Al - Moderator

OK, so first there's a whole range of good and bad scars from both FUT and FUE, but I think you realize that, so for this lets assume you were to go to a top Dr and get good scars. If you were to compare the best 20% of FUT scars with the best 20% of FUE scars if you shaved down then the FUT scar would be more noticeable because it's a long line all the way around the back of our head. Even if it is very fine and thin, if you are shaved down completely then you will notice it easily. The FUE scars are tiny dots scattered all over, so they don't stand out as much. With really good FUT scars you can get away with pretty short hair, but not totally shaved. If you keep your hair a bit longer it won't matter whether you had FUT or FUE because neither would be noticeable. There is a way in some cases where FUT scars may be better and easier to hide then FUE scars. If you keep some length where the FUT scar is and fade it below that then you can fade to completely shaved down without revealing the scar. The trick is to do a low fade rather than far up the sides and back. In a case like that the lower portion of the FUE scar area may be noticeable if it was FUE, but the FUT scar would not be, so if you can style it a certain way FUT can turn out better scar wise. However you never really know how well your scars will end up with FUT or FUE.

Dr Robert Dorin at True & Dorin in Manhattan NY does body hair (beard and chest) to scalp FUE.

How long have you been using it? If you haven't been using it at least a year then there's a good chance that continued use will cause some of those baby hairs to grow into fully mature hairs.

For only 2200 grafts it looks great compared to what it was. You had just about no hair at all there before. If you are able to get one more session to add a bit of density and maybe move back further into the crown if you need to then you should be looking stellar.

@Davyhas had this done and it seems to have turned out really well. See below.

It's going to vary greatly from person to person as to how suitable your belly (abdomen) hair is. If your chest hair has been determined to be good for transplanting and if your belly has the same or similar qualities as your chest hair including the length that it grows and how much of it you have then it is probably able to be used. I had a lot of chest hair taken and we had to move further down into my abdomen in later sessions as I don't have much chest hair left to use. The abdomen hair seems to be growing well on me and I plan to use more of it on my next session.

If you are only doing hair line work then you can get away with sleeping on your back with an extra pillow. The further you go into the mid scalp and crown then you need to be sleeping more upright. I slept in a recliner chair the first few nights with a neck/travel pillow and that worked fine for me.

You absolutely need to color your hair before you go to Thailand. It will all match a lot better and look more full. The girls there will be all over you.

I think you should forget about doing SMP because your donor looks good and normal as it is. SMP can be a good solution for bad looking donor areas, but yours now looks great and nobody would know you had anything done. I think doing SMP on you is risking making something that looks mostly natural end up looking fake.

Give some serious thought to at least trying medication (Finasteride or Dutasteride) because right now you still have enough hair in your crown and midscalp that you may be able to make most of that area look full if you start now. If you wait until it's all gone then you won't have a chance of getting much back from the meds.

Since you are 14 I'm going to take a guess that this is the first time you really took a good look at the hair on your crown and thought "Oh no! I'm losing my hair!" What you can do is take pictures every 6 months for the next couple of years, so you can make comparisons. But in the mean time don't worry about it because everyone has that. You don't see it on some people because they comb their hair back or style it different ways. You can try playing around with different hair styles if it bothers you.

Some points first: I'm in the USA and not the UK, so things may be different. This is just my opinions and story. I also went through my lawsuit years ago, so that could make a difference also. I also don't know the extent of your hair loss before the procedure or what the and result of the procedure is, etc. so this is all just comments based on what I've been through. I am also not a lawyer. I went through the hair transplant lawsuit and I can tell you it's not simple. I was a major botch job and I was also 22 at the time of my first hair transplant and my lawsuit still went 8 years and ended up being dropped because it was getting nowhere after all that time. Some big hurdles are: 1. it is considered elective surgery so no matter how much your hair loss is or was affecting you, it doesn't matter. It's considered part of normal aging. If you do something about it such as a hair transplant then it's on you to know the risks and if you want to do it or not. It's not up to the Dr to decide for you no matter how much you think he/she should have told you something other than what he/she told you. In my own case I was told I had an "excessive hairloss disease" (his exact quote) and I needed to have surgery as soon as possible and we scheduled it for one week later because it was so urgent to fix it before it got any worse to the point where they wouldn't be able to help me. Yes they really said that. But even so, it's still considered elective surgery no matter what the Dr says. 2. You went to a hair transplant clinic/Dr. No matter what you say you went there for, they don't need to be anything other than a hair transplant clinic simply because you want them to be. What I mean is if you want them to give you advice or prescribe you certain medications, but they tell you they don't recommend that or offer hat, they are free to do that. With finisteride and dutasteride specifically, there is enough evidence of various side effects that there a number of Drs who think it's not worth the risks and won't advise you to use it and they are free to feel that way. It is up to you to find a Dr who will advise you on those things if you feel you want another opinion. Also, the fact that hair loss is considered normal in men means you will get nowhere trying to claim that they should have told you to use medication for your hair loss as it is not medically necessary to do anything at all for your hair. 3. You went to a hair transplant clinic/Dr. No matter what you went there for, they are going to claim that they should be expected to offer you a hair transplant. For example, if you go to a new car dealer and tell them you are trying to get maintenance done on your old car and you're worried about how much longer you car will last and ask what you can do to keep it running, a new car dealer/salesman is going to tell you that if you are concerned about your car breaking down then maybe it's time to get a new one and he will try to sell you a new car. Whether you buy a new one or not is up to you, but if you are at a new car dealer you have to expect them to attempt to sell one to you. It's no different at a hair transplant clinic.... again because it's elective surgery and not something necessary, so everything you think a Dr should be doing or saying does not apply. 4. Just reading parts of your story, you are all over the place on what you want, so that will only hurt you. For example you say you want to remove the transplanted hair and just go back to where you were, but you also say you are so worried about losing more hair, so which is it? If it's not a concern and you just want to go back to where you were, then why were you there in the first place? The Clinic's lawyer will make you look like a fool with this. After all that I want to say I am not against you. I'm just giving you the reality of what you are dealing with. If you can threaten a lawsuit and get them to offer a refund or even a partial refund then take it. That's most likely the best you will get (I will point out though that I don't know your case specifically). They may offer a partial refund if they really feel you are serious about suing them because they know it will cost them money for their own lawyer, but don't expect to get much. They won't be offering anything because they think they will lose the case. It's just them trying to pay you less than their lawyer charges. My overall opinion is it's not worth it unless you have been seriously injured to the point of near death or some serious physical harm OTHER than on your scalp where the hair transplant was performed.

No, but if you can make it to mid 60s without ever looking like you lost much hair all your life then you pretty much beat hair loss. Basically 99% of men will have significant hair loss by that age, so it's not going to matter as much if you are thinning after that. Besides it's not like you would suddenly lose all your hair the day after you turn 60 something.

As Berba and yourself indicate I also think you probably had much less than 3000 grafts. In any event that's past. I don't think you are trying to deceive us, so lets just move on to the real issue which is what to do next. It looks like you still have very good donor, so I would just have one good session to fill in between the transplanted hair line and the natural hair line. It seems like that should be easy and you can probably hide the work if you don't shave your head and comb your hair to cover it, so you may not even have a noticeable ugly duckling stage. If that lasts for another 10 years then at that point you can go back for one more round to fill in a bit more and you are done.

Looks like you are growing pretty well.

Looks very good considering you had a major botch job to start with.

There is something I'm not sure I'm understanding. Are you saying you had 3 procedures with over 3000 grafts total and only got that thin line of grafts along the front for all that work??

I don't know. I never had mine checked. I started taking it because Vitamin D and Zinc supposedly help with Covid if you get it. Then I started looking into it and saw they raise T levels, so I kept taking it. At 55 years old I'm sure my testosterone is lower than it used to be and I do feel like it's helping because I seem to get better erections and a better pump when working out.

I see improvement from month 4 to month 5, so hang in there. You should get a bit more improvement at least. With that said, it looks like you had a lot of area to cover, so 4200 grafts may not be enough to get the kind of coverage you may be looking for. You will probably need a 2nd session. That does not mean it was a poor job because 4200 grafts is a lot for one session, but extensive hair loss usually takes a 2nd pass to make most men happy with it.

Shock loss above and below the donor scar is normal. It grows back. Wait a few months and see if it looks any better.

I drink a glass of Emergen-C Immune Plus almost every morning. It has zinc and vitamin D which both help raise testosterone.

It depends on how much donor hair you still have left on the sides and back and if you have a lot of beard or chest hair. If you do have some decent donor available and if you have some beard hair then I think your best option would be to add a small amount of single hair grafts in front of the hairline to cover the scar. Then mix beard and scalp grafts to the midscalp behind the flap and going as far back as you can towards the crown. If the flap hair is still very thick then you can also look into FUEing out a few grafts from that and use those to cover more area. I know what you mean about looking like Frankenstein. I used to say that about myself. I didn't have a fleming-meyer flap, but I did have 5 scalp reductions and multiple FUT strip scars starting back in 1989, same year as you.

Your hair looks totally full. It's a completely changed look from where you started. I bet there are people who you bump into that you haven't seen in a couple of years who don't recognize you.

The average FUE grafts done by a Dr per day in the USA is under 1500 grafts. They don't make anywhere near what you are saying. They also have to pay a team of techs and a consultant which probably averages $35 per hour for each one and more like $40 when you factor in the social security and medicare tax and cost of benefits the Dr has to pay. The anesthesiologist will be making a lot more than that. Then there's rent for the facility which can be over $25k per month. Plus there's utility bills, equipment, etc.

I have an ex girlfriend who lives in California and makes $300k working as an ICU nurse at a hospital. If the Drs are not making more than that then they are not being paid enough.