Al - Moderator

Drs know how many grafts they can do in a day. They've been doing it long enough to know. That makes it pretty easy in most cases to know how many days to schedule. If they know they can do roughly 2000 grafts in a day and they estimate they will be doing 3500 grafts on you then it's easy to see that will be 2 days. Repairs are a lot harder to determine ahead of time because it's not always clear to see what the extent of the repair will be such as how many grafts need to be relocated. Repairs usually take longer to do than standard hair transplants. There is more planning needed as well, so they may spend more time discussing with you various options and strategies on what to do on the morning of surgery, so it may be later in the morning that they actually get started than if it was a standard case.

It's a little more than a month later. How is the redness and the bumps at this point?

I get these as well. On me they will either eventually fall out or some of them will just start growing. Generally by month 9 they are all gone.

You should be waiting until 3 days post op to pour water from a cup on your hair. You can very lightly put some soap suds on it by very lightly patting the soap/shampoo on your head without rubbing. Do that on days 3, 4, and 5. Then on day 6 you can let the shower run on your hair normally, but be gentle with putting your hands through your hair.

It could be lead poisoning, arsenic, or possibly a few other chemicals. Did you move into an old house just before this all started?

Yes. 6 days is about the time you should start showering normal. Just be careful. If you have a showerhead that has settings, then put it on a setting where the water doesn't come out too forcefully for days 6, 7, and 8.

He uses Artas. I wouldn't go there.

Transplanted hair can start growing in a bit coarse, wiry, kinky, extra wavy, etc and it sometimes sort of goes in all directions and doesn't stay when trying to style it. This is normal, but not everyone has this problem. It can take up to 18 months for the hair to match the rest of your hair and be more manageable.

It's possible for transplanted hair to not fall out and start growing immediately. A lot of people get a small amount of scattered hairs that don't fall out, but it's rare to get a lot of it that doesn't fall out. I've had a small area in one transplant that just grew from the start and never fell, but it was maybe a 200 graft area. I would say it's more likely with a smaller session spread over a large area.

Your temporal points look good from what I can see. They come very far forward. You have a lot of thinning area in front, top, and crown to cover, so I would concentrate on those areas and not worry about the temporal peaks for now.

I think he might just be talking about the whirl pattern which should be recreated as it looks more natural with it as everyone has one naturally.

If you are worried about it then just get a conservatively placed hairline. If you have a hairline, but it's receded and thinning then sometimes just reinforcing the current hairline without lowering it can make a nice difference without using up too many grafts. It can take up to 1000 grafts to lower a hairline just 1 centimeter. You can always lower it later.

It's normal for hair to go through lots of periods of increased or decreased shedding over the years. I imagine for people who are on hairloss meds they may not have periods of increased loss, or it may be subtle enough to not notice. With washing your hair, the reason you see more hairs falling out if you haven't washed your hair in a few days is simply because those hairs have been sitting there ready to fall, but haven't had that little push needed that a hair washing did. They were going to fall out anyway. It's like if you have trees growing in your yard and you rake the leaves every day you are going to have less leaves to rake than if you waited a few days to rake them. Don't get too caught up with 100 hairs a day. It's just a general guide. If someone with a full head of hair loses 100 hairs per day he may not even notice, but if a NW 6 is losing 100 hairs per day then that will be very noticeable because 100 hairs is a much greater percentage of the remaining hair on his head. As far as Covid causing hair loss a few months later, yes that's a possibility, but it's not just Covid. Any severe sickness, disease, or something that stresses your body and immune system can cause temporary hair loss. That loss shows up a few weeks to a few months later and then grows back. This happens to women who give birth for the same reason. Some of them experience temporary hair loss a few months afterwards.

It's only 3.5 months. Give it some time.

Since you had FUT one risk with a larger session is a wider scar. The Dr has to cut out a wider section, so the tension when closing is it greater which is what causes scar stretching. Smaller FUT sessions will have less tension and have a much greater chance of leaving you with a very thin scar.

He was thinning years ago and started wearing a hairpiece for movie roles, but then later got a hair transplant.

Are you in the USA? If you are only doing BHT into FUT scars then you are probably only looking at a few hundred grafts and it may not worth flying to another country to get such a small procedure done. The travel cost will make the total cost of the procedure higher than if you stay in the USA. The only reasons to go to another country would be: 1. If you can't find anyone in your country that you are confident enough with BHT to do the procedure 2. If you are planning a much larger BHT session later and want to try a test of grafts into the scar first. If this is the case then it actually may be better to find a Dr who you are seriously considering doing the larger BHT procedure.

I think most of the time your body hair grafts should be mixed in with scalp grafts. You want to blend them. I think Drs and patients who are starting to use body hair grafts are hearing that they should only be used in the crown or midscalp and so they are then using all body hair grafts in a particular area. This is a mistake. This is going to make that area stand out as looking different. This is not the goal. Body hair grafts should be blended in with scalp grafts throughout most of the balding area except for the hairline zone and in some men it can even be used there depending on the type of body hair the patient has. What you want to be doing is increasing the amount of donor grafts (using body hair grafts) while at the same time still trying to creating the most natural head of hair that you can as you would have done using only scalp donor grafts. This means mixing the body grafts with the scalp grafts, so it all blends and has less of a contrast and texture difference between the recipient area and the donor area.

This doesn't just happen with hair loss cures. I remember when I was a kid back in the 1970s there was supposed to be a tooth decay vaccine coming in a few years that would be giving to all young children and would make most Dentists go out of business because there wouldn't be anyone getting cavities any more. I just read an article recently still saying a vaccine is coming soon. That's 50 years.

If you look at other NW 6 guys who had very good results after a couple of procedures, they end up getting between 10,000 and 12,000 grafts.

I tried to make somewhat of a chart to see if FUT or FUE is better for you. What do you guys think. If you like having length to your sides and back, can't stand the thought or look of yourself with a shaved head, don't like the shaved sides and hair on top style then FUT is for you especially if you also have a family history of NW 6s. If you have a family history of NW 6s and you think you may be headed there and you like having length to your sides and back, but think perhaps you would shave it someday if at some point years after your hair transplant you lost more hair and think you may not want to bother with more hair transplants, then it's a toss up between FUE and FUT, so you have to decide if you would really be OK shaving your head in the future (try it now before you have a transplant) because if you will shave your head later then FUE is better, but if you really feel you'd do more transplants (this is why you need to try shaving first if you are in this situation) then lean towards FUT. If you like the shaved sides and longer hair on top hair style and can see yourself cutting it all off later in life if you lose more hair then FUE is better for you If you have been buzzing or shaving your entire head and are OK with continuing to do it, but would like more hair instead and you are at NW 6 or above or feel pretty strongly that you are headed there then don't do FUT. You would be better off with FUE, but you should seriously consider not doing anything as it's probably best in the long run just continuing shaving your head if you've been OK with that.

Would you like the complete history? 13, 14 (1980, 1981) - Started losing hair around this time 15 (1982)- Noticeable thinning crown. Front half still has no noticeable thinning. 16 (1983) - After being teased about my bald crown I started combing my hair back to try to cover my crown 17 (1984) - Temples receding and loss in the midscalp, so I have to start doing a combover to cover it which makes the crown more visible. 18 (1985) - Diffuse NW 6 pattern clearly visible, but I'd say I was NW 5 as the sides went up high with still some midscalp hair (somewhat of a thinning midscalp hair bridge). I'm keeping my hair long and doing a combover to attempt to look like I still have a lot of hair. I'm able to get the front half looking OK, but the midscalp to crown is very thin. 19 (1986) - Combover is now obvious from all sides as the thinning increases. However I have a small frontal center area that is still somewhat thick which really helps the combover look from the front. The crown has a completely bald spot about 2 inches in diameter with the rest of the top of my head at NW5 due to a bit thicker sides going high up, but showing a NW 6 pattern. 20 (1987) - NW 6 area widening. Not enough hair in the part line to get any kind of coverage even with a combover. Temples have receded too far back so that I don't have a hairline anymore either. 21 (1988) - hairpiece 22 (1989) - Consultation for a hair transplant. I was promised that in 1 year I'd have a full head of hair just as thick as the hairpiece and never have to worry about losing hair ever again because once they transplant the hair it grows forever. When I questioned him about it lasting forever and what happens to the sides and back because I have relatives who don't have any hair on the sides he said I can pay extra for a guarantee that there will be no scars, they would double the amount of hair I had on the sides and back, and I can never run out of donor hair. Of course I paid extra for the guarantee. I was very excited to have a full head of real hair growing. 22 to 28 (1989 to 1995)- Multiple hair transplants. The sides continue to widen and the crown dips down. I am at NW 7 by the end of this time. Hair transplants can't keep up with the continued loss as each transplant we end up adding hair around the sides and back to fill in the additional loss rather than getting any thickness/density anywhere. This also caused the hair line to never be completed. (I never got the hair line drawn on me. They started towards the midscalp and were supposed to work their way in both directions, front and back in the later procedures) 28 to 31 (1995 to 1998) - Very depleted donor with many scars visible and unable to cover. Unable to do any further hair transplants. Entire bald area still widening and donor area starting to thin. 31 (1998) - Start taking Finasteride. 32 to 35 (1999 to 2002) - Hair loss seems to have stopped or at least slowed down and possibly improved slightly in some areas. Probably a bit of both the Finasteride and a natural slowdown in hair loss. 36 to 40 (2003 to 2007) - Hair loss gets aggressive again even while still on Finasteride. 41 (2008) - Added using a laser comb along with continued Finasteride use to try to stop the hair loss again. Hair felt better and softer and to my surprise I grew back a bit of hair around some FUT scars on the back of my head where hair hadn't grown back after the FUTs, basically making a few scars thinner. I didn't notice any other hair growth, but possibly a slowdown or stoppage of loss for a little while. 42 (2009) - Hair loss continues on again, so any help the laser comb had wasn't doing anything anymore, except I think I kept a bit of hair on a few FUT scars in the back. After 11 years of Finasteride use my body hair, most notable on my chest, has thinned out a lot. At this time, body hair transplanted to the scalp is being tried by a couple of clinics, so I decide to stop Finasteride to try to regrow body hair so that I can get some body hair transplants done in the future. 43 to 47 (2010 to 2014) - Sides and back continue to thin. Bald area still increasing in size. The bald area has dipped down around my entire head past some of the FUT scars. Retrograde balding has started and I'm losing hair past the lower FUT scars. By 2014 probably half of my transplanted hair has fallen out. 47 (2014) - First test of BHT using chest hair transplanted to my part line. 610 grafts with Dr Dorin at True & Dorin. 48 to 54 (2015 to 2021) - Had 8 repair sessions (including the one above) using only beard and chest hair. Approximately 6000 grafts total split roughly evenly between chest and beard. Grafts are mixed, so there is not any area with only beard grafts or only chest grafts. I requested this, so that it would be a more even look and texture throughout. Native scalp hair on the sides and back continues to thin as well as any originally transplanted hair which makes the body hair grafts not look like it's giving much improvement (gaining body grafts and losing old grafts) 55 (2022) - Today. Retrograde baldness is so bad that I really need to get some BHT done along the bottom because I hardly have any hair past the middle of my ears in the back and I can't hide the FUT scars in the lower back anymore. This is just going to use up more BHT without getting any more density throughout the rest of the area. The sides are still widening as well and we have already done a lot of grafts over several sessions to chase that hair loss, again just trying to maintain rather than getting any improvements. I'm hopefully going back for another session soon.

i agree with this. I personally always felt that a hair piece looks better if the sides and back are grown out a bit. When you have buzzed sides and a long thick hair piece on top it draws peoples eyes to the bulk of the hair and hair line making it more noticeable as fake. I wore a hair piece for almost a year a long time ago.

I think it's always going to take at least the amount of time for the hair to grow. If someone isn't losing hair and shaves their head or cuts their hair very short, it takes months to get back to the length it was at previously. I don't think you are going to change that very much other than something that maybe can increase the rate of hair growth, but you'd probably be only cutting the time down slightly.

I think this is the Hasson and Wong result you were referring to in your reply to me above. The bigger issue as I mentioned is that the end result shown here is what most men are having hair transplants to fix. It looks OK as an end result if you are starting off completely bald, but most men under 30 are freaking out and going for hair transplants when they have more hair than this guys end result. I understand that as I was bald when I was still in my teens which is why I went for a HT, but as I said, what happens when those people end up as what would be a NW 7? This is the biggest reason it will become a major problem if we start calling it a cure.