Al - Moderator

In my opinion there's way too much negative info about them. If you look hard enough I'm sure you'll probably find a few patients who ended up with decent results, but it's pretty clear that many don't end up satisfied. Why would you want to take the chance of being that 1 person out a 100 that turns out OK? Just go somewhere else.

Well a HT didn't cure me. I went to a so-called hairloss specialist who said I had "an excessive hairloss disease" and a hair transplant would cure it. I ended up going to 8 different Drs. 3 of them did work on me. 2 turned me down completely. 2 were willing to do very minor work to try to create a part, but both said it's probably not in my best interest to even do that as it would just make the visible scarring worse and probably wasn't a good idea to make a new scar for so little work. I ended up much worse than I started. I would not have any scars on my head if I didn't have a HT. So now I am bald with scars instead of just bald. After going through that I didn't come on here telling every Dr and member here that HTs don't work and they are all lying and full of crap. What I did do is try something that I thought might help me get a little bit of growth or thicken some wispy miniaturized hairs and said I'd let the forum know if it works for me. I try it for a few months and get a bit of growth and simply because I say it's working for me I get Dr Feller saying I'm lying unless I can show HIM proof. Who is he that he needs proof that something works for me!? On top of that he says the cure to my problem is a hair transplant. So tell me, how would you feel?

There are several Drs in the recommended/coalition list here who require non refundable down payments, so while I don't like the idea of it, it seems to be at least somewhat of a standard practice. Thinman, since you already put a lot of money down and don't want to lose it, I'll give you advice if you do decide to have it done. I can't see your hairloss, so this is general advice considering your age. Go with a higher hairline than you'd like to have at your age. You'll be glad you did that later. Cover the front half and leave the back alone at this point. You can always go back a few years later for more when you get a better idea of how much loss you will have. Don't try to get dense packed with too many grafts because you want to make sure you have enough donor left over for possible future loss. Take a look at Azza's blog on here. He had significant loss at a very young age and had a HT. It didn't turn out as thick as he would like, but it was the proper amount of coverage to both get an improvement and leave donor for later if his area of loss gets wider.

Anyone who posts on this forum and says they had a HT between 4 to 6 months ago and claims it doesn't work because they haven't seen any results, you would be saying it's too early and they have to wait a full year to evaluate it fully. Anyone who posts on this forum and says they started using Propecia between 4 to 6 months ago and claims it doesn't work because they haven't seen any results, you would be saying it's too early and they have to wait a full year to evaluate it fully. Anyone who posts on this forum and says they started using Minoxidil between 4 to 6 months ago and claims it doesn't work because they haven't seen any results, you would be saying it's too early and they have to wait a full year to evaluate it fully. So... now you and 2 friends tried laser therapy for between 4 to 6 months and with you knowing that it may take at least a year to see results with anything that works have somehow proven that laser therapy doesn't work after just 4 to 6 months. Hmm.... Why aren't you giving the same time frame for results as you would give every other method?

Of course they are! Are you saying that all HT pictures posted by the Drs on here and on their own web sites should not count for anything because it comes from them and not a "real" patient? It was said that the manufacturers hadn't produced any photographic evidence showing improvement. I showed that they have produced the evidence asked for. Your response is that doesn't count because they gave you what was asked for. Is that the best you can do to discredit it? I notice you didn't say that you didn't see improvement in the "After" pictures.

There generally isn't much benefit of taking more than 1mg to 1.25mg a day. Every persons system is different, but if you are taking an amount that stops your hair from falling out then taking more than that is just a waste or worse because you'll be more prone to the sexual side effects. Propecia/Proscar doesn't really make new hair grow. It stops it from falling out, which in turn allows the hair to continue growing that would normally have fallen out, miniturize over a few cycles, and eventually not grow back. Propecia keeps the growth cycles going. Some people do get a bit of new growth, but it's mostly hair that was on it's last cycles and just beginning to go permanently dormant.

I don't agree that there is one certain place to take grafts from. My hair loss goes very far down the back of my head. If you were to take hair from the bump in the back and above then you'd be taking out bare skin. I had my HT done before I lost hair down the back. I do have a scar that's just above the bump and later lost hair past that area, so I now have a scar showing across my bald area in the back of my head. The scars on the sides are showing too because I lost hair down the sides as well. I would much rather have lower scars because I'd be able to hide them better. I can post pictures if you like.

You guys assume too many things and make comments on stuff you don't know anything about. He says he paid $11170 for 2065 grafts. That's $5.41 per graft. Slightly on the higher side maybe, but I wouldn't call that a rip-off. Sure he can get a lower per graft price if he had 4000 to 5000 grafts done, but how do you know he needs that many? Maybe he does, but we don't know at this point. If he's a NW 2 or 3 he may only need 2000, so what's the point of discussing 4000 plus until we know if he needs that many. I will agree that he should have/could have had the entire 2065 done in one session, but he didn't say if that was his choice or not, perhaps because of money issues. I can only go by what he says. So far he says he's happy with the first results. That's good news (and leads me to believe he probably doesn't need 5000 grafts). Now to answer his question about shock loss. It's normal to have some temporary shock loss to previously transplanted hair when you do a new procedure in between the first grafts to add density. Normally it will all grow back in a few months. Usually the shock loss hair will grow back a little sooner than the newly transplanted grafts.

I see improvement on some of these. Not going from bald to a full head of hair, but certainly in line with what propecia and minoxidil do. The site claims that they all used ONLY a laser comb and dod not use minoxidil, propecia, etc. http://www.sunetics.com/beforeafters.aspx

Jupiter, I'm another one who knows exactly how you feel. I was 16 when I started getting teased about my bald spot. I was already doing the combover then to cover it. I had diffuse thinning all over the top of my head, so by the time I was 18 I couldn't even cover my hairloss by doing a combover. I felt like I went from graduating highschool to age 50 by the time the summer was over. Even my mother told me when I was 19 that I looked like a 42 year old bald man. Believe me that is depressing. Now at age 41 I feel like the bald school principal in the movie Back to the Future where Marty McFly goes back 30 years in the past and the guy is bald even then and Marty says "Jesus! Didn't that guy ever have hair?". That's me. I was pulled over by a cop one time who thought my drivers license was fake because in the picture I had hair (taken at 17 when I got it) and he thought there was no way I was only 20. I had some women think it was fake back then too because they insisted I must be at least 10 years older than my ID showed. I ended up dating only women who were about 5 years older than me because they thought I was a few years older than they were. Forget about dating the 17 to 21 crowd. I had almost no chance with them. A girl I met and started dating back in 1988 and am still friends with has never known me with hair. When I broke up with her in 1989 I told her I was going to have a HT. I didn't see her for 3 years after that although we did talk on the phone once in a while. When she finally did see me 3 years after going through several HTs she said "Why didn't you ever have a hair transplant." So believe me I know how it is to be depressed about hair loss.

DISCOUNTS I don't see a problem with asking if there are any discounts. I know some Drs offer discounts if you make a sizeable down payment when you book a procedure. There are also some Drs who have discounted "standby" pricing if you are willing to be available to come in on short notice when someone else cancels at the last minute. With those in mind I don't see why someone shouldn't ask if there are any discounts or reduced pricing plans. COST PER AREA VS COST PER GRAFT I don't think there's really much of a difference in the end result here. First of all there will always be some Drs who will try to cheat you whether they charge per area and spread a small amount of grafts over the entire area or charge per graft and split them all into singles. So assuming we are dealing with 2 decent Drs, but with differing pricing schemes we get this: 1. Dr A outlines the area to be covered and says it will take about 2500 grafts to cover that area for $4 per graft for a total cost of $10000. 2. Dr B outlines the same area and says he will cover that entire area for $10000. He ends up giving you roughly 2500 grafts because that's how much it takes to properly cover the area. The end result is the same. I think it's just Dr and patient's preference as to what method of pricing they feel more comfortable with, but I don't think the method itself matters very much.

I have a low opinion of the hair transplant industry as a whole (which I feel is completely warranted), but I never said I had a low opinion of you personally. Just because I don't agree with you on some issues doesn't mean I have a low opinion of you. In fact in at least one of my posts somewhere on these boards I said I think you do great hair transplants. However I do get a sense that you feel whatever you say or do is right and everyone else is wrong. It's really hard to listen to someone saying something can't work when I see it working. What experience or knowledge? You never used a laser comb, have no desire to meet anyone who used one, tell your patients not to try it, walk out of a lecture discussing it, etc. A person can never gain any knowledge or experience by completely closing their mind to the possibilities of there being anything more to learn or experience than what they already have. Honestly I didn't expect it to work very well. I tried it and said I'll let you guys know what happens. I really didn't think I'd get enough growth to actually see much in pictures. I did try taking pictures at the beginning, but they turned out blurry. I decided it wasn't worth bothering to take another set. I also didn't expect to get slammed so badly from members of this forum simply because it's working on me. The bashing of me was more of a surprise than the growth I'm getting. When I saw I was getting good growth I did take some more pictures and I posted them on these boards as "Before" pictures just to prove that they were taken at that time. I do plan on posting updates soon, but just as with a hair transplant, propecia, or minoxidil it takes months to see a noticeable improvement. Give me some time. I'm not in the business of selling laser combs. I'm just a user of one. I don't think I should be responsible for any company's marketing claims. Now THIS is something I find very offensive. You want to talk about how laser comb manufacturers' claims are all lies, but what about the hair transplant field? Let's see... it's a cure for hairloss, no touch method, non surgical, regain a full head of hair, be back to work the next day, painless, etc. I'm sure you think that is all totally truthful marketing, right? Oh and Dr Feller, I had a hair transplant. Actually I had 25 hair transplants. I'm still not cured. I wish I were because then I wouldn't have to use my laser comb. Your hair transplant "cure" caused massive scarring on my head that I can't cover even if I grow my hair 4 inches long... and that was after paying an additional $150 per procedure for a guarantee that not only will I not have scars, but I'd also get double the amount of hair in the donor area as that area was beginning to thin too. But of course hair transplant Drs never lie and are never wrong. It's the laser comb companies that are scamming me. Right.

Hi, I'm very curious about this because I'm in a similar situation where I've had to grow my hair longish all around to try to cover the scars and haven't been able to have a decent haircut in about 20 years. I did have strip in the late 80's and early 90's but with early strip transplants they created a new scar for every HT surgery rather than building onto the previous scar. I tried several times to get them to piggyback the old scars, but they told me I was crazy and that it would never work because it would only make the scar wider and wider each time. For reference you can see a few of my old pictures here: http://members.aol.com/LongScars/photos.html So anyway, if your donor area was so sparse that you had to have hair transplanted into it and also were able to add hair in the hairline area, I'm wondering where H&W got the hair for that? Did they first spread some back and side hair around to make it more even and then on a later session do a strip through that area to put in the front? I'm leaning towards using armpit hair because it grows the thickest and longest of any body hair and any donor scars created there won't be seen. I figure one underarm worth of grafts to fill in the scars and the other side to spread around in strategic areas on top to add a look of density. You're not even close! I'm pretty sure I hold the record by far for both total number of hair transplant surgeries performed and for how many surgeries can be done in the shortest time frame. I had 25 HT surgeries in a 5-1/2 year period. The closest I ever heard to that number was about 17 total HT surgeries for someone who went through a bunch of repair surgeries to punch out most of the plugs.

As someone who has been maxed out and has the $hitty comb-over I can tell you the reason you don't see more men getting 1000 or more FUE into the scar to make it less noticeable if they shave their head is because if they actually were able to get that many more grafts they would simply put them on the top and not have to do the $hitty comb-over.

Transplanted hair sometimes does start growing sort of curly at first. It will slowly straighten out and get softer, but it can take 18 months to get to a normal state.

Age 15: My mother started yelling at me to stop pulling out my hair. She used to cut my hair and every time she would cut it she would yell at me for it. I used to play with my hair alot and twirl it around my fingers, so she thoght my hair fallout was my fault. That went on for every haircut for maybe 2 years until she finally refused to cut it any more. Age 16: Got teased about my bald spot from some friends. Age 17: Got turned down for a date to the prom because she said she wouldn't date someone with no hair.

I have very thin hair all over. I've tried dermatch. I can get a completely full look as if I never lost any hair at all, so it does create a good illusion of hair as long as you have a little bit of real hair as a base. However I personally don't use it because it feels fake if I put my hands through my hair, it's hard to comb my hair with it in, some of it rubs off, I get worried that people will find out (which to me is worse than just being bald), and the biggest reason is you either have to use it every day wherever you go or else you look bald one day, full head of hair the next day, bald again another day. That is just too obviously fake for me and who wants to go through all that trouble to get it looking right every single day.

I've been using proscar for 11 years. If I stop taking it for more than about 3 days my hair starts falling out. As long as I take it every few days my hair stays in. I don't think it's growing much hair anymore, but it's definitely still helping me keep what I have. I know I'd be a lot worse off if I wasn't using it all those years.

The only one I know of from Wired Technologies looks like this:

Yes! This is just what we need. Fingers growing out of our heads. We will actually be able to feel the hair growing.

Hi Carlos. Welcome to the forums. If you're a NW 6+ then you should probably read this thread http://www.hairrestorationnetwork.com/eve/showthread.php?t=148644 With a high degree of hair loss it may not be possible to get decent coverage although a lot of that depends on your age. How old are you? It will generally take a lot more coverage for a 25 year old to consider it decent than it takes to make a 50 year old feel the same. You should try posting a picture here. To answer the question of can you go back to get a 2nd procedure. Yes you can if you have enough donor hair remaining. I think most people end up getting 2 or 3 procedures. You can get the front half covered on the first session, so that you'll still have a bald spot in the back, but good hair up front and then you go back later to fill in the rest, but it's not necessary if you're OK with having a bald crown. Doing it that way allows you to wait a few years until you save enough money to pay for the 2nd one in the top/back (if money is an issue).

I agree with you Janna, but my opinion and your opinion don't matter if the laws and medical licensing boards say otherwise. Hahaha. I have to laugh at that. Sorry. I'm sure you really do think that stuff is true. I have to ask you, what do you consider direct supervision? Recently there was a thread about Dr Cole ethics. There was a link to someone who had some bad FUE procedures. here's the link: http://hairtransplantcons.blogspot.com/2008/01/its-neve...mba-its-patrick.html It's hard to decipher with all his cursing and ranting, but it sounds to me like he's going through the same kinds of things I did. The just call me Patrick thing is something that happened to me. It's a planned thing the way they do it. In my case it was something like "This is your lucky day. You won't have just any Dr working on you today. You'll have the Medical Director". Then he comes in and says "Hi. Dr is so formal. You can call me Stephen". Now in my case there was a Dr who came in, put some novacain in where Stephen marked the area to be worked on and the Dr cut out the strip that was already marked where to cut. Once he was done that he would leave the building and drive back to his General Practice office 20 miles away. Legally that was all OK because a Dr did every part that was legally required and was available by phone if they needed anything, so they could claim he was overseeing the process. In fact the company was run by several Dr's who were active in the business, so they technically were supervising/overseeing all of their 5 or 6 clinics in NJ, NY, and PA. There were several class action lawsuits and several individual suits, but nobody ever went to jail, nobody lost their license, nobody even got a fine. They are still in business today. Moving on with that, I think the reason that FUE guy can't get anywhere is because that Patrick person didn't have to be a Dr, so there's no recourse. Even though it's clearly in the literature that he was a Dr (same thing happened to me) it doesn't matter because he doesn't have to be one. It would only matter if he performed duties that required him to be a licensed Dr. So my question is what's stopping a Dr from opening several clinics and hiring consultants and techs to do everything while claiming the place is run by a Dr which it is... he's just not there during your HT, but he does run the business and is available if they need him. This was harder to do before because you actually did need a Dr to come in and take out the strip, but now you don't need that if you do FUE, so I'm thinking there's a chance the HT industry as a whole might soon be going backwards a bit to when there were a lot of butchers in the industry.

HLBD, As for Hairmax, it says on their web site that they previously sold a single laser comb in Australia where the company began and they started selling a newer model in the USA in 2001. Of course they don't say the old one was ineffective, just that the new one is more effective. Most products do improve over time. As for FDA stuff I admit I don't know much about that, but at least we agree that other companies don't have to do studies for something already approved. The whole FDA thing is a gray area anyway. You can use lotions, shampoos, skin creams, etc without going through the FDA, but minoxidil that you only rub on your head, no different than all those other things I just mentioned had to get approval. I wonder if it wasn't already under FDA guidelines for oral use for other treatments if they then could have simply sold it as they please. Why wouldn't they be able to do that? But back to the laser comb. That didn't need FDA approval either. Hairmax got approval last year but was already selling them in the USA since 2001. I think it was more of a marketing thing. If they could get it approved as a medical device than they can claim it's FDA approved "to promote hair growth" (that's the FDA wording) rather than only being allowed to say it can make your hair seem shiny and full looking. So if it's something that didn't need approval anyone can sell them. Also anyone can claim that laser combs are FDA approved because that's true as long as you don't claim that your specific comb or design has been approved.

Very well written. I completely agree.

HLBD, Hairmax's older model from several years ago used a single laser with mirrors, but their current laser combs use either 5 lasers or 9 lasers depending on which one you buy. The FDA approval was for a multilaser model, not the old single laser comb. darkmanhyk, As for the wired technolgies laser comb, it looks to be a pretty good deal at $79.95. It has 9 actual lasers at the same power ratings as Hairmax (650NM/5MW). It also gives you the option of either plugging it into an outlet or using it with the rechargeable battery. While THEY didn't get FDA approval for THEIR device, it's just like using generic medicines. The original manufacturer gets FDA approval and eventually other companies are allowed to make the same pills. They of course don't need FDA approval for theirs because the active ingredients are already approved. If you want to try using a laser comb but don't want to spend a lot of money on something you're not sure will work then this might be a good comb to try.