Dear readers,
I am happily sharing a review here from my FUE treatment by Munib Ahmad at his clinic Fuegenix, in Bergen op Zoom (NL).
I am a 28-year-old male from Belgium with classic patterns of alopecia androgenetica. Quite some men in my family had a norwood 5 hairline when they turned 30. When I was a 20-years-old student, I saw more and more thin hairs falling down on my reading notes. Not just one or two, but a considerable number each day. It was clear that I was losing my hair at quite a rapid pace.
I quickly decided to contact my dermatologist to treat my hair loss and I've been using Minoxidil 5% now for more or less seven years. I never considered doing a hair transplant before the age of 25, as I knew that I first had to use medication and see when and how my hair loss would be stabilizing. Very recently (since 2023) I've switched towards Essengen-6, a combination of topical Minoxidil and topical Finasteride, for the moment only available in Belgium by importing it from the USA.
As Minoxidil really stopped the fast pace of my genetic balding process, I decided to let it stabilize for some years and to put some money aside in the meantime for a hair transplant treatment before my thirties. I wanted to wait a bit, but not too long, as I wanted to enjoy my hair when I was still young. I personally would have less issues losing my hair around my 40s/50s. From the age of 20 I have spent hours and hours reading on the internet what the best solutions would be: from an aesthetic, medical and financial point of view. Based on my first reads and research, I had the feeling that hair transplants were all very invasive treatments and that the healing process was very hard. I must say that this idea was mostly influenced by the fact that some years ago, FUT treatments seemed to be still more common than FUE treatments. For quite a while, I thought that hair transplants were only possible with big scars etc.
Little by little, I began to understand that a hair transplant was clearly not the horrible operation I was afraid of. However, it was still very very important for me to find a doctor/clinic with a high level of service and an honest personal contact. The lack thereof is unfortunately not only an issue in Turkey, but also in Western-Europe. This was also one of the reasons to postpone the treatment for me for a while. I only wanted the operation to be done by a doctor/clinic where I would feel 100% comfortable.
Thanks to a Dutch hairloss-forum I saw more and more extensive and honest reviews from Dr. Munib Ahmad and his clinic Fuegenix in the Netherlands. Fuegenix was (and is!) clearly unique in its kind. I also read the reviews on this forum here and it was for the first time that I really felt convinced and well-assured about my hair transplant options.
Some important factors for me that made me opt for Dr. Munib Ahmad/Fuegenix and that you almost never see with other surgeons, are the following:
(1) Dr. Munib Ahmad speaks Dutch, which is quite exceptional, even for clinics in the Netherlands or Belgium.
(2) Dr. Munib takes care of the primary contact, of the consultation, of the treatment and of the after care follow-up. Basically of everyting! And all of this in a sincere and extremely professional way. There is no intermediary commercial contact person at all. Munib must be one of the most personally involved hair transplant practitioners in the world. His first response time is amazing, just like all his other messages. Sometimes he is so fast that it feels unreal. It feels like he is working all day long, and that he's clearly very passionate about his practice and his work.
(3) Munib opts for a future-proof hairline; for me this realistic no-nonsense approach was very important, as it creates a relationship of trust.
(4) The post-op images of his work (also from independent reviews) looked all very neat, clean and healthy. This is in high contrast with some horror-pictures that you see from clinics all over the world.
(5) The general results look great and the pictures provided online are of a sharp quality. As he often states himself online, he is not afraid of taking close up pictures of the hairline and to explain exactly what he has done.
(6) The communication on his website and other social media is up to date and are always well documented. For me this is also a sign of professionalism.
After I had sent some pictures via the contact form on his website, I was contacted the same day (a Sunday!) by Munib himself. He had some specific questions for me, to be certain that I really wanted to have a consultation and treatment, as it was important to be realistic about the aesthetic results and the financial side of the entire story.
The consultation itself was both personal and efficient. We found common ground on my future hairline immediately and talked openly about some other important factors to take into consideration. As I had already decided for myself that I wanted to get my treatment at Fuegenix, it didn't take me much time to accept a date for the operation. Operation day - day 0
The 18th of May 2023 was finally the day of no return: operation day. I must say that I was quite stressed the months before. Not so much about the operation itself, but rather about the recovery time and the reactions of people around me. For that reason, I didn't tell it to too many people in advance, just some friends and family. The "eternal doubter" in me was also afraid that the appointment would still be cancelled just some days in advance. I just couldn't believe that the one thing that I was contemplating about for years, on an almost daily basis, was finally going to happen ... Right now, after the treatment, I actually still can't believe that it finally happened :-D.
I decided to stay at a local hotel nearby the night before and the night after the treatment. I arrived quite late at my hotel (as I had some work to finish at work, considering that I didn't know how much days I would need to fully recover) and on top of that I couldn't catch too much sleep that night, as I was afraid to sleep through my alarm and miss the operation the next day ... leading to the fact that I was already awake around 4:30 in the morning on the day of the operation.
After a very short walk through the beautiful town of Bergen op Zoom, I arrived around 7:15 in the morning at his practice. There, I was welcomed by Munib and we took the final pictures of my hairline (from many different sides); my hair was then shaved off. After a short visit to the toilet, I could lay down in the treatment chair, on my stomach with my head facing down through an open headrest. This was much more comfortable than I had expected. To keep my body as still as possible, I decided to lay both my hands under my legs. This worked out quite well, I must say.
The anesthetic injections performed by Munib were not as painful as I had expected. It basically felt like some kind of an electric trimmer that rolled over my head and, at multiple occasions, turned some skin together and tried to pull that out. If a baby ever tried to pull your hair ... That is what it felt like. So it was a bit painful, but no undurable pain at all. It is also a bit comparable to the pain of pulling several nose hairs out.
Then, the first part of the treatment started: the extraction of my grafts in the donor zone at the back of my head. This was very relaxing, I must say. A bit later his assistant arrived, to sort the harvested grafts. During this procedure Munib and his assistant were talking about "singles, doubles and triples", which refers to the number of hairs per graft, I suppose. The ratio between those sorts of grafts is important to create a natural hairline (I believe). After an hour or so, I had to put myself on my side(s) for further extraction of grafts in my donor zone.
After that, the doctor gave me some extra anesthetic injections and drilled holes in the recipient zone. First I was not aware of this, as it all felt so relaxed and smooth. If I wouldn't have been so excited about the entire treatment, I could have fallen asleep easily at that time.
So all in all, the entire process of harvesting the grafts and drilling the holes was a rather relaxing experience and not painful at all. The only thing that was annoying for me was that I really needed to pee and could not go to the bathroom for a while ... so I was very very happy when the time had come to take a lunch break. During the lunch break, my head was packed in a special medical bandage cover and I had the time for a sanitary pitstop. I was advised to be careful whilst walking to the bathroom, as some patients might be a bit paralysed when standing up. After I went to the toilet, I could eat a nice gouda cheese baguette sandwich that was provided by Munib. It was a really good sandwich: no bad hospital food here, but real quality food ... clearly everything is on fleek with this doctor! While I was eating, Munib already gave me some after care rules and advice, to ascertain that I would treat myself correctly after the operation, day by day.
After lunch, I was requested to take place again on the treatment chair and the grafts were placed by Munib. A bit later on, after having sorted all the grafts, his assistant came to help him place the grafts, which she did great as well. This process took more or less two hours. It was a bit more unpleasant than the first part of the operation, as you feel that very special things are being done on the skin of your head, but it was still much more comfortable and relaxed than a dentist treatment or a surgical excision. Again they were referring quite often to the "singles, doubles and triples"-things. Which shows that they put high importance in placing the right grafts at the right place.
Then the final stretch had come and the operation was officially finished. The doctor took some pictures and I could leave the practice. Tis was somewhere between 14:00 and 15:00 in the afternoon. In total I have spent more or less 7 hours in the practice. post-op First I was a bit scared to walk back to my hotel, as I was afraid that many people would really be staring at me, but this was not the case at all. Most people didn't even seem to notice it from a certain distance. I stayed in my hotel room for that day/night and must say that I was really amazed by how clean and neat it all looked. I had no pain at all, the top of my head only felt a bit tight, but that was all very normal. The most difficult thing was falling asleep in an upright position of at least 45 degrees.This wasn't easy, but I still managed to do so for +- 5 hours that night. The day after, I went home and had no issues at all, everything went fine. My head was swollen though and this caused quite pressure on my head, but nothing too bad. In the meantime, I kept on spraying the saline solution on my head. The second day after the operation I felt better than ever before, the swelling was much less than the day before. I kept on spraying. The third day of the treatment I could wash my head gently for the first time with the special shampoo that was provided to me by doctor Munib Ahmad. I rubbed it softly onto the donor zone and then I used the existing foam to top it very very securely on the transplanted hairs, as advised by Munib. My head feels a bit more itchy now from time to time, but that is only normal, as the wounds are healing.
--> I'll be posting updates on a regular basis.
Cheers!
