slartibartfast

Yes, great point! This is an issue with any thread asking who the "best" is -- it's a matter of personal preference.

You have pretty advanced recession for a young age and it seems like you have some diffuse thinning as well. I might think about adding oral minoxidil, upgrading to dutasteride and reassessing after a year.

What's your medical regimen?

You are so young with hair loss but have had a great result. Try to be as conservative as possible. Hold off on transplant.

Can you submit some pictures of before transplant, post transplant and now?

How far out from surgery are you?

How old are you now? On finasteride?

My surgeon told me that in general should use scissors after transplant for haircuts until recipient really comes in, I think because of less risk of folliculitis?

This is all good, but ultimately there are too many details of the procedure that are not under our control. It's more important to focus on their patient posted results online and your general comfort level with the surgeon. Otherwise the list of questions you could ask is literally endless and doesn't change much at the end of the day. The proof is in the pudding.

I didn't take into account patients that had a subpar result but went back in for a revision and came out with something much better (or rarely worse). This is based on first pass only. I also didn't consider anyone from Turkey as I was not interested in that market.

I work a lot in machine learning/algorithmic trading so I'm a numbers guy. This is a chart that took me quite a while to compile, but it's based on my own personal estimates of patient submitted FUE cases (rating each case 1-10 for the first column, and the percentage of cases that I rated as an 8 or higher for the second column): Some more linear charts of case results over time: These were compiled predominantly from HRN and the Spanish forum, though I did look at 3 or 4 of the less popular forums as well (Real Self, Italian, French, German, etc). I ignored all results posted by the clinics themselves as those are generally pointless. Some points to keep in mind: Note how few cases led to these scores. Alvarez has an extremely high success rate, for example, but it's only based on SIX patients. At the other extreme are guys like Freitas, who seem to have a new patient posted case every other week. These numbers don't take into account "artistry" of design, which I think is a very personal choice. Hasson draws his frontal lines across and almost never rebuilds temples, Eugenix folks like very sharp and angular temple points, Ferreira is sharp but not as extreme as Eugenix, Couto and Konior are much smoother and more natural with their lines and don't shy away from temples, Lorenzo and Pinto are a bit over-conservative and usually keep their hairlines high. I didn't include any FUTs on this list because that wasn't my interest. This is a big deal for guys that are heavy hitters with strip like Konior and Hasson, who've arguably had their best results in that arena. Patient population must be taken into account, with the Spanish, Portuguese and Indian docs getting the more "robust" follicles of darker haired men while American docs have a much more varied patient population with a larger percentage of very fine haired blondes. Pinto's high success rates are probably in part due to his cherry picking cases and conservative approach, at least from what I've heard on the Spanish forums, similar to what you see with Keser. It's also interesting that certain doctors tend to have better results at certain times of year. Not sure if this is related to weather, clinic factors or patient availability, but just something to note. I'm making these decisions based on online pictures, many of which are of severely limited quality. Particularly if you go back 5-10 years. Things often look a bit different in person or if you're taking the pictures outside in the desert at noon versus in a dimly lit office. The point of all this is that it's a very complicated question you're asking for who's considered the "best". It's like saying who's the best athlete in the world? Cristiano Ronaldo? Jon Jones? Tiger Wds? Tom Brady? Michael Jordan? Sachin Tendulkar? Ric Flair? There are just too many variables to boil it down to something as simple as "this guy, he's the best, no questions asked". One size fits all is a size that fits none. You have to find who works for you.