Al - Moderator

It says they estimate the repair cost at between 26000 and 50000. I don't know the exchange rate, but that sounds like a lot considering he originally paid 7000. I'm wondering how bad can it be if he has enough donor left to do up to 50000 worth of work. When I had my lawsuit going on, the estimated repair cost was 0 because it was deemed unrepairable by several different Drs. That's one potential problem with a settlement for repair costs for something that is not renewable. Any hair that has been lost is gone. No amount of money can ever bring it back. Any amount of repair he can possible have done, could have originally been done without it needing to be a repair. Thus he will always be left with a lesser look than was originally possible.

What makes you think that it's a safe bet that someone you don't know won't be thinning in their donor area until their 60's or later? Your own observations? What would those be? Looking at men who are stage 7 with thin donor areas and ASSUMING they are 60, 70, or older because they look older to you? When I was young I thought my uncle was at least 10 years older than my father because my uncle had no hair on top and didn't even have enough hair on the sides of his head to cover the sides. I found out years later that he is actually a few years younger than my father. He was only in his late 30's, early 40's then and had see-through donor hair already. I've been battling a thinning donor area since my early 20's. I had a HT at age 22 and one of the things I hoped to fix was the thinning on the sides and back of my head, the so-called safe area. Another thing to remember is once you get a HT you removed the best hair from the sides and back. If you max out or near max out, what you are left with is hair in the lower neck and just above the ears that generally thins out sooner than the areas taken for the HT. You also have the hair above where the HT donor was taken which also is out of the safe area and as your thin/bald area gets larger, that is the hair that will go. Add to that because of several HTs you may have had, what's left of the donor area is already thinned out because the area had to stretch back each time leaving more space between each hair there, so you're already starting off with a thinner area after the HT than you would have if you didn't have any HTs. So... even if you would be someone who normally wouldn't thin out in the donor area until age 60+, you're going to be thinning out years earlier than that because the best hair in that area has been removed.

Every patient has their own idea of what areas concern them more. I obviously can't speak for this patient. I'm looking at it from my own perspective as a person in a similar situation as this guy (stage 7 except for overall thinness from prior pluggy HTs and little donor left). I'm hoping to get at least 2000 grafts, although it may be that I can't really get any at all. Although I have a pluggy, thin hairline, I'm more (or at least equally) concerned about building up the sides so I can make a decent part and comb my hair to the side without looking so strange. Like this guy I too have kept my hair rather long for many years, but it's not because I like it that way. It's because I'm trying to cover a bad HT. One of the goals in a repair, at least in my view, is to be able to cut my hair at a more normal length. Everyone who gets a HT wants to know if they'll be able to cut their hair short without scars showing or the HT looking unnatural. I'm certainly no different there. Maybe I should have made a new thread.

You say it's 7 months old. It can take up to a year to heal completely. You say it is filling in, so just leave it alone.

Looks great from the front, but it now requires him to keep his hair extra long to do a comb back to cover everything behind the hairline. He now has a thick line of hair along the front and very little behind it. If he cuts his hair short it's going to look strange. I would rather have the 2000 grafts spread out a bit more, say the frontal third rather than just an inch. It would be a bit thin looking, but I think more natural overall. No? Now if he gets that additional 1000 spread out a bit behind the initial 2000 then it may end up being basically what I'm saying, which might not be so bad.

Annieg Do not go to Dr. Schwinning. I went there for a consultation and then on the day of the operation they did a Dr switch telling me the 2nd Dr was better at hair transplants and I'd be in better hands with him. After doing a procedure totally different than was discussed they both told me I had to talk to the other. One saying If he did the procedure then talk to him. The other saying if he told you we could do that then talk to him. It's a planned scam. They tell you stuff that they know they can't deliver and then have someone else do the operation, so they can blame it on you that you didn't tell the Dr who performed the hair transplant what you wanted. Before Dr Schwinning got into hair transplants he was a surgeon who was barred from practicing everything except for hair transplants. He amputated the wrong leg of a patient (which means the patient lost both legs because they had to then amputate the correct one too). As far as his hair transplants, there was a class action lawsuit with 120 patients plus several individual lawsuits. Mine was one of the individual ones. The company claimed bankruptcy and opened as a new company the same day in the same office with the same phone number and same staff effectively canceling all the lawsuits while staying in business. A few years later when the judge was going declare that the lawsuits could go ahead against them, they sued themselves in order to drag it out (new company sued the old company but it is the same people involved in both). I could go on and on. I don't know the other Dr, but if he's part of the same group, stay away. Try Dr Feller in NY or Dr True in NJ. Both of them are MUCH better. EDIT: I can send you pictures of what they did to me if you like. Just PM me with your email address.

Does Dr. True require shaving the recipient area?

You say you are in NJ, so I just want to caution you. If the ad was for any of the following or includes any of the following Drs, I would not go there if I were you. Dr. John P Schwinning Dr James J Malecka Dr. Gary S Hitzig Dr. Michael J Kassouf Dr. Paul M Goldberg Hitzig Schwinning Medical Group New Jersey Vein & Cosmetic Surgery Palisades Center for Facial Cosmetics Again, if the flyer is part of any of the above, I would stay away. They are all part of a group of hack Drs with various lawsuits against them. As soon as the lawsuits start to pile up against them, they file for bankruptcy and start a "new" company the same day in the same offices with the same phone numbers.

I've said before I think underarm hair should be great to use in a HT. I don't know about anyone else, but mine grows long and straight and there's a lot of it. You can take it out using strip rather than FUE, so there's no worry about FUE not growing as well. You don't really have to worry about the scar because who is going to see a scar in your underarm. You can leave a small bit of hair there to hide it a bit anyway.

Stamos, Have you had a repair job since those picts? My old HT is similar to yours in that the top of my head is very thin all over. I'm curious to know how much area you were able to cover if you had a procedure done yet.

I had my first HT at age 22.

In their photos the guys head was tilted slightly further forward in each photo. Sinc each angle is different there's no way to actually see if there is any more hair growing on his head.

Was there an official count yet? Bill already had over 7000 total grafts in the previous 3 HTs, so I'm going to guess a low number figuring he's almost tapped out of good donor supply. I'm guessing 1500. Where would you put much more than that on his head anyway?

If I knew I was going to end up looking like those NW 7 after pics I would not have had the HT. I think most younger guys are better off shaving their heads rather than doing a combover/combback with a small amount of hair. If I did do the HT I would have definately insisted that it be done differently than they did on me. Sometimes I see repair pictures and think there's hope for me to get some improvement. Other times I see what other NW 7s have gotten and I already have more hair on top than many of them and then I just don't know if it's worth getting my hopes up.

if the best a NW 7 can expect to get is a very high hairline with some thin hair in front and none in the back, then what happens down the road to the 20 something year old NW 3 who has 2 megasessions to get hair as dense as he can? In 5 or 10 years when some of them progress to NW 7s they are going to be in bad shape. I know this from personal experience. I tried to continue filling in to keep up with the hairloss, but eventually the loss progresses to the scar. At that point you've already taken all the good hair on the sides and back out, so there's not much "safe" area left by then. I've been asked why I kept doing more HT sessions, but what choice does a person have? If you don't continue to fill in the sides as the area widens you just look freaky even sooner.

Concealers are too messy. Can't play with your hair, can't go swimming, have to worry about people seeing you without concealer one day and with it the next day and then again without it another day, etc, have to worry about some of it brushing off on someone's clothes or something else. worry about sweating too much. just seems to me to be more worries than thinning hair.

Why do you think this? Just because you can see where you are losing hair today does not mean you can know where your hair loss will be later. I was also a diffuse pattern hair loss sufferer NW 5 by age 22. The HT clinic kept insisting that they could see my pattern, but once the original hair was just about totally gone in that diffuse pattern area then the whole area started to widen and move down the back of my head. There was thick hair towards the back of my head when I started my HT. Enough that a donor strip was taken from there. A few years later that area was completely bald and now has a donor scar through it. There's also the thinning on the sides now as well. I think the diffuse pattern people are much more likely to have this problem. If you only start out with a small area of loss then it seems to me it will take a much longer time to lose hair on the sides toward the ears and down the back, but if your pattern starts as a large area, then you're that much further along in the balding process right off the bat.

I have pretty much the same problem. I have a lot of scars from old HTs when they made a new scar each session. I want to get a few of them cut out to make less scars and use the hair in between to fill in some other areas. Doing that would require me to shave my entire head. If I shave my head all of the scars will look really bad. In my job I wear a suit and have to deal with many people daily, so I'm not in an office all day and can't wear a hat. I figure I'd have to take at least a month off of work, but I'm not able to do it.

In New York and New Jersey, stay away from: Dr Gary Hitzig Dr John P Schwinning Dr James J Malecka Dr Paul M Goldberg Dr Michael J Kassouf

If it helps any, I just measured mine. At my ears the side rim hair is about 2 inches. In the back of my head it's about 2.25 inches. I'm 41 years old and consider myself a NW 7 if I didn't have a HT. It's actually now sort of a NW 7, but with some very thin hair in a combover trying to cover the large area and scars. I wish I could just cut it short, but it's really not an option unless you're willing to show your scars. I think a lot of guys who are getting megasessions are going to be in real hair trouble in a few years especially as the megasessions get larger and larger the last few years. I think there's a lot more NW 6 and 7s than some people want to believe and they are a lot younger than you think. I keep hearing here how it won't matter once you're in your 70's, but don't think all those NW 7s are that old. They just look much older than they are because they are NW 7s. It's the same reason most NW 3s want a HT... they think they look much older than they are. Think about it. The NW 7s look much older too. I was a NW 7 at 25, but nobody would have ever guessed I was that age and a lot of people thought I was in the 50 year old range.

Of course! When your hair is thinning you really don't want to be able to see that shiny bald spot too well. Once you get some hair growing it feels so much better when you can get a good look at all the hair on your head.

If you have dark hair, have you considered or tried lightening your hair color a shade or 2?

I've had 25. A new scar was created each time. They were done between 1989 to 1994. I'm hoping to eventually get one more high quality HT session done that can hopefully yield 1500 to 2000 grafts and combine a few scars into one leaving me with more hair on top with less scarring on the sides and back. I don't really know if it's possible. I should go for a consultation, but I'm afraid I might hear that they can't do anything for me which would really be depressing.

From looking at your 2 pictures, 1300 - 1500 will not be enough. 4000 is probably too many because of your young age and not knowing how much additional hair loss you'll have. You need to keep a good amount of donor saved for later. I would try to go with around 2800 - 3000 grafts with a high hairline. The curly hair should make it look a little thicker and lower, so I wouldn't try to put in too many. You can always add more later if you feel you need to.

Doesn't look like a combover. Just looks like you're combing your hair forward. Looks like it covers it pretty well. But I know how you feel. I was doing a combover at 19 and got told by my mother that I combed my hair like a 40 something year old bald guy. Yeah that made my day.