arfy

Damo You're on another forum pretending to naively "ask" about Dr. Martinick, just a couple of days ago. In in yet another forum, you are posting a thread like you did here. It's got a false ring to it. Dr. Martinick may very well have given you a nice result that you're happy with. But your methods are questionable. If this is supposed to promote Dr. Martinick, it could very well backfire. Not all of us are rookies to the internet forum as you appear to be. Sometimes phonies fly under the radar, other times it is obvious. If Dr. Martinick did give you a nice result, and if your stupid spamming tactics backfire, affecting her reputation, that would be unfortunate... (for her, not you.) I suggest you rethink your approach, and if you continue to post here and elsewhere, please leave the bullcrap out of it. Sorry if that is unnecessarily rough, maybe you made an innocent mistake ("testing the waters" so to speak, soliciting a "blind" testimonial out of curiousity about someone else's experience with your doctor perhaps). Realize that many of us read more than this forum, and tend to notice little things. If I have misunderstood you, then I apologize. Your posts do read like an advertisement, though.

I know someone who was involved in a class-action lawsuit against them. I would avoid them, also avoid any big franchise operation like them (in my opinion) like MHR, Bosley, PAI, HRG etc. You will get more attention and (in my opinion) better results if you pick a top doc (and probably pay less, too!) The number of top docs is very small and it takes a little bit of reading and research. Treat this like a HEART transplant, don't just go to the local clinic down at the mini-mall, find someone who gets results that really impress the heck out of you, and then go wherever they are located. The best scenario is to see the doctor's patients in person, first, as many as possible, before making any decisions. Look at them closely, really examine them from all angles (and not just the guys who work in the doctors office. Of course they look good, that's why they got hired). Pics can be deceptive. You may need to travel to see a top doc, since the number of great doctors who get consistently great results is small. So it's unlikely that one will be located in your town (unless you are lucky). It would be well worth it to travel if necessary, remember that you will be living with the results on top of your head for the rest of your life. Find a top doctor, or don't do it at all. And no, NuHart is not considered one of the 'top clinics'. Be careful, a rookie can't tell the difference between a good clinic, a bad clinic and a great clinic. Don't get any surgery unless you know the score first. Hang around for a while, read up, ask questions, etc. Take your time making a decision!

Avoid all the big franchises, in my opinion. You generally get better work and pay less, if you don't go with one of the chains (the chains spend millions on advertising, and they pass the costs on to the consumer). Also, I have generally not heard good things about Dr. Sword.

The best hair transplant doctors have spent time building their practices, and have excellent 'word of mouth' advertising. If a doctor does not have experience or good 'word of mouth' then he might need to join up with a big franchise to help with mass-market advertising, in order to get new patients in the door. These franchises spend tens of millions of dollars on mass marketing to try to drum up new patients. In return, the franchise takes a cut of each doctor's action. The higher prices are then passed on to the consumer. Salesmen at these franchise clinics tend to have quotas to meet, either officially or unofficially. If a salesman doesn't sell a certain amount of surgeries he will probably be out of a job. That leads to salesmen exaggerating the benefits, minimizing the potential risks or down sides, selling the procedure to bad candidates, 'lowballing' the number of grafts required in order to get the patient started with the first of several hair transplants, etc. Lets recap: Inexperienced surgeons or surgeons who do not have enough good 'word of mouth' to survive outside of a big franchise. Higher costs for patients because the franchise takes a cut, to pay for mass marketing. Salesmen who distort the facts or use pressure or other tactics in order to meet real or unspoken sales quotas. Sound good? The idea that doctors learn the (surgical) ropes at these clinics, and will later go on to practice better techniques on their own, is missing half of the problem here: At what point will these 'ex-franchise' doctors suddenly develop a sense of ethics????? In my opinion these big franchises are the scourge of the industry, although there are certainly PLENTY of lousy "solo" HT doctors out there, as well!

To my knowledge, other FUE doctors do not use a punch. Maybe this is just a case of terminology confusion though. Most FUE docs seem to 'score' the scalp and then use other tools to free the graft, and pull it out. I don't know what technique Dr. Woods uses, but it seemed to be as I just described above. The resulting grafts did NOT look like cylinders... they had a small amount of scalp tissue at the top, and at the root they bulged out (as they are naturally constructed) with no extra tissue down below. If they had been punched, then the graft would have looked like a "tube" shape.

Nobody knows exactly what causes shock loss (except when it is caused by directly damaging the existing hair with recipient site incisions). According to Dr. Bernstein (and scads of anecdotal reports from patients) shock loss can happen even in the areas where no grafts were placed. In other words, you could theoretically get grafts placed in the hairline only, and have shock loss in the crown. Some of the guesses why shockloss occurs: the numbing agents cause it the saline used to expand the scalp causes it general surgical trauma causes it Much of the reputation for 'no shock loss with FUE' seems to originate with Dr. Woods' practice (although other FUE docs seem to report "less" shock loss, if I recall correctly). Also, this is not to say Dr. Woods has never had a patient report shock loss... he has had one or two, to my knowledge. However it seems that generally his patients do NOT have shock loss issues. As Franklin noted, Dr. Woods uses a Godzilla-sized microscope to place the grafts, which guarantees that no existing hairs are damaged directly from new incisions. Other doctors do not use the same level of magnification as Dr. Woods. His microscope makes your grafts look like the size of tree stumps (he has a video feed coming from the microscope, you watch him place the follicles on a TV monitor). There is no chance of accidently damaging an existing hair, as far as I can tell. Franklin is a good case study for shock loss and FUE via Woods, as Franklin had a whole lot of pre-existing hairs that were grafted in and around, with no shock loss reported. I am certain that the microscope used in graft placement must have played a part. Shock loss has never been studied, it is controversial and not fully understood. For example some doctors say there is no such thing as shock loss, and some doctors say that they 'never' have a problem with it. Also, it can sometimes be hard to say what is "shock loss" and what is just garden-variety "continuing progression of hair loss" that could have happened even if you didn't have surgery. Also, IF shock loss is sometimes a result of "general surgical trauma" then you could argue that FUE results in less shock loss because FUE is less traumatic than a traditional strip surgery. (Yes, technically the 'square inches' of incisions may be mathematically larger with FUE, but in my opinion the body tolerates hundreds of tiny incisions better than one very BIG incision-- the strip excision).

Hey now! Dr. Woods has published a body hair study. Most excellent! I've had some body hair transplanted, but I am a repair case. Body hair is not your first choice for donor hair (head hair is, obviously) but for the guys with depleted donor supplies, then body hair is a God-send. Just be sure to pick an experienced FUE doctor, don't be one of the guys your doctor is "practicing" on.

Good Lord! I am so sorry to hear that your LASIK surgery didn't turn out well!!!! That is terrible news! I hope your second surgery will work out! Use the forums at Surgical Eyes! Get some advice from experienced patients. Like hair transplants, find a doc who is world class, and don't settle for somebody who's just "okay". Like HT, it can be hard to tell which are the docs who are truly the best. Find the best!!! Boy, I hate hearing about this kind of thing!!!!!!!

Agree with Robert, skipping days isn't going to make a difference. I'm not convinced that MSM does anything for hair, anyway. I haven't noticed anything, so maybe it works for some guys and not for others

I'm not convinced tatooing the scar is a good idea, but if you do decide to do it, try it on one area, not the whole thing. Do a test patch, then get your girlfiend or family to tell you if it's helping. If your buddy starts running his hands through your donor area, kick him in the shorts.

I agree, dense packing has to be limited to small areas like the hairline. In some cases, if you have a large balding area (or if your hair loss continues to progress to a high level) then dense packing could (theoretically) even be counter-productive... because dense packing uses up a lot of grafts that you may need elsewhere. For example, you probably wouldn't want to have a situation where you have a dense packed hairline, but then come up short in the vertex or the crown. Bottom line is to spend your 'donor bank' wisely, and plan for your future needs. Dense packing is nice, but make sure you are being sensible with your donor supply.

I haven't seen the problems you are referring to. Which patients are you referring to? I've never heard of a patient having problems from 3000 FUE, and I've been paying very close attention. Hair transplants have limitations no matter what method you choose. The biggest limitation is probably the small amount of donor supply isn't enough to restore a full head of hair. Supply can never keep up with demand. You only have a finite amount of donor supply available and that is true of strip and FUE. You can certainly "over-harvest" the donor area using strip OR using FUE. It takes experience to avoid that. Pick an experienced doctor. FUE is a good option, but it takes time for new techniques to catch on. For example doctors started talking about a donor strip in the late 70s, but it didn't catch on until the early 90s. Until the donor strip caught on, doctors continued to use big punches (the doll hair look). You can't compare FUE with old fashioned punch grafting. I've had both techniques, and the difference is night and day.

What Smoothy said... you are in the dormant phase, which lasts about 10 or 12 weeks on average... sometimes longer... <BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>My biggest concern is in the front hairline itself I see just bare smooth scalp where grafts use to be.You couldn't tell I had anything done. This may sound strange at first, but that is actually a VERY good sign. If your scalp doesn't look "worked on" post surgery, that is a sign of small garfts, small recipient sites, etc. The sign of bad work is if your scalp looked like the lunar lanscape, had bumps or divots, etc. The less evidence of surgery, the better!!!

If you are that concerned about having no donor scar, then I wonder why you'd get a strip excision transplant in the first place. The best way to avoid the donor scar is to not get one in the first place. 3000 dollars is not enough to do FUE, probably. That will only give you a couple hundred grafts or less, and graft survival in a scar is not great... sometimes only 50% or less, depending on the scar and the doctor and luck... It sounds like maybe you aren't being realistic about hair transplants (?) I haven't posted here in a while so I am not familiar with your situation, though. I'm not trying to be rude.

You've got a 'net gain' of hair. It doesn't seem grafty-looking to me (does it look grafty in person?). If you don't look pluggy at that short length, then you almost certainly wouldn't look pluggy at any length. I agree with the other person who recommended you let your hair grow out a bit. If I were you I'd keep up with the Propecia and whatever else you're using, and coast along with what you're working with now. It looks to me like Propecia is working for you. I'd even predict that you will continue to improve on where you're at right now. If you can avoid getting any more surgery in the future, then you've come out ahead of the game. When you first started posting here, I was worried that you might have some trouble with your hair transplant, but as far as I can tell, it seems like you are doing just fine. Way to go Joe!

I don't know who the best HT doc in Chicago is, but I do have an opinion on who are possibly the WORST. Avoid like the plague, the clinic in Rosemont Illinois known as "PHTI" (physicians hair transplant institute). This clinic was formerly doing business as "Cleveland Hair Clinic". When I say to avoid them like the plague, I'm not really exagerating. This clinic did a liposuction surgery on a woman who then developed necrotizing fascitis ("flesh eating disease"). http://www.malpracticeweb.com/stein_ts.htm I would also avoid like the plague any doctors who work for Cleveland Hair Clinic, or who ever worked for Cleveland Hair Clinic in the past: Dr. Puig, Dr. McVaugh, Dr. Panine, etc, etc. (Cleveland Hair Clinic was a big 'hair mill' franchise with clinics in several cities... none in Cleveland though.) In my opinion Cleveland Hair Clinic permanently damaged a lot of guys with low-quality hair transplants over the years and should have been shut down years ago. I don't think there are any actual HT doctors still doing business under the name "Cleveland Hair Clinic", but most of those clowns are still working in the profession at other clinics. Beware!

Hey Joe Are you using Propecia? Honestly it looks better than I would hav e guessed, but pics are usually deceiving even in the bets circumstances. Just wondering if Propecia may be adding something to the mix. If you're not using it, you should consider it... with your diffuse pattern it may be a help.

I don't have any comments on Dr. Tessler, but I recommend that you do as much homework as possible before your consultation. That way you'll be able to ask good questions, and not so many basic questions like 'does it hurt'. Time in a consultation is usually too short, and it's easy to forget to ask things you wanted to ask. You may even want to take some notes along with you, if you have a long list of questions. Consider your appointment a 'fact-finding' mission and tell yourself you will not make a snap decision on surgery, while you are there. Some guys get nervous during the consultation and that may help. I would read everything on this website, including the articles in the Hair Transplant Articles section (formerly known as the Research Library section of the site). The more you know, going into a consultation, the better. And usually the better doctors appreciate an informed patient. If you have a favorable experience see if your doc can help introduce you to local patients, so you can see examples of his work (not just photos, and not just guys who work in the office). Hopefully these are guys with similar characteristics as you have... similar age, similar amount of hair loss, similar hair characteristics, etc. My #1 question is probably "can you give me a long-term plan?" Know how many surgeries you'll need, how many grafts you'll need, what about preventative strategies, what is your hairline he proposes, etc. In other words, it's a big question. Avoid a doctor who just wants to 'get started' and "lets worry about the next steps, later on down the line". You want to have a general plan and know what to expect long term (no surprises). For example if you're going to need 3 or 4 surgeries and max out your donor supply, know that BEFORE you get started with your first surgery. Hope that helped...

T-Gel is just a tar shampoo. Look for a local brand that has tar. Head and Shoulders uses Zinc compounds (Zinc Sulfate I believe, sorry, too lazy to get up to read the bottle). Nizoral is a ketoconozale shampoo. Those are the three basic choices in a dandruff/scalp conditioning/ anti-itch shampoo: tar compounds, zinc compounds, and ketoconazole. You might want to cycle these...

"what characteristics makes a person an ideal candidate?" "what characteristics makes a person a less-than-ideal candidate?" "What is the difference between an FU and a Micrograft? Minigraft?" "Why is the FU transplant considered state of the art?" "Microscopes... why are they important?" "What are the HT issues and concerns of the very young patient, in the beginning stages of hair loss?" "How to plan for the future?" (long term issues regarding hairlines, sensible and efficient use of donor supply, maturing with a transplanted hairline, etc) "Transplanting into the crown?" Cool that you guys keep improving the website...!

Good suggestion by Qvarnis to bring in some pics of hairlines you like. Moving a hairline back, which was placed too low, is one of the harder things to do, as Gillenator said. It's impossible to have a surgery without leaving a scar. When you move a hairline back, you are creating scars right in the frontal hairline (or worse, on your forehead). Top doctors can do very nice work and leave minimal scarring, but a scar is still a scar. Avoid having to fix your hairline in this way at all costs. This subject is one of my pet peeves. A lot of younger guys want to look good immediately and can't think long term. Some guys have even said "I won't care about my appearance when I'm 50!" (Baloney!) It can take 10-20-30 years or more for this problem to rear it's head. And some guys lack the foresight to avoid it. It can be trick for a young guy to find a hairline that will look good now, as well as when he's an older man.

hard to say for sure... A scarred recipient area can show growth slower than a virgin area. However, if you already have some growth in that exact scarred area, then I would expect the existing grafts to mature, but I suspect that new sprouts are not going to appear. When we talk about hair transplants "maturing" over time, we mean that the existing grafts gain thickness, not that a whole new wave of additional crops appears. However in your case, where you are grafting into a scarred area, it may be that some grafts will be slow to emerge. My suspiscion, though, is that you are looking at your yield now, and should not expect additional grafts to appear, just some additional maturity.

Another weird thing: every once in a while the forum posts will go really NARROW. No big deal, I hit refresh and it goes back to normal width. (Also, it's very rare). Just sayin'...

Hi Altair I had some plugs that were revised using the "coring" method (punch-outs) as described by Dr. Vogel's article. Sometimes the punched-out grafts would continue to look pluggy after healing, requiring a second pass. You may want to consider using FUE for hairline graft revision, which will target the individual follicular units, rather than a coring approach which is less "targetted". It's aggravating when grafts that need correction can be so stubborn, and continue to look pluggy. As far as the shock loss, hopefully you have been using propecia or avodart, in order to stablize your hair loss? The less at-risk your hair is to loss in general, the better your odds at avoiding shock loss. In any case, keep your fingers crossed.

Good points, Robert. But also, I think there can be a gap between expectations and reality. Sometimes guys can expect that a Hair Transplant will restore their hair to pre-hair loss appearance. This is probably more of a problem for the younger guys. Hair transplants do have limitations, they are not a perfect solution. Guys need to understand the limitations ahead of time. Many clinics will not discuss the limitations with a patient, because that's not good for sales. Unethical clinics will actually use a patient's unrealistic expectations as leverage to help make a sale. Sadly, it's up to the patient to do the homework and know what he can realistically expect. Funny, but I think the clinics who allow patients to have unrealistic expectations can make money in the short run, but lose in the long run. They destroy their reputations by disappointing their patients. HT patients are most satisfied when they know what they can expect, and then get what they paid for. That's how a clinic builds a reputation for consistent results. (Edit: I'm not suggesting this fellow had unrealistic expectations or that his expectations were not met, I'm just going off on a tangent.)