Al - Moderator

I just wanted to comment on this part of your post. I would take a guess that if the Dr knows you're planning on coming back as soon as possible then he may have felt it best to cover a single area rather than spread them out because at 6 months it will be hard to tell where additional grafts are needed since the area would still be growing in. If he puts grafts in just one area right now then he can consider that spot completed and he won't have to worry about if hair he is placing is in an area that is still growing in. He would just stay away from the area he already transplanted.

I love that you've been showing updated close ups on the scar from the very beginning. You can see it was a very good closure, but you ended up with a lot of shock loss in the scar area. That will all grow back. This is something FUE patients need to see because they often think they've ben depleted when it's just shock loss. It's much easier to see that it's shock loss when it's FUT.

Hopefully it keeps thickening up some more, but it sure looks a lot better than it did before the HT.

The number of extractions is going to be more than the number of actual grafts because they are extraction ATTEMPTS. Some of the attempts will not get a graft out. There could be some transection. Usually those hairs will grow back as the follicle root is still intact under the surface of the skin. Then the techs could also have been still counting how many they had when you asked for the number, so it may not have been all of them. I can tell you how the process works at Dr Dorin's office. While they are extracting grafts they would give them to the techs maybe 20 to 25 at a time. The techs start looking at them all in the next room. So even when extractions are done or they take a break to see how many they have, it can take a little while for the techs to finish checking them all, so the count of grafts will be much lower than the extractions at first, but they updated the count on the board a few times as they counted up all the grafts. So in your case, when they said they had 300, that could have just been what they had counted as good grafts so far and may still have been looking at more of them and maybe update the count again 10 or 15 minutes later. Remember also as I said that the extraction attempts will also be more than the actual grafts handed to the techs to check. I hope that all made sense.

Do you mean this one? To find your previous topics you started you can go to your profile and click "See their activity" (circled in green below) Then select "Topics" and it will list any topics you started (circled in green below).

Please update us in a few months to let us know if it improves. Thanks.

I think the only thing you can do to find out is stay on the meds and see if it grows back. Earlier I mentioned a possible shed due to stopping or changing meds, but depending on how long ago you first started using meds, it could be a synchronized shed... meaning if the hair all started growing in at the same time it may tend to shed at the same time too before growing new, stronger hairs.

It looks like you are getting great results from the meds. That will really help you out if/when you go for a hair transplant. It will save you money and grafts.If you feel that you are still improving, then maybe wait a little longer before going through with the HT just to see how much growth you can get without it. Surgery is something you are better off avoiding if you can get to a decent place without it.

Same here. It’s weird that the beard area clears up quickly, but my chest took 6 months for it to clear.

That's great news. Hopefully you can keep the hair you have for many years to come and never need a hair transplant.

The transplanted hair will almost all shed and then you will start to grow new hair after 3 or 4 months. This is completely normal and happens to just about everyone. It's very rare that transplanted hair does now shed.

First I will say I'm a NW 7 and I'm not currently on any meds. However there are several reasons a NW 7 may want to be on various meds. Todays FUE extraction area extends outside what used to be considered the safe zone, especially on higher NWs who need as many grafts as they can get, so preserving what you have left after having a HT can stop the area from expanding past some of the FUE extractions. You mention that 99% of men won't thin in the safe zone, but statistics are funny. Let's suppose it is 99%, meaning only 1 % will thin in the safe zone. That's 1% of all men, but nearly all of that 1% are going to be NW7s. For example someone who never gets past NW 3 probably isn't going to have significant thinning on the sides and back. The ones who are going to have a thinning "safe" zone are the NW 7s, so if you look at just the small percentage of people who reach NW 7, it turns out a lot of them will end up with a thinning "safe" zone.

Most people who go for a hair transplant are trying to get back to something similar to what they once had. I always say if you were relatively happy with the hair you had before it was falling out then take a look at some old photos of yourself and try to recreate that hairline style. I'm not saying to try to get it as low or as dense as it once was, but the general idea of what you had is usually the best place to start if you are trying to decide on a hairline style. The reason is because you want to still look and feel like yourself... just a better version.

You got a lot of improvement from just using meds. I'm impressed with those results.

Yeah good catch. You should be cutting the 5mg pills into quarters and taking 1.25mg.

I am trying to wait at least a full year before going back for a consultation because I want to let everything grow and heal as much as possible to get a proper idea of where I am at with everything including how many grafts I can still get as well as where I need them the most. I'll be setting up a date soon. I'm planning on going back for the actual surgery sometime around November. I'd rather not be in the ugly duckling phase through the Summer. I'll post here for sure when I go.

Looks great. Seems like all the redness is gone.

Thanks. It's all beard and chest hair. No scalp donor was used for any repairs.

You have a lot of crown loss, so it's probably best to start with a high, conservative hairline first. Then later if you still have enough donor grafts left you can think about lowering the hairline a bit. Usually the few hairs in front of the transplanted hairline will help to make it look more natural, so I don't see anything wrong with what the Dr is saying about that.

That sounds somewhat like what was done with me. I did 3 things --- 1. I had the front hairline fixed so it doesn't look like an old hair transplant anymore. 2. I filled in around the perimeter where I had lost hair over the years due to the NW 7 area expanding. 3. Added some grafts all over to try to get a bit of density and have some hair to comb over the top to try to make it all look covered. I didn't have any scalp donor, so I had to rely only on body hair. I also have severe retrograde loss. There is no way I am ever going to get the same amount of hair as Gatsby because he had a lot more scalp donor to work with. This is where I was too. Shaving was out of the question because I had multiple FUT scars plus remnants of 5 scalp reductions all over the top of my head which were being hidden by what little hair I had on top. So for me any improvement I could get made it worth it. Do I still want more? Yes! and I'm hoping to do at least one more round (hopefully two) to get as close to a decent head of hair as I can get. I'm glad I did it just so that I don't feel so freakish looking anymore. I still look like I'm balding pretty heavily, but it doesn't look as strange as it once did. I posted comparison pictures in my personal thread about my repair work of my hairline before and after. I'll post them here if you didn't see them. The ones on the left are prior to any repairs and the ones on the right are from last year on the beach. You can see it looks much more natural now. It's not perfect and it's still very thin behind the hairline, but at least I look normal from the front.

I'm not personally a fan of it, but I know there are a few clinics that do it. Just make sure they are not extracting grafts on day 1 and not implanting them until day 2. That's a big NO. Grafts have to be put back into your scalp within a few hours to have good growth. I think this is actually the reason why some Drs will do all of the incisions on one day and then extracting and inserting the next day. It cuts down the amount of time that grafts are out of your body. If the incisions were already done then they can just extract grafts and place them into the incision holes much quicker. If there's very little out of body time then the grafts will potentially have a better chance at survival. I would say take a look at a lot of the Drs before and after pictures of other patients who had it done that way. If you still feel uncomfortable about how the procedure will be performed then perhaps he/she is not the right Dr for you.

That's a scar? I wouldn't know it if you didn't say so. Very good.

Here are a couple of before and afters on the hairline. The "Before" pictures on the left are both from 2014 which was about 20 years after my last hair transplant at the time, but prior to any repairs. The "After" pictures on the right are both from September 2023.

Hair greed strikes again. It seems nobody can ever have enough hair 😃

This seems to have gotten into a Pitella, Zarev, Sethi debate, but the original question was I just somewhat gave my answer to this in another of @Approach's threads. I'll link that below. I'll say for myself as a NW 7, 50 something year old who also had FUT transplants many years ago, I am very glad I went through with having beard and chest grafts placed into my scalp. I didn't have any scalp donor left and I had several FUT scars visible with not a whole lot of hair on top either. Did I get a full head of hair? No. But what I did get was enough improvement that I am not embarrassed to be seen anywhere. I'm still looking at further improvement to get to something near a full head of hair, but even at the point it is now and the $68,000 it cost me, I'm glad I did it. See my other answer about using body hair below.