Al - Moderator

He had no hair at all in that area before the transplant. It looks like the section in question was transplanted a bit light from the beginning. If you look at his 8 month picture, you can see there is hair growing and it looks like they may be a bit thin and probably has some maturing to do over the next couple of months. Without seeing a view of the entire result it's hard to say for sure if this is good or bad.

That makes sense. People do that with everything. I was on a car forum when I was having trouble with my car and trying to fix it myself because the shop said the part needed wasn't made anymore. While I was looking for help I also responded to a few others asking for help because I had gone through those issues and knew some of the answers. Once I sold my car I never visited that forum again. There was no reason to after that. I never even thought about it again.

You should post anyway. Just because people don't respond doesn't mean they aren't looking at it. I certainly don't respond to everything. It's also good for people who come to the forum later and are searching for results from a certain Dr. It's good if they can find ones that post updates throughout the entire year to the final results. So don't think it's not helpful to anyone just because nobody is responding. I get it though. It makes you feel like nobody is interested.

Also check out Dr Parsa Mohebi in that area.

My personal feeling is you need to wait at least 10 months unless you are transplanting to another area. Then you may be able to do it in a little as 6 months afterwards.

If you are near Redondo Beach CA then check out Dr Sanusi Umar.

This post was from 14 years ago. Certainly someone's skills can improve a lot over 14 years. That doesn't make anything that anyone said about the Dr 14 years ago crazy.

I'm not affiliated with Dr Wesley, but I'll give you my opinion. Most USA Drs are on the conservative side. One reason is cost. It's more expensive to have a HT in the USA than in some other places, so a 6000 graft session would not be affordable to most people. A lot of guys who need very large sessions will look to other countries to save money as they can't afford to do it in the States, so it's not easy to compete with other countries on the amount of grafts placed. Another reason, and this is the one you are actually trying to get an answer on, is that they feel it's better to leave a lot of grafts and donor area for later use as the years go by and you lose more hair. The good thing about getting 6000 grafts with a low hairline that's densely packed is that it gives you a huge improvement and a much more youthful appearance. Who wouldn't want that? But it doesn't leave much room for further work down the road if you need it. The hair mills in some countries don't care about your long term satisfaction. They just want to show a big improvement right away for the WOW factor especially with social media these days. That makes even the good clinics in those countries have to push the larger sessions with low hairlines and dense packing too since they need to compete with the hair mill down the road. Someone like Dr Wesley who goes conservative with a higher hairline and not as dense will try to make sure you can maintain a decent look for many years by keeping a lot in reserve so you can go back periodically to add more as your loss progresses without as much worry about running out of donor grafts.

FIRST DAY BACK TO WORK This is Friday December 17. This is 11 days post op. I took two weeks off (16 days). The first 5 days was for me to let my beard grow. I don't want to grow a beard at work. The redness is a bit less than it was, but it's still there. I'm hoping I can get by without anyone noticing. I'll try to hide in the office as much as I can. Luckily this is a low week at work with everyone out Christmas shopping. The top looks fine. Nobody will see anything up there. My hair is still a bit wet in those pics as I just showered and getting dressed for work.

Yep. An in person consultation is always going to be better than online. I think most Drs who only see you online are going to be much tougher on who they judge to be candidates because they don't want to say OK and then you set up a surgery date, you get there for the surgery which is the first time the Dr sees you, and then you turn out to not be a very good candidate in person and he has to cancel the entire surgery. That is bad for everyone. If you are getting rejected online, try going to a quality Dr near you and see what they say.

FIRST SHAVE! Saturday, December 11. This is the first shave post HT. This is 5 days post op. I tried to shave gently, so it isn't an extremely close shave. And here is a few minutes later trying to show you what it looks like in a normal situation. Oh no! I look more my age now. Those lights in that hotel room were really good to me. LOL. Or maybe these lights are just really bad... yeah that's it. A couple of top pics, so you can see how the recipient looks at 5 days post op when you don't have to shave it all off for the procedure, although I know I only had a small session and it probably wouldn't be as easy to hide it as this is if it was a large session.

We tried a small test of back hair a while ago, but the amount of good grafts the Dr was able to get for the amount of attempts was maybe 10% to 20% of useable grafts and the area was getting torn up a lot. I think the issue is that the flesh is more mushy or maybe less dense is the way to say it, so what was happening is the flesh just falls apart very easily and it was basically just disintegrating as they were pulling the grafts out. The tech showed me what was happening. She showed me a graft that looked OK on her finger, but then she rubs her other finger over it and the flesh around the hair just rubs away like water and all she had was a hair with nothing on it as if she just plucked a hair out. I may try a test of arm hair since I seem to have a lot of that.

I vacation for a week on the beach at the end of every Summer and I've had no issues being on the beach with no shirt after using a lot of chest grafts as well as the beard grafts. I'm also at several other beaches each Summer for one to 3 days at a time. I don't think I ever get a really dark tan, though, but certainly darker than I am in the Winter. Once the Summer comes around and my grafts start growing in I'll be sure to take some pictures out in the sunlight. I will gladly volunteer to take a week vacation on the beach for this important research 😀

What would really be great is if there was a before picture of him wearing the hair piece so we can compare the hair piece to the transplant end result. That's something that would really very beneficial to see for someone who may be currently wearing a hair piece and thinking about switching to a hair transplant as this patient did. Nice work, though. Thanks for posting.

One thing you can do is post what clinic or Dr it was, so everyone is aware of a possible issue. I say possible issue because we don't know for sure. There are a few clinics who charge by the procedure rather than the graft count. They give you an estimate of how many they will do and set a price. Then you are leaving it up to them whether they actually give you that amount of grafts or not. I am not a fan of that at all. My feeling from the few cases I've heard about who have done this is that they will rarely do the amount they charge you for. It's a way of setting a seemingly low price per graft while actually charging you much higher than if you went somewhere else. I don't know what happened in your case, of course. I'm just posting some thoughts here.

I would try using nizoral once or twice a week and see if that stops the dandruff. The ketoconazol in nizoral may also help a bit with hair growth. I used to use nizoral years ago and I felt it helped slightly.

Unfortunately there are a lot of people who think that way. It's hard to blame them though since for the past 10 years or more FUE has been marketed as a scarless and non surgical procedure, so of course that makes you think it's not a big deal and you can have it done anywhere and if it doesn't work out, oh well, just shave your head like you were going to do if you didn't get the hair transplant. That's also why they look for the cheapest place. Why spend so much money and then if you're not happy you will just shave it anyway. All of that is wrong thinking, but with the way it's marketed, that's the message people have been getting.

Adding to what LaserCaps said, it looks like some of your hair in the back may be gray. When it's very short that can make your hair look thinner than it is because your eyes see the dark hairs while the lighter colored ones blend in with the scalp. Let your hair grow a bit and if you have some gray hair then dye your hair. It may look much fuller then.

I am not positive on this, but I believe he is training a Dr in Princeton NJ who is a Dermatologist and does various other procedures for lips, nose, eyes, etc. I imagine he is currently heavily involved at this point as he just started in NJ and would probably have to teach her for a while especially if he is only there a few days a month. What happens after that though I don't know. I'm wondering if he is trying to start a chain of HT clincs here that license the name or something since he now has 2 clinics in the USA. EDIT: Or he could just be renting an office at the Princeton NJ facility to perform hair transplants on his own patients rather than setting up an entire office himself. It would be much cheaper to just pay a small amount to use a space in another large facility.

No worries. You are fine. Pimples are normal after hair transplants when the hair starts trying to grow.

It was a different time. Shaving back then made you an outcast. Even just having 1 or 2 tattoos was frowned on. Such a big difference than how it is today. Just for fun... Here is me at 22 years old in 1989. This is in the chair getting ready for my first hair transplant. I wish I had more and better pictures, but there was no such thing as cell phones with cameras back then and I didn't want to be in pictures looking like I did. This one is black and white because it's a photocopy of the one the clinic took. The clinic used a polaroid instant camera to take all before and after pictures. By the time shaving your head started becoming acceptable in the early to mid 90's I think, I had so many scars by then that there was no way I would do it. This one is me in 1998 at 31 years old. (9 years after the first HT). You can see all the rows of FUT scars. I count about 8 rows of them.

Yes. Exactly. We talked about this in private messages too. If I was completely bald on top I would definitely not do SMP. I think it's too easy to spot as just a tattoo on your head to try to fool people and it isn't fooling them. I think it looks better in pictures than in real life. You need the 3D effect, so I think if you have at least a bit of hair all over it can look good and pass for actual fullness without anyone ever knowing. Now that I do have hair all over I am at least considering it, although I don't think I will buzz down. I'm thinking I may like it better with my hair at my usual length and letting the darker color of the SMP give it a more full look. I've seen this done by a couple of other posters in this forum. That would give me less of a change since I'd still be growing my hair and I think that would make it an easier transition. It's still my hair just looking better. The weird thing is that I think if I get to a point where I feel like I have enough hair for it to really work well then I'd probably feel like I don't need it. I don't know. Anyway, it is something I'm thinking about now where I wasn't interested before.

December 10. This is 4 days post op. I apologize if I'm posting too many pics for you. My beard area is a bit yellowish. I think this is from the Aquaphor I'm putting on it. It really reduces the itchiness and seems to help clear up the redness faster. You can see my beard looks like I can probably still grow a half decent beard even with about 3000 grafts removed. I can probably get a few hundred more grafts out of this still. I'm adding on top view too with my hair wet and pushed away so you can see what that looks like. I been using a Liposomal ATP spray on the area. I don't know if it helps with growth, but it does keep the scalp wet and really helps the scabs come off fast and easy. I also put another pic of the hairline work. I'm really curious to see how that grows in 6 to 9 months.

Some shots from 2 days post op of the beard. This is Wednesday, December 8

This is 2 days post op on Wednesday December 8. This shows what we did in the corners and a close-up of some grafts on the hairline. The hairline grafts will be interesting to see how they grow out because everyone says never to do that. I think it will be fine because I have already been parting my hair on the side through all BHT grafts and I don't have a big issue. It's not perfect, but it sure is better than not having hair to make a part at all!