Al - Moderator

When the choice is either horseshoe or totally shaved bald, some guys prefer the horseshoe look. I think this is especially so for some men in their 50's and 60's who remember shaved heads meaning you were a neo nazi skinhead. Kevin Oleary is one example of someone who looks fine with the horsehoe hair look.

Do I feel a sensation on my head that the scar is there? The first year while it's healing, Yes. After that, No. Can I feel the scar with my fingers when I rub them along the scar? The first year while it's healing, Yes. After that it's mostly no. There's a small section of one scar that I can feel, but it's minor. Can a woman feel my scars? No

Here's the back hair to head transplant I was talking about in my previous post.

If you had a scalp condition that was causing some hair loss then you really should wait at least 6 months to see how much hair grows back.

If you have enough body hair you could theoretically use 100% body hair transplanted with no scalp donor used at all. If I remember correctly there was a recent post or video on this forum about someone who had a massive amount of back hair and I think they only used that hair to transplant to his head and it looked like it turned out really well. I had a large completely bald area in my crown that has been transplanted with only beard and chest hair. The area is still thin and needs more grafts (I just had more put in this week actually), but as far as how it grows and the texture, there isn't really much of a difference. Most people seem to say that body hair will grow slower and not as lengthy, but I found it to be just the opposite on myself. My beard and chest hair grow faster and longer on my head than my native head hair does. I have to cut it more often than the surrounding native hair.

Joe Tillman, Spencer Stevenson (Spex), Bill Seemiller are 3 that come to my mind who have had their hair transplants done over 10 years ago who were all once contributors to this forum and are still active in the hair transplant industry. There have been plenty of posters that come back here and post some years after having their hair transplants because they are looking to have more work done and say that they are happy with the first procedure they had years ago. There are also many of the hair transplant Drs who started in hair transplants after having a hair transplant themselves. Some of the older Drs transplants were done well over 20 years ago. You can also look at US President Elect Joe Biden. His hair transplant is over 40 years old with some touch ups over time to make it more realistic looking as it was originally very pluggy. You're not going to find a whole lot of people on youtube talking about a hair transplant they had 10 or 20 or 30 years ago for several reasons. 1. Because if they are popular on youtube it's not for hair related topics (other than the people I mentioned earlier like Joe Tillman and Spex) because they had their hair transplant before youtube was a thing and probably none of their followers and viewers know they ever had a hair transplant. Why would they make a video about it and let that out there? 2. Guys on youtube who get a hair transplant generally make it into a series that can last an entire year showing you their before photos, the plan, who they consulted with, the immediate after photos and video, then weekly and monthly videos of how it's progressing and so on. Someone on youtube who happened to have a hair transplant 10 or 20 years ago would only be doing a one off video about how he just so happened to have a hair transplant 15 years ago. There's no reason to do it. There's no way to get followers or views from a one off video of some 15 year old transplant, so you're not going to find those. 3. Even if some guys who had hair transplants years ago wanted to tell the world about it there isn't much to show. Sure they can show a few old photos of what they used to look like, but it's very rare for anyone to have post op photos and certainly not video. It wasn't done in those days. My in office photos taken by the clinic were taken with a polaroid instant camera. Nobody had cell phones with cameras to take selfie photos when they went home. Besides back in the day a hair transplant was something you had to hide and be ashamed of letting anyone know you did it, so you wore a hat for a few months and made sure you were not in any pictures. It's a totally different thing now.

Yes. Sides and back. Correct (sort of). This is why I am still in favor of strip/FUT for a lot of cases. When I went they made a new scar for each surgery, so I have multiple rows of scars. So the donor area used on me is more like an FUE area because it takes up a lot of space. I lost hair past the upper and lower scars. But what you are saying would be correct if compared to having a FUT strip the way it's done today where they keep using the same scar line. I would have been doing a bit better as far as keeping transplanted hair.

If you have a good, healthy donor area then I don't see why you wouldn't be able to get a nice result. 6000 to 8000 grafts with a conservative hairline height should be able to get a NW6 some decent, moderate coverage.

I still have hair growing from transplants done over 30 years ago. It has thinned out considerable, but this is because the donor area has thinned out and progressed past the strip scars. The transplanted hair has lasted exactly as long as the hair in the donor area lasted. Hair transplants have been being performed for over 50 years. It's not something new. It's been proven many years back from men who have had transplanted hair grow for 30, 40, or 50 years plus that transplanted hair continues to grow just as long as it would have if it was never transplanted. There are two issues going on. 1. The myth of a safe zone or permanent zone. It doesn't exist. There is a zone that is safer and lasts much longer, but it is not totally safe as Drs want you to believe. Even the Brad Pitts of the world will have thinner donor areas as they get older. 2. This one is my own theory. I have no real research to back it up other than having been around hair transplants for over 30 years and seeing that this is a recent happening with FUE. The reason I believe that some transplants seem to be losing hair after a few years is because the punch sizes are getting too small to get the complete follicle or to get follicles with enough surrounding tissue to be viable long term. They are damaged grafts and don't grow well after a few cycles. This is not a problem of hair transplants in general. If you think about the recent issue of losing density over the past few years I believe they are all the same type of hair transplant. FUE with smaller then .9mm or .85mm punch sizes. Those .7mm and .8mm punch sizes sound great because they don't leave scarring, but they don't grow good hair either. They do at first, but with no tissue surrounding the follicle there isn't enough there for donor dominance to take effect and thus the weak, dyeing follicle surrounding it after it gets transplanted may actually be able to take over after a few growth cycles. I should draw some pictures to show what I mean.

The patient has to actually go back to visit the Dr. 10 years later for the Dr. to be able to do a 10 year follow-up video. When the patient is happy with the results they don't have a reason to return.

I don't drink, never smoked, never used any drugs, lifted weights regularly in highschool, but none of that ever helped my hair. I was a NW6 in my early 20s. The weight lifting actually made my hair fall out faster, so I don't think staying healthy has much to do with it.

You really should try a session of about 500 grafts into your crown. I think you have a very light covering of scalp grafts in your crown already, so mixing it with 500 to 600 beard grafts would probably do wonders for the crown without having any real difference in texture. I tell people even if the texture is different, how can it not be better than using concealer.

I don't have anything recent in my profile. I may decide to post some updated pictures now that I have another surgery coming up. I've been reluctant to post photos because the changes aren't easily seen in pictures. I've had grafts placed all over a NW7 area that had light coverage before from earlier transplants, so I mostly have an overall thickening with the body hair rather than any specific area with a major change that shows up well in photos.

That is not bad at all. I don't think anyone would notice any scarring unless they knew the scars were there and were looking for them. It also looks like the rest of your hair grew in and thickened up a lot. It looks really good.

If you get a hair transplant: If you go with FUT they will only shave a strip of hair around the sides and back and then cut that strip out and use those grafts, so you won't have to shave your head for that. If you plan to keep your hair long for a lot of years then FUT is probably the better option for you. If you go with FUE they will need to shave a larger portion of the back and sides, but with the length of your hair you can probably still hide it pretty easily. Just make sure you let the Dr know you want to keep as much of your long hair as possible to cover the donor area. For the recipient area since you're just doing the temple areas I don't think you should have to shave anything there either, although possibly a very small amount along the hairline to blend the grafts in if needed. It depends on how thick or thin the existing hairline actually is. Take a look at Legend007 hair transplant thread to see how he managed to conceal his FUE transplant with long hair. You shouldn't need as many grafts as he did and your hair is longer than his was, so I think yours should be easier to hide.

A bit over 4600 body hair grafts split almost evenly between chest and beard. I have another session coming up in January. I'm hoping to get another 800 to 1000 grafts done. I am a true NW7. My sides have dipped very far down and what's left is thinning too. Without body hair grafts I would be completely bald where some the strip scars were (I had multiple strip scars). I also have some retrograde balding and I lost hair upwards from the back past the lower scars there as well. This is why most of the previously transplanted hair from the strip scars has fallen out. It lasted 15 years until the hair loss progressed past the scars, but it was never a good hair transplant anyway and never gave me any real coverage. Eugenics and Umar are already doing what I'm saying, although to a lesser extent as they usually use less body hair than I would, but they are doing it and getting good results so far. I think more places need to be incorporating body hair in the original planning. I took finisteride for about 11 years, but I was already a NW7 and still losing hair. Yes it was thinning out my chest hair, but I don't know about my beard. My thought was there was no point in continuing finisteride if I'm still losing hair and already a NW7 and needed to use body hair to get any improvements. I hated being on medication continuosly anyway and I'm so glad I'm not on it any more. I do think I lost some head hair faster since being off of finisteride, but again, what was the alternative? I didn't see any other choice. I'd rather have body hair covering my head instead of scars covering my head. Yes. A lot of it is gone now which is why I had no other choice than to go with body hair. But it did grow for a lot of years and thinned out just like it would have if it was still in the donor area and never moved. Yes. As time goes by it gets harder to tell the difference. The length has never bee an issue. It actually grows faster and longer than my head hair. I have a few scattered hairs that don't like to comb the right way or that still have a bit of roughness to them, but I don't know if that's because it was body hair or because of all the scarring I had on my head that it was transplanted in to. Years ago I had 5 scalp reductions so we are transplanting over all that, most of the previous transplanted hair is gone and being transplanted over those scars, some of the strip scars are being transplanted into, I had I think over 100 3.75mm plugs of scalp removed and sutured closed years ago to try to eliminate some spaces between grafts etc, etc, so I had a lot of scarring. The thing is though that you can't tell by looking that it's not real head hair and since a NW7 doesn't have much hair anyway there's not really any hair that you are tryng to match or blend in with, so if it's not the same texture as it was when you were younger and had hair does it really matter?

I had noticeable crown loss at 15 years old. By 16 I was combing my hair straight back to cover my thinning crown. At 17 I switched to doing a combover because my temples had receded too much to comb my hair back. At 18 I could no longer cover the crown even with a combover. At 19 it was obvious I was doing a combover as the temples had receded so much and left me with a center tuft of hair with very thin hair in the midscalp and a several inch diameter completely bald crown. At 21 I got a hair system. At 22 and a NW 6 I got a hair transplant.

Everyone has a crown swirl. It's totally normal. Some are more pronounced than others and in a lot of people it can be more off to one side rather than in the center. In some rare cases there is a double swirl.

Looking at the before pictures it looks like you have very soft and somewhat fine hair. If that's the case then the end results, if everything grows in right, may look slightly thin, but very natural. I like the scattered hairline.

Over the last few years I've become a big proponent of using beard and chest hair. A lot of people say you should only use body hair as a last resort, but I think it's much better to use it from the start for those who think they are headed to NW 6 or NW 7. What you don't want to end up doing is using all your scalp donor and then going to NW 6/NW 7 and having some of the hair that was transplanted fall out plus the area still expanding and then needing to basically redo your hair transplant with body hair. If you have a lot of body hair just use it at the start mixed in with some scalp hair. beard hair lasts basically forever, so you won't have to worry about it once it's transplanted. 90 year old NW 7 bald guys still grow thick beards. You want that hair on your head. It doesn't look anywhere near as bad on our head as most people think it will. If you can get 5000 to 6000 beard and chest grafts then that's that much less scalp grafts you have to use. I'm saying this from experience after having multiple hair transplants when I was younger only to end up a NW 7 and now redoing the entire transplant over with body hair.

The two procedure approach of doing the front first and then then crown on the 2nd procedure is somewhat standard with USA Drs when the patient is a higher NW. You won't look strange since it doesn't look like your crown goes far down the back of your head. You will actually look much better because the front will be much more full and you will have a hairline. There are people who lose the crown first and still keep thick hair in the front, so it will not look out of place. It only becomes an issue if your crown is more of the NW 7 type that has dipped far down the sides and back.

Looks like a very good scar so far.

Looks really good when buzzed down.

Your scars aren't very wide, so I'd go with FUE. With scar revision they will cut out the scar and close it up, but you will probably still be left with a noticeable, but thinner scar. You may hardly even notice much difference. If it was wider then Id try scar revision first to see how thin you can get it, but at the current width I would go with FUE.

I had a session that cost about $10,000. I saved enough for half and I paid the full amount with a credit card with 1% cash back. Then paid my $5000 to that card and then transferred the other $5000 to another card that gave me no interest for a year. I came out about even because there was a 2% transfer fee for the $5000, but it enabled me to basically pay $5000 over 1 year totally interest and fee free when offset with the cash back.