" whilst the other set is "worrying"

7 Month update?

10 minutes ago, TH123 said:

I’ve seen examples of shock loss photos tho and it doesn’t look like that. It’s normally confined to one area. This is how it looks all over the donor area. 

My shockloss came in a diffused pattern rather than the traditional bald patches. Here is my thread of my donor shockloss recovery

20 minutes ago, TH123 said:

How many grafts did you get if you don’t mind me asking? 

3872 Grafts. About 2000 from my left side of my donor and 1800 on my right side of my donor.

My donor looked very depleted for the first 3 months, and it only started to look decent by the 3.5 month mark and by 4 months it had grew back.

Do you have post-op photos so we can see the extractions?

On 5/20/2023 at 2:37 PM, mister_25 said:

Is this necessarily a good sign or promising sign that your grafts have taken and have survived the surgical process and will come in later post shed? Or is this rather just a common thing and has no relation to whether or not that these grafts have survived?

Anyone got a answer to this question? Almost all of my transplanted hair was growing before it shed and my growth so far is a bit slow and unimpressive at six months which is making me a bit nervous.

Did Dr Couto ever tell you about how much you yielded? and what approach did he do this time that was different to the first in order to optimize better growth. I understand that he planted less grafts to go for better growth but did he switch up your post-op care routine?

1 year update? maybe with some wet hair?

43 minutes ago, HappyMan2021 said:

so if you are following your own advice, you are saying you will quit this journey if this hair transplant is unsatisfactory?

one of the unfortunate thing about hair transplants is you really do have to 'see it through' to the end. Unless someone is super ignorant and naive on what is vs what isn't a good hair transplant, people won't be happy with a work-in-progress result. 

Also in my opinion it is incorrect to assume than going to an elite clinic will yield a 'one-and-done' result. All doctors are humbled by nature, science, and the body's physiology. No matter a doctor's skill, talent, and experience, nature/science can unfortunately limit how much can be done in one go, even by the world's best doctors. 

Also whatever you do please don't put elite doctors on a pedestal. Some people say the only difference between an "elite" doctor and a "normal/random" doctor is charisma and political savviness 🤣.

It depends on how unsatisfactory the results are, in my opinion 60% yield while many will deem a failure and it really is, it still lays the groundwork for future surgeries and is definitely salvageable depending on donor reserves (which I probably have, albeit will dip into reserves for future loss), but if your growth is like 50% or below its playing with fire. And the more FUE grafts the more it takes away from maintaining a aesthetic shaved head. 
 

Definitely agree on the one and done point. I will most likely have my second op next year and I’ve already had talks with the clinic. I’ll have to wait and see how it pans out by 9 months or so. If the yield is poor from invisible factors such as patient physiology then ill probably have to give up.

As for placing doctors on pedestals, I try not to do that.

On 5/24/2023 at 3:56 AM, milito_22 said:

Hello everyone, I think I will just post pics 9 months post op when I will send an update to Dr. Wong as well. But I can tell you that pretty much nothing has changed since the last update. And I don't think anything else will change until month 12 unfortunately

Did Dr Wong reply and give an explanation to the lack of yield?

This is quite concerning and hopefully you can find a answer and have a path moving forward.

34 minutes ago, Z-- said:

It’s important to emphasize that any lack of growth isn’t due anything you’ve done; you’re on all the right medication, you’ve researched well and selected an elite clinic, and you’ve followed their instructions to a T.

I do believe that If I could go back in time with the same knowledge that I had now, I probably still would select H&W. 

To me the idea of doing everything right and just being the type of patient that won't have good yield is the worst outcome. I am a big believer of enough hard work, discipline and diligence you can meet your goals but I guess you can't really say that applies to HTs 100% of the time.

As for Donor. I don't know, its a conversation to have with the doctor when I'm at 10-12 months.

I should include these now because they add more context to my situation, I've included some additional photos taken 10 minutes after a shower and towel dry with varying conditions. This should help prospective patients understand how much lighting/angles play in your favor.

I've included these three shots indicating how much lighting has a play on HTs, If I could describe the lighting in these photos. I am in a different bathroom and somewhat under the lights directly. But the lighbulb itself is dimmer. Otherwise rather moderate lighting

Left:

Right:

Here are the zoomed in photos.

Left:

Right:

1 hour ago, HappyMan2021 said:

For 6 months in I would say growth looks mediocre at best. Hopefully you are a late grower. You still have a few months ahead of you before you can cast definitive judgement. 

Yeah I am not giving a final judgement, the quote "its about the journey, not the destination" cannot be any more wrong when you apply it to hair transplants. I'll probably start to get really worried if it isn't any better by the 9 or 10 month mark.

1 hour ago, HappyMan2021 said:

That being said, based on your 6-month status report alone - my objective opinion is that you will need a 2nd pass to increase density, in order to be happy. 

While needing a 2nd pass is completely normal (and pretty much expected in the majority of cases), I am a bit surprised I guess as I thought H&W was known as being a 'high-density' clinic. 

I think for my case if my yield was as expected (and hopefully will be) then I wouldn't really need a 2nd pass for the hairline (maybe behind it). The post-op and the buzzed hair at the 2-3 week mark indicate decent-good density for a single pass if it had satisfactory yield. Here is a photo I took at Day 16 for clarity.

In my honest and yet probably controversial opinion, if you go to a reputable clinic and get poor yield on your first hair transplant with what people have said is good-excellent work, then I would just give up on hair transplants all together. I don't see a point spending tens of thousands of dollars on a impossible goal that you are desperate to reach, may as well admit defeat and shave.

1 hour ago, Melvin- Moderator said:

There’s certainly more time left, and I’m sure you’ll see much more growth, but I can understand your disappointment at this point in time. Have you been in communication with the clinic?

Yes. During the month 0-1 mark I was in frequent contact asking what I should do and how to treat my scalp which they responded at one point saying the scalp looks healthy, which I'm pretty sure implied that I was doing things right in the 0-1 mark and the photos showed for it. I followed all post op instructions and avoided touching my hair for the first 3-4 months.

Outside of Month 0-1, I send monthly photos asking if everything is standard and how everything is looking. I haven't gotten a response back yet for this month as I only sent it a hour ago but last month my reply was;

"Dr Hasson has looked over your 5 month post-op photos and said you are right where you should be. The frontal zone has started to regrow but the hair is still fine and immature. The crown is always the slowest area to come in and it is very common for no regrowth to start until around the 5 month point and it will be baby fine and patchy when it first comes in. It will take the full 12 months to see the final results in the crown."

I will include their response at the 6 month mark when I receive the email.

EDIT: Dr Hasson said that my growth at 6 months is good and that within 3-6 months I should have sufficient coverage.

Hey everyone, I'll take and add some new additional photos tomorrow but I just took these just now for a quick brief update so you can see what is going on.

Brief 6 Month Update:

Front:

Frontal Tilt:

Left:

Right:

So far I can say the following things;

• These photos were taken in the same lightings and same conditions as the 5 Month update. However I would say that If I took month 5/6 photos in moderate lightings/wet hair then the change would be more dramatic. Its starting to hold up on its own a bit in desirable angles/lightings now which wasn't possible a month before.
• I would say that the "skeleton" of the hairline has come in, its has the framing now but it doesn't provide any aesthetic value due to nature of the immature hairs and incomplete result.
• My forelock still has shock loss, I am starting to think it might be permanent. Before the surgery my forelock was bigger partially due to the longer hairs but also due to having a large amount of miniaturized hairs that did help contribute. In a follow up image below I circled the area that I believe is still suffering shockloss in red.
• The stubble is getting harder to feel in the crown, probably because its growing in length and feels finer/thinner after the initial sprouts
• I am feeling a bit of stubble in the hairline/previously bald areas at the front. It feels like maybe a few multis are coming through. I am also getting a few pimples this week in these areas. These areas are the areas highlighted in green on the follow up image.
• I do not believe I can say that I am any better than my baseline at this moment. I've simply "traded hairs" if that makes any sense. Because of the fact that my forelock is still suffering temporary or permanent shockloss I cant reasonably say I am any better because it looks like I've thinned out more over a wider area even though I probably have more hair in the front than I did before.
• Getting a lot of ingrown/pimples and stubble in my donor area, specifically where the shockloss was most severe.
• My mid-scalp looks very bald when I mimic my pre-op hairstyle of slicking it back, mainly because the hair refuses to lay down and just puffs up exposed how thin it is in the middle. I will need more length to do that.
• Some of the transplanted sprouts/hairs are white/grey hairs, I did not have any white/gray hairs in the recipient sites before hand.
• The left side is significantly slower to grow and weaker than my right side. Especially at the very front where the hairline is.

Pre-Op Follow up Photo:

I am having mixed feelings at this point.

On the positive side It is growing still at a ever increasing accelerating rate and even has some "shape" or "weight" to it in desirable conditions, and when I compare to myself at the four month mark compared to now at 6 months it is a massive positive change.

On the negative side, I am not any better in my opinion than compared to my pre-op, I had a receded hairline with a rather decent sized forelock, whilst now I have hair in previously bald areas but the tradeoff is that my forelock is weaker and smaller. 

Pretty much, when I compare my photos over these few months I feel more positive, but when I compare to other patients timeframes I feel more negative. I would say I am in the bottom 15-25% of growers but I am not saying that I would get a bottom 15-25% result, just that I am rather slow growing at this point.

My adjusted expectations are that I am going to take a while, maybe at the 9-10 months mark before I get anything substantial that looks like I'm not balding. Although I would be lying if I said I was expecting this from the beginning and I am not disappointed and concerned.

Honestly, it’s looking fantastic for 5 months. You went from slick bald to this in only 5 months and factoring in you have 7 more months for more growth and the hair mature you are way ahead of the curve.

Amazing result and amazing presentation

Its definitely a big improvement. I believe the magic will happen on your second procedure as it will give you a more balanced and uniform density across the scalp.

5 hours ago, consequence said:

That's really interesting, thank you. Did you keep it on all day and just reapply more when it came off? Also did you do this with saline?

Also definitely keep us updated on how you're growing. 🙏

Yeah I kept it on all day for the first 2-3 days post op, however I did have to go to the clinic for them to wash the hair where they reapplied afterwards.

I’ve read that a lot of people spray saline every 1-2 hours for their post op instructions but I didn’t have these instructions

Ill update on the 1st, but the general idea is that in the past three weeks I’ve had more growth than any of the previous months.

22 minutes ago, GoliGoliGoli said:

Ya as everyone says the crown can take a bit of time, and it varies patient to patient of course too. I think it's a good sign that you're feeling stubble there, and hopefully you start to feel more stubble all over the crown recipient area.

Apologies if you already said, but you do know how many grafts went into the crown specifically? 

Roughly 2900 in the front, 950 in the crown. I will most likely need a second transplant for the crown and midscalp which I will get in 2024.

32 minutes ago, GoliGoliGoli said:

Do you feel any stubble sprouting in the crown? 

Yes, I feel these small spiky/prickly hairs in my crown, maybe like 5-10 of them on the left side of my crown. I can only really feel them if im moving my fingers from front to back, otherwise I cant feel them if I'm going from the back of my crown to the front because I am pushing down the hairs if that makes any sense.

I haven't really looked at my crown since the 5 month mark, so I cant really verify if its hair or something else, but I am guessing from the way I described it, it is hair.

On 5/11/2023 at 10:39 AM, consequence said:

Your coming along right on track, patience is key. 

May I ask what was that gel he had you apply immediately after surgery? Was it petroleum jelly.

I asked the clinic and they said it’s a ointment called Bactroban which they said they use for a few days to ensure everything heals properly.

12 hours ago, aNewHairHope said:

2.5mg/day. Has worked very well.

Here is some photos on a very bright day in direct light. Density deficiencies are more apparent.

It looks really good even in harsh lighting conditions and angles, definitely a successful top HT.