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Dr. Alan Feller

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Everything posted by Dr. Alan Feller

  1. No, you didn't simply change your mind. You agreed to not post on MY threads but "reserved" the right to comment as you wished on other threads not started by me. This thread was started by me. And why do you follow me around online anyway ? I don't know you. We've never met nor have we ever spoken. But when you constantly harass me online and even tell viewers of this site to actively not consider me for surgery I don't think it's "telling you what to do" by demanding that you stop. I think any doctor targeted by you as I have been would demand the same thing and be justified in doing so. Your focus on me is simply creepy and I have asked the moderators to step in.
  2. Impressive effort on your reply. But nope. None of the things you listed are advancements in FUE. Not a single graft coming out of the scalp via FUE today is affected any less by the three detrimental forces than they were 17 years ago. It is this reality that cuts through all the noise and the hype. The fact remains that each and every clinic you discuss in your post shows more FUT results than FUE results by a huge margin. And I ask again, if they believe FUE was the equivalent of FUT why would they keep performing FUT ? Why would there be any FUT presentations by them at all? I can't speak to why any particular clinic would choose to jeopardize their good reputation by performing FUE but I can make an educated guess. Wishful thinking, internet hype, and shameless/illegal marketing schemes have misled potential patients into believing FUE is the equivalent of strip. I can see how this happened on this very website by the incredible rejection of reality by so many posters. FUE has become a religion on this and other websites. So to keep the doors open these doctors believe they had better offer FUE or perhaps go out of business. They are just giving the public what they think it wants. The problem is that it is wrong and unethical and can't be justified when the realities of the procedure are compared to that of FUT. That's why, at least in the United States, informed consent is where the BS stops. Failing to inform a patient of the differences between the two procedures and the specific disadvantages of FUE in particular is a violation of most if not all State Medical Board regulations. This can lead to medical license suspension or revocation. It can also lead to civil action. The medical boards of other countries, especially the third world ones, don't seem to give a damn. Physician accountability is non-existent especially when the procedure is elective. You focus on all the "successes" posted online by FUE doctors in general. That's very nice, but how many failures and unhappy patients do you see on these doctors websites ? None, of course. No sane doctor would do that. But there are plenty of unhappy FUE patients on this very website that you completely ignored in your post. How many unhappy patients were given money back by their doctors in exchange for keeping their mouths and keyboards quiet? I can guarantee you they exist because such patients have come to my office and told me their silence was paid for by their doctor. You didn't mention them because you have no idea they exist. But they most certainly do. Most or all of your entire field of view concerning FUE and hair transplants in general is from online reading. That is simply too narrow of a view for you to be truly informed. All I can say is trust me when I say there is much more to the picture than you can possibly be aware of.
  3. These doctors have shown up. That's true. And I thanked and gave credit to each one in writing for doing so when their FUE colleagues would not. However, not a single one of those doctors discussed nor demonstrated that they have addressed the three detrimental forces that afflict the FUE procedure-much less reduced or eliminated them. Until they do no claims of advancement in the FUE procedure can validly be made. And no claim of parity with FUT can reasonably be made either. FUT/FUE surgeons do not need to come on here. They are not the ones making the FUE claims. But if you want to "hear" from the FUT/FUE surgical crowd they tell you every day where they stand on the FUE vs. FUT issue, all you need to do is know how to listen: Look at their websites- H@W, Rahal, Shapiro, T@D, Cooley, Alexander, Gabel, Konior All show mostly FUT procedure results and virtually no FUE results. Look at the cases they themselves choose to post on this site every month. You can be sure they pick the very best result they can find for the month because they know it will be scrutinized for years and become the basis upon which they are judged professionally-these results are almost always FUT results. Why do you think that is ?
  4. Lupanzula and Bhatti did not debate me, they made claims I proved were false using their own video presentations and they fled the discussion. But I know you know that. Sorry, no copyright violations under Fair Use, but I have no doubt you know that. You just love to spin things and harass me for some strange reason when you are not overtly cheerleading for your doctor and trying to send patients his way. Your agenda is obvious. I went through your recent posting history and you only come on to cheerlead your doctor or denigrate me. No other doctor, just me. I don't know what your problem is but i have never met you nor even spoken with you and your consistent pattern of stalking is getting out of hand. I will report this to the moderator. By the way, didn't you apologize and promise never to come onto one of my threads again when I proved you were very mistaken about another assumption you made about me and posted online ? You should demonstrate some honor and decency by holding up your end of the bargain by not posting in my threads again like you claimed you would.
  5. If the difference between FUE and FUT were so small then FUT would no longer be offered or performed. Doesn't that make sense ? Look at the videos of surgery posted by FUE doctors themselves on this site performing the FUE procedure.Anyone can plainly see that the grafts are being handled much more harshly and aggressively than in the FUT procedure. This isn't even debatable. So why would doctors knowingly perform a surgical procedure they know, or should know, causes more damage to both the grafts and the donor area ? What do you think ?
  6. The video can't be going a bit too far if it is telling the truth. The truth is simply the truth. Notice no FUE practitioners have come on to debate these statements ? They never do. There is a simple reason for it...they can't. FUE is the option if you can't do strip, but the overwhelming percentage of the population can do FUT. It is unethical to only offer FUE to a patient who is a candidate for FUT because these two procedures are NOT equivalents any more than ice cream and diet ice cream are equivalents. http://www.fellermedical.com
  7. Mikey, You definitely get the participation award. I think few watched the video as intently as you did, though they certainly should. Doctors, too. Just received a phone call from an HT doctor who viewed it said BRAVO to the video. Unfortunately your observations and analysis are not on point. Not because you are not intelligent or not dedicated to figuring things out, but because you don't live in the HT world as a profession- nor perform the procedures yourself. You only see it from the outside lay view which is a completely different view. The extent of your HT field of view is this forum. But imagine if you were a doctor who saw thousands of hair transplant patients every year. Don't you think your perspective might change just a little bit ? Apparently I can't convince you, and many others, about the truth of FUE. All I can do is convey the facts and hope they take root before too many more patients become FUE victims. We have been getting great feedback from patients who have read these posts and viewed our videos and were thankful to be given the realities of both procedures. In the end they almost always choose FUT. Please keep viewing our videos and commenting. Thanks !
  8. That quote from Cooley has nothing to do with "cherry picking" FUE grafts. It's just saying that he uses magnification to help him extract the grafts as they are, and then uses microscopes to determine how many follicles those extracted grafts actually have in them AFTER they have been removed and are on the dissecting table. The reason he is doing this is precisely because he can't cherry pick. You applied the word and the concept of cherry picking, Cooley (or whoever wrote that quote) did not. There is nothing about it in the quote. The reason he looks at the grafts after they have been removed is because he doesn't know how many follicles are actually in it. There may have been one hair coming out of the skin before the extraction and yet there might be one or two more follicles in the graft in different phases of growth where the hairs could not be seen. There is no way for him to know before he targets it. That's what makes FUE is a blind procedure. It is also why so many FUE hairlines have multiple hairs coming out of a graft instead of just being pure singles. Also, he may target a three hair graft, but one or two of the follicles and/or their bulbs may be torn off during the extraction process. The only way to know is to look under a microscope after the fact. We've been doing this since we started doing FUE 17 years ago. Problem is MOST FUE clinics do not inspect their grafts under a microscope- or at all. If the target graft had three hairs coming out of it yet two are torn away leaving just one possibly functioning follicle it is still counted as a three hair graft. If you want to know how they justify this, just ask me. There is no cherry picking in FUE. It is a totally blind procedure.
  9. Most FUE clinics claim that FUE is "the newest" and "latest" procedure. It isn't. The procedure was reintroduced to North America 17 years ago. One can hardly call that "new". Would you call a car that was 17 years old "new"? Yet on the majority of FUE clinic websites they taut that they use the most "modern" method available of hair transplant. They claim it's "new" and "superior". The false implication that it is better than the "less-modern" procedure of FUT. Which of course it isn't. Then there are the claims of "IMPROVED" FUE using robots, motorized punches and suction machines. Also untrue. In the end, these devices do not improve on simple manual FUE nor do they elevate the results of the FUE procedure to the level of FUT (the Gold Standard). Nothing has changed since Dr. Rob Jones and I developed and shared North America's first revealed FUE procedure. This means we didn't pretend it was a State Secret like the few other doctors experimenting with FUE and use it as a marketing tool. Everything we figured out and developed we shared openly with the world. In fact, I performed the first FUE procedure that was video recorded and placed online back in 2002. And Dr. Jones and I performed the first FUE in a live surgical workshop during an ISHRS meeting back in 2003. Nothing has substantially changed that since time regarding the mechanics of the procedure itself. It is still exactly the same: A punch is used to score around the graft, a forceps is used to grab the graft, and the graft is ripped from the skin. Every clinic does it this way with the possible exception of one awful tool that tries to use suction instead of a forceps which injures the graft even more. Here is the worlds first FUE procedure shown online in great detail and close up back in 2002. NOTHING HAS CHANGED SINCE THEN ! I called it a "perfect extraction" in the video because the graft LOOKED intact. But in reality it was significantly injured. There was just no way to see or measure the damage. But when you stop and look at what forces were inflicted on that graft compared to FUT it becomes clear to any rational physician that the FUE procedure is brutal by comparison. See how I had to grab that graft and hold pressure on the forceps as I pulled and pulled waiting for it to tear free ? THAT is what injures the FUE grafts and makes FUE outcomes very unreliable when compared to FUT. And of course the bigger the case the faster the doctor goes and the worse the compression and yanking forces become. There is no equivalent in the FUT procedure.
  10. And here are videos shot specifically to present what FUT scars really look like. Not the rare and shocking scars that FUE clinics mislead people into believing are common. The scar results we show are representative of the TRUE typical strip scar. All of the skin above and below the scar are completely untouched and undamaged. When FUE is performed, in contrast, the entire donor area is damaged well beyond necessity and limits the numbers of grafts available for future use. Feller and Bloxham Hair Transplant Great Neck, NY http://www.fellermedical.com
  11. After reading Bverotti's post Dr. Bloxham and I began a discussion between ourselves about how confused people are about the realities of FUE surgery. So we decided to film it and share it online. If any FUE doctor cares to chime in, please do. Dr. Alan Feller Feller and Bloxham Medical, PC Great Neck, NY NYC Hair Transplant | NY Hair Restoration | Feller & Bloxham Medical
  12. I'm sorry Bart, I can't agree to disagree. What I wrote was not opinion-but clinical fact based on 17 years experience in FUE and 23 years experience with FUT. What you wrote was simply not true or confusing at best. The word "transection" is used very loosely by the FUE community and it's time that it stopped. FUE clinics seem to want the public to believe that transection is the only injury visited upon a graft during FUE surgery. But this is not true. The damage from the twisting, compression, and yanking of partially freed FUE grafts inflicts damage in far greater numbers than transection does AND it is invisible to the eye. If it is your contention that all FUE grafts that appear intact (not transected) grow as well as FUT grafts then you are sadly mistaken. If you were a doctor and actually performed the FUE procedure you could appreciate the amount of force and trauma applied to the graft to get them out of MOST patients. When I say "most" I mean the vast majority of patients meaning 85%. Probably higher. If FUE clinics started to use the more accurate "Damaged Graft" percentage instead of the so-called "Transected Graft" percentage the public would understand the true and unpredictable nature of the FUE procedure and few would take the gamble to have it performed on them if the gold standard of FUT were available. In the United States patients must be given informed consent. Failure to disclose the" graft damage percentage" while offering only the "graft transection rate" would be failure to give informed consent and would seriously threaten that doctors license. It would also be grounds for civil action. This is why you don't see "hair mills" and "FUE mills" in the United States. In fact, you see almost no FUE- only clinics at all in the United States for this reason. As I recall, years ago you sent a few doctors to Dr. Jones to learn the FUE techniques Dr. Jones and I developed together. I'm in contact with Dr. Jones on a regular basis and nothing significant has changed in that time on his end. Nor mine. Nor anybody else's as far as I know. Are you claiming that your current staff of doctors are performing FUE significantly different from what Dr. Jones and I developed and passed onto your doctors ? If so, how does it significantly differ ?
  13. The statement is a non-starter. Sure, there can be donor thinning under the scar but it is usually just within the first weeks to months just after surgery and normally completely resolves on it's own. I may see this phenomenon once in every 30 surgeries and none have been permanent. It is the donor thinning from FUE that is aggressive, permanent, and often the subject of online posts from unhappy FUE patients.
  14. I'm afraid the entirety of your post is misinformed. FUE does not hold the record for most grafts implanted, FUT does by a wide wide margin: You are being fooled by the fact that FUE clinics misleadingly use the term "in one procedure" to refer to multiple days of surgery, whereas FUT clinics always mean a single day. In order to approach the density and growth success of FUT, FUE doctors NEED to take more grafts to make up for the lower yields and thinner hair shafts. FUT doctors have no such disadvantage and thus fewer grafts are needed by comparison. Furthermore, when FUE megasessions are performed almost all of them take hair from OUTSIDE the safe donor areas. FUT practitioners do not need to. You are correct that there are bad FUT procedures out there. But almost all of them were performed by amateur practitioners seeking to perform HT on a part time basis. That's why patients NEED to look for clinics that perform FUT fulltime and have a full staff. Unfortunately, many patients find out AFTER their procedure that their clinic was amateur. FUE has it's place, but only for smaller procedures or AFTER the strip procedure can no longer be performed. And your statement about FUT techs is also incorrect. Of course there is some wastage during dissection, but orders of magnitude less than FUE. Furthermore, none of the FUT grafts get traumatized whereas ALL FUE grafts are traumatized all the time. Then you have to pray that the grafts tolerated the FUE procedure and hope they grow. This is why FUE yields and results are poorer compared to FUT and why so many more grafts are needed to achieve the same results. The public is getting wise to the realities of FUE megasessions.
  15. Excellent question. Here's the answer. 1000 FUE will not look as good as a 1000 FUT in the recipient area even assuming 100% growth yield on both. The reason is the damage inflicted on the follicles by the FUE procedure. A follicle is composed of cells each of which contribute to the final thickness of the hair. If only part of the follicle is damaged it may still grow and thus be counted as a "successful" transplant, but the shaft diameter of the hair will be thinner and often kinky. Depleting the donor area to make up for a poor yield of FUE, or the thinner hair shaft of FUE, is not an acceptable surgical protocol. If you were cutting fabric then that would be fine, but when you're dealing with human flesh ETHICAL doctors don't act this way.
  16. The best decision you can make is to have an FUT procedure. An FUE will not grow as well and it will cause more damage to your donor area. Forget about the internet hype and the trolling and look at the two procedures: FUE is a blind procedure that rips the graft from the scalp. FUT is a fully visualized procedure that allows for dissection of the grafts with the least amount of trauma known to man. It's no contest. FUT is the gold standard. FUE is internet hype. Here is a video of an FUT scar from a typical patient of ours who received 3000 grafts:
  17. Hairdew, All politics and rhetoric aside I advise you in the STRONGEST terms to visit a local physician immediately as you may well be dealing with necrosis for which treatment with antibiotics and possibly professional wound care may be called for. I also read that you have not contacted your doctor's office as yet, I would recommend you do so immediately. Dr. Feller Great Neck, NY
  18. 100% agree with this. That's why I focus on the differences between the two procedures themselves and not the doctors who perform them nor the patients they are performed on. When you view it that way a mediocre FUT doctor will out perform a very experienced FUE doctor each and every time. The doctor who moves the most grafts without damage wins. Everything else is secondary in an HT surgery.
  19. Dr. Lupanzula, Your response is disappointing. You didn't address any of the substantive FUE issues. You simply attacked me. But I will not take the bait and allow the thread to get off track. Let me ask you this... Which graft suffers less injury ? A graft that was removed via strip that was divided under a microscope. Or a graft that has been grabbed hand over hand along its length with a forceps while under compression and traction powerful enough to literally rip it free from the dermis ? Thank you.
  20. Then we are in fact mostly on the same page here and right back where we started. The popular hype is that FUT is being replaced by FUE. However, if any doctor who can do both has to screen their patients for one or the other then obviously both procedures are not going anywhere. And, indeed, history has shown this to be the case as FUE has now been around for over 17 years and nobody has come up with a novel way to perform FUE of any significance. The misinformation fired at me during these online discussions has always been that I am anti-FUE. This is false. I am pro-FUE but for SMALL cases that have been well screened. For everything else I prefer Strip and perhaps even a strip/FUE combo, or mFUE of course. But physician competency, experience, and goodwill are not at the core of the issue here. The issue is the mechanics of the FUE procedure itself when compared to FUT. Not the doctor who performs it. When you compare the two procedures independent of the doctor or even the patient, FUE is downright brutal to the grafts. Graft trauma is the number one predictable reason for graft growth failure. And if our textbooks and meetings and lectures emphasized one thing over and over it is that safe and delicate graft handling is essential to graft survival and overall result. Mishandling grafts is a sin. And the trauma inflicted on FUE grafts, no matter who performs it, is orders of magnitude greater than for FUT. FUT does not inflict nearly the level of damage on grafts and donor area that FUE clearly does and has no analogue to FUE in terms of detrimental forces. I know Dr. Bisanga. Lovely and genuine man and surgeon with great experience and skill, but even in his hands the disadvantage of FUE over FUT are simply not addressed. Is he better than the newbie FUE surgeon ? Of course. Does he have a better body of work because he meticulously screens patients for FUE instead of willy nilly taking anyone for FUE surgery who requests it ? No doubt. He has maximized the potential of FUE. And if you are going to have FUE done you better get it done with him or a surgeon like him. Of which there are not many. But the limitations of FUE still exist in frightening proportions are not something he can overcome as they are inherent to the very procedure itself. Until and unless a doctor creates a brand new way of performing the FUE procedure that does not inflict the three detrimental forces of FUE ,and does not thin out the donor area, then they cannot claim parity with FUT. This isn't debatable. A doctor can maximize their chances of getting a good yield with FUE, but in each and every circumstance, without exception, performing that same procedure with FUT will always end with a consistently better result. Not sometimes, EVERY time. I don't have to look at any particular FUE doctor's photo gallery to know that no matter how good their results may look it was attained at a higher physiological price compared to FUT. Look at all of the poor FUE results posted on this site to date. All of them would have had a much greater chance of growing well if they had opted for and were given FUT first because their grafts would not have been injured nearly so much.
  21. Gas, I'm glad you like my passion. You've written that a few times and I appreciate it. This is my business and I happen to love what I do and enjoy sharing it. I volunteer my time on this site and take a lot of abuse because in the end I enjoy speaking my mind and cutting through the BS that get's thrown around far too often-especially when it comes to FUE. You can chalk up the phone interview, or lack thereof, to a misunderstanding. I have no intention of going around and around. But it is all seems very clear to me. Summary: 1.I asked for your name and phone number and you would not give them. 2. You made conditions I could not accept. 3. I never agreed to conditions in the first place. Timeline: I asked for your name and phone number. Plain and simple. But you didn't send them. Instead you posted online that you WOULD give them, but that I would have to agree to conditions that no reasonable person could accept especially if the goal was to do a recorded and transparent interview. So already the games began. I ignored your conditions and immediately posted what my questions would be limited to. Which were nothing sinister by the way. Just basic FUE questions.That should have been enough. But rather than PM me your information right away so we could move forward you PMd your conditions again saying you didn't want the call to turn heated and that if the doctors refused to participate that I couldn't report it. First, how can I be expected to control which way the conversation goes ? In an interview the discussion goes where it goes. I certainly had no expectations of an emotional phone call, but apparently you did. And second why should I not report online that the doctors refused to participate if that's what they choose to do ? And third, if I posted the recording on a thread how can I control what other posters will say about the doctors? I am not a moderator. Your conditions were unreasonable. I immediately PM'd you back that I don't accept conditions. Either the call would be totally open and transparent or it would be pointless. You should have dropped your conditions and let me make the call and just let it go where it goes. But you wouldn't do that. Instead you went back online and simply posted that Dr. Feller wouldn't accept your terms. That was disingenuous. I didn't agree to terms in the first place and I gave you no reason to believe that call would turn heated or that any thread built around it would become a "slugfest". That was the canard you created. Again, this is game playing and time wasting. I wanted to give you one more chance to allow the phone call to happen so I posted on May 22 that I would not use your name. And you vanished. Until I received a PM from you 9 days later on May 31. More game playing. And in that third PM did I get your name and phone number ? No, only A name and no phone number. To get that I would have to use a linkln url that you attached. I put it into my browser and hit a wall that said I would have to sign up for an account. More game playing. I had enough and wrote you off. If you were serious about the phone call happening you would not have stretched it out so long and you would have simply sent me a single PM saying "Hi Dr. Feller my name is Mr. John Doe and my phone number is XXX-XXXX I live in X country and I am available at XX:XX your time for the phone call" But you didn't do that. You played games and wanted me to fish for every piece of information and then prevent me from using it if things didn't go according to your "conditions". If you want to call that series of events a misunderstanding that's fine, I'm not going to continue going around and around with you, but the events seem clear to me.
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