N-6

FUE is not a scar-less procedure, is more expensive and has less yield. Also, I think its possible that your FUE grafts may not be permanent because its hard to predict progression of hair loss and therefore difficult to say for sure that your grafts are being taken from the permanent safe zone. This varies with the patient. From what I hear the downtime is less with FUE though and you can cut your hair much shorter in the back with FUE than FUT. With FUT, which I've undergone multiple times, it depends on the patient's hair characteristics, amount trimmed down for surgery in donor area and possible donor shock loss, but generally 1-2 inches will suffice to cover scar post-op. Will it look uneven? It can, depending on your hairstyle but this is where having a hairdresser or stylist (not a barber) comes in handy. If you have long hair all around, then I think you can get away with concealing everything even when the grafts at front starts to grow back. You might be able to push it forward to cover the smaller hairs in the recipient area when they start to grow in OR you can try and cut your hair fairly evenly all around when the grafts start to be visible (maybe 4-6 months). By that time, I think the donor area will have recovered its hair and you would require less hair to cover the scar. So it should look fine. I think a 1200-1500 strip will be ear to ear whereas a 3K strip will be wider and run up higher above the ear.

No script, got mine from Vitamin Shoppe.

I'm heavily in favor of FUT and I don't understand doing FUE before being stripped out. FUE is more expensive, has lower yield and there's a possibility that FUE hairs may not be permanent. That said, I do wish you the best of luck WB and hope you get the results you want.

Great result!

Excellent synergy here between Dr. Dorin's skill and Propecia. Very impressive.

WB, I'm curious, if you already underwent a strip, why stop now? Also, given that there seems to be generally less yield for FUE versus Strip and the higher price of FUE versus Strip, what inconvenience do you see with an additional strip that won't be present with FUE?

Agree with Aaron and Newhair. There's no way to tell whether your HT was a success that early on. You won't know for sure until much later on.

Impressive result. Orangehair, How many grafts were placed in the crown? What is the hair breakdown in this case? Did the patient start propecia for the first time before this surgery or after the surgery? Thanks.

Buzz2, I think the very first thing you need to do is consult with your doctor and get a professional medical opinion about your donor supply and scalp laxity. Every patient is different. Not everyone has the same supply. Everyone wants a whole lot of grafts but not everyone has the number of grafts they want. You also have to consider what could be safely removed in your specific situation. The doctor may think he can remove over 3K grafts easily in one procedure or that he may only be able to remove 2500. The larger the procedure the larger the risks. I think its also easy to overlook that the quality of the donor supply varies from patient to patient, ie., donor density. Some patients have more hairs per square cm than others. For example, both Pt A and Pt B receive 3000 grafts. Pt A though has higher donor density than Pt B. Therefore, Pt A may end up with the better cosmetic result because of the donor density difference even though both A and B received the same number of grafts. As many people have said on here, its hairs that count not grafts. As to whether 3000 grafts are sufficient for your situation, we don't know because we don't know what your scalp looks like. Assuming you have average donor density, the doc can safely remove 3000 grafts in one sitting and the 140 sq cm has no current existing hair coverage, then, yes, I would say 3K would leave you with a very see through look. However, if you have decent coverage in that area, then 3K could make a nice difference in your case.

Very nice, I'm really impressed with the scar.

This looks excellent. Really interested in the use of nape hair for the hairline. Dr. Umar, is the hair in the nape usually in 1 and 2 hair groupings? Or do you still need to split nape hair groupings up for the hairline? If the hair in the nape naturally occurs in 1s and 2s, then it would seem very logical to use it for hairline and save the others 2s, 3s and 4s for other parts of the scalp.

I thought hair didnt really take in a scar because it had minimal blood supply. Not true? That said, what's scalp FUE yield into scar? Also, what's body hair FUE yield into scar? It would also be great if someone could point me to some before and after photos of scalp and body hair FUE scar repair cases. Thanks!

I think after a transplant, its really hard to generalize about when a particular patient should go back to cardio, weights, etc . . . Not every patient heals the same way, not every patient has the same scalp laxity and not every patient had the same type of closure. CaptainO might have had a tension-free closure and has nice laxity whereas futbol9 doesnt have the same laxity and the closure had more tension. We don't really know. Plus, some people may be more susceptible to scar stretching than others especially those who have undergone multiple procedures. Some may be able to go back as soon as 2 weeks but others may not. Obviously talk to your doc about any limitations he thinks you may and be in tune with your body about what seems to stress the area.

Thanks southbeach, good luck to you too.

Im about 3 weeks post-op and will start cardio up this weekend and thinking about weights at 50% capacity sometime after. I read the post with the occupational therapist's comments. Does anyone have any back and shoulder exercises that won't affect donor? When I do resume weight training, I plan to go light for awhile and max out on reps rather than weight. Thanks guys.

I'm nearly 3 weeks post-op and have been alternating between aloe vera shampoo to help with healing and biotin shampoo to help strengthen hair. Eventually, I will add Nizoral to the mix.

That's really nice, I'm sure you're excited. 4600 grafts and how many hairs were transplanted exactly?

Dr. Umar is board-certified in dermatology and internal medicine. He is also a researcher and recently published the results of several of his BHT procedures in the Annals of Plastic Surgery, therefore, providing him with peer-reviewed transparency. Importantly, Dr. Umar's posted results are excellent. He is not just performing quality scalp FUE procedures but also specializing in a technique (BHT) which very few doctors, if any, in the world can effectively perform. The significance of BHT is that it can increase the finite scalp donor supply for a patient. This additional supply can add density or help repair prior transplants once the scalp donor is depleted. It can also be used to conceal a strip scar with, for example, beard hair outright instead of using scalp donor via FUE for the scar. I obviously would have no hesitation in recommending Dr. Umar.

This is an impressive result. I know he got 8K plus grafts but how many total hairs? Were the units split to achieve this number of grafts?

Wow, I didn't see baldpatch's snide remarks coming. Here I am taking time out of my busy day to reply to his posts and give an honest opinion about what I think his pics reveal and this is how he reacts. Unbelievable.

I think the office photo presents more of your true state of thinning. The car photo is too dark. Recipient area-I wouldn't be concerned about this. This looks normal to me. Your grafts are usually falling out by this point and native hair sometimes falls out as well. Native hair should return over time unless they were weak hairs to begin with. It looks to me that you're entering what people refer to as the "ugly duckling stage" (do a search on here for this term), which is where you usually look temporarily worse for 2, 3 or 4 months right after the surgery. Sides-where did they harvest grafts from? Was it a strip? FUE? I don't know what your sides looked like pre-op but if they were not thin or patchy then I would definitely talk to my doctor about this and send him photos. I remember seeing someone on here who had loss in the sides that looked a little bit like yours. Donor loss generally grows back. Still I would talk to your doc. In the meantime, I would use concealers. FYI-in the future, try and take photos in the same position and same type of light.

6000K could make a big difference but it depends on whether you have 6K to begin with as well as the quality of your donor hair and your future progression of hair loss. I would do research on HT docs but IMO would not limit it to the two docs mentioned above.

You should be able to post pics and conceal your identity no problem. Its hard to comment on whether what you're experiencing is not normal. was your most recent surgery a strip? why 3 days? How can you tell whether your native hair is growing or not growing in just 3 weeks? Sure scalp numbness is normal this early on, it lasts for months. Hair loss in the donor area also happens and shedding in the recipient area also happens, particularly, those hairs which were thinning anyway. Ive personally experienced this. Talk to your doc about using laser comb just 3 weeks out. People on this forum have recommended MSM (dosage 3000-4000 mg daily), a nutritional supplement used for achy joints, to help speed up growth. Biotin has also been recommended to help quality of hair. I'm taking 2000 mcg daily right now.

Bonanza, glad to hear you had a pleasant experience. Of course, I'd be interested in seeing not only your photos but also many more photos/videos from other patients having work done at this clinic. Just saying they do good work is insufficient for this forum, doctors need to consistently prove that they do good work. Also, Ive got to say that in reading prior comments on this thread, I completely disagree with the comments about Mexico being "highly unregulated" or that procedures there are inherently "risky". Frankly, I find this ignorant. The US medical system in general is not much better than Mexico's. Check WHO's most recent rankings. Traveling to a different country to undergo cosmetic surgery is pretty common nowadays. There are skilled doctors all over the world in the HT industry and if you can get a much better deal financially overall with comparable results, then more power to you. Best of luck Bonanza.

It sucks that you feel the way you do but its hard for us to assess without pre and post-op photos. I know patients, including myself, can be hyper-analytical of our hair and scalp in the post-op phase as we wait for growth. Posting photos would allow the many knowledgeable people on this forum, including patients and doctors, to comment on whether what you're experiencing is atypical. Also to compare what you went through with your prior minor strip procedure and this apparently very involved procedure is apples and oranges. Three consecutive days of surgery seems like a lot of trauma to your donor and scalp. I assume you underwent FUE? I don't know how you found this doc but what's done is done and hope that you keep close contact with your doc about your situation or even see a reputable HT surgeon locally to get an opinion if you remained overly concerned. Good luck.