Dr. Walter Unger?

[joshhhhh]

Did you end up working with Dr Walter Unger? If yes, how were the results and would you recommend him? And how much did the entire procedure cost?

[joshhhhh]

Great posts, thanks for the helpful information!

I’m curious, what was the total cost of you latest procedure with Dr. Rosenberg?

[trackrat]

I wouldn't recommend anybody see Dr. Walter Unger. He's pretty well known for his research and basically wrote the textbook on hair transplants - but I cannot say the same for him as a surgeon.

 

Very long story short. He had a perfectly good canvas to work with on me. I was starting to lose hair and wanted some reinforcement and picked the perfect time to do so where nobody would notice. Fast forward 3 months and I have a lot of shock loss - all of which came back, but was probably due to the incision being closed under too much tension. I wore a hat for 3 months, had to withdraw from classes, and was overall a very depressed person. This was the first time in my otherwise extremely elated and confident life where I felt insecure and down about myself. Not because of the balding, but because of the butchery that was done on my head.

 

I enjoyed a faux hawk type haircut with close cut sides and back (which unger assured me would still be possible within reason) and my my front bangs geled up.

 

As a result of his procedure and cursory follicle placement in the front, it looks like a parallelogram. I was receding and balding on my left temple. So naturally you would think that he would have transplanted there. Instead, he transplanted more in my right region where I already had strong hair and brought my temple/hairline even more forward than it already was. I guess more hair is good...but not when nothing was done to the region which actually needed attention. So end result is coming out looking more lopsided and worse than when I started.

 

It's a tough time in my life as I'm trying to forget and move on. I was a good looking individual about to enjoy the prime that was supposed to be my late 20's and I've taken a serious emotional blow by what Unger did to me.

 

If I ever gain the courage to look past this incident without anger and enormous regret, I will post some pictures I took along the way. Unfortunately, right now, I'm not comfortable enough to do so, let alone look dig through the pictures as they will take me back to a very, very bad time in my life.

 

I wish you all happiness, and successful hair restorations. I just wanted to put the word out there since there wasn't any to steer me away when I was looking for a HT. All that I heard was how well known he was for his research and concepts and debates.

 

Small tidbit - I went in for a 1 month post op check up to address my concerns about why I had lost so much hair around the incision area. While I was there I asked why don't you use tricho closure - to which he responded "because then you get ingrown hairs".

 

Yea. Cheers everybody. If I save just one person from the agony and emotional avalanche that I endured these past few months, then I am glad.

[wayek]

LSorvats,

 

I've had 2 procedures with Dr. Unger's associate Dr. Marla Rosenberg. I visited other well known clinics in the T.O. area and I had one previous transplant with Bosley (dissapointing). I can assure you that based on my experience with Dr. Rosenberg, their office is one of the best in Toronto. Their techniques, staff and equipment is all leading edge. Isn't Dr. Rosenberg recommended on this site? Dr. Unger is not an unknown in this industry.

 

Hey there! I live in Ontario too and I am heavily considering making an appointment with her since I found so many negative reviews about the one in Sudbury

[Mustard]

trackrat

 

It seems everyone wants to see photos that substantiate your claims that Dr. Unger is poor. From my research, he has a textbook that claim to be the authority on transplantation - so he must know what he is talking about. That does not mean he is able to do a good transplant, but that he is knowledgeable.

 

Show the pics.

[DrWalterUnger]

I had no idea that a flurry of more than 5000 hits dealing with me on this site in the last month or two was going on until the patient I was operating on yesterday told me I really should look it up and post something, and later in the afternoon one of my associates, Dr. Carlos Wesley, told me the same thing. Most or all of you probably recognize Dr Wesley's name as he is on the list of preferred hair restoration surgeons recommended by this site, as was Dr Rosenberg who is my associate in Toronto. By way of introduction to me, both of them did all of their training in hair restoration surgery with me before becoming associates in respectively my New York and Toronto offices. They have always also used the same technicians as I do, and their technique continues to be very very similar to mine. I don't belong to this site or others of a similar nature because I fortunately have always had sufficient referrals from doctors, hair stylists who have seen my results and mostly prior patients of mine and therefore it hasn't been necessary for me to do that; hence the paucity of information about me on this and other sites. If you want to know the facts about me, what I do or don't do and why, as well as what my results are like, you should go to my website (drwalterunger.com) or read a few of the 38 chapters I have been asked to write for some of the most important dermatology and plastic surgery textbooks in the world....the last three since 2012. The full list is on my website along with the five editions of my textbook and the various papers I have written and lectures I have delivered. I mention all of this only to convey to you that I can't be as bad as some of the members of this group might think.

 

Having got that off my chest, I want to confirm that "Trackrat" is in fact one of my patients and not just the figment of the imagination of a competitor as sometimes happens on the internet. He represents the worst complication I have ever had in the more than 30,000 hair transplants I have done in my career (in the early days of transplanting the sessions were far smaller and we could do 4 to 6 surgeries per day, as opposed to the one per day that I have been doing for approximately 5 years now.) Fortunately the enormous amount of shock loss he experienced was temporary, his donor scar was only approximately 1 mm wide when I last saw him about a month or two after his surgery, (He won't come back for me to see him or send me photos for the last 4 months or so), and I still believe that in another 6 months, when a majority of the transplanted hair has grown in, that he will be feeling enormously better about his results. He probably will still be angry with me because I didn't warn him about a complication that had never been seen by me before, and whose severity has never been written about or been seen in medical articles. He also thinks I should have done some things I did, differently.....after he did considerable internet searches. I don't think he's right about that.

 

What is certain is that if either of us had known what was going to happen, neither of us would have proceeded with the hair transplant. Nobody other than him and his family could feel any worse than I have felt since this happened to him. If he feels better by venting on this site, I am actually happy that he's doing that. It will cause me discomfort but far less discomfort than he has endured in the last 6 to 8 months. I will send a longer email including what I did after his troubles began, on Monday or sooner, so you will know that I took his situation very seriously and did all I could to help him myself and via specialists that I contacted to quickly get him get him the attention he needed while he was at school.

[DrWalterUnger]

I have emailed Trackrat and will delay a further reply to this group until later this week after I have hopefully had a chance to talk to him and to urge him to at least wait until the results of the surgery are fully grown in another 6 to 12 months before he posts anything more. I will however add a few things to what I wrote before:

Since sending the previous email I have gone over his chart, which I hadn't had the chance to do before Saturday. I operated on him on July 20, 2012 and transplanted 2740 FU. Although he alluded to a bad donor scar in his posting to this site, my notes of August 7, when I first saw him about the large amount of hair he was losing, included "Scar is superb". I do not use a word like "superb " easily. ( I had mistakenly thought the scar was simply less than 1mm wide but it was better than that) I have not seen him again despite many requests asking him to come back, but Dr. Jerry Cooley who is a recommended expert hair restoration surgeon on this site, did see him. He very kindly and quickly fit him into his schedule and emailed his report to me on September 13. It included the sentence: "The scar itself is just fine and should heal normally."

Dr Elise Olsen who is a world expert on medical causes of hair loss and treatment, and who also saw him for another opinion at my request, also emailed me : "He obviously has a telogen effluvium but is resolving.... The transplants and scar look great!" There is usually a year or more waiting list for patients who want to see her, but she too did us the great favor of seeing him quickly. Maybe Trackrat will ask a member of his family to take a picture of his scar and send it to the site in case it widened after he saw those two doctors, though I think that it is very very unlikely that it would do that if hadn't by close to 8 weeks after the surgery.

He is most disturbed currently because of a perceived asymmetry in his hairline though we chose it together and that's what I followed. It is not yet fully grown in so he thinks I have missed some areas, but if those areas are within the lines we decided upon..and we have pictures of them....I am certain that we will in time see hair there.

Edited March 11, 2013 by DrWalterUnger
Too long and meant to go to specific person

[greatjob]

How far post op is this patient? I know nothing of the case and without pictures it is impossible to assess the situation, but this kind of sounds like premature post op panic that we see everyday on these forums. A lot of people jump into a HT without really understanding the process, this sounds like it might be a case of that. However, I do also think it is the clinics job to make sure their patients are fully educated about the HT process. It sounds like you have done a lot to try and help the patient, and I hope you continue to do so in the future so that all parties are ultimately satisfied.

[GNX1]

I've actually just logged onto this site to reply to a posting by a patient who I operated on in July 2012, Trackrat, and who wrote a scathing report on what happened to him postoperatively. It is one of two complaints about me on this site in the last decade or two and was bad enough that a patient who I operated on last week told me I should really see it and reply to it because it was so bad. Then my associate Dr Carlos Wesley told me the same thing, so I did reply partially on Friday and was just logging on here to say that I have emailed the patient and will delay a further reply to this group until later this week after I have hopefully had a chance to talk to him and to urge him to at least wait until the results of the surgery are fully grown in another 6 to 12 months before he posts anything more. He had the most severe postoperative hair loss that I had ever seen or heard or read about, for no reason that I or any of my colleagues can think of, (I consulted over 40 experts by email and referred him to two other doctors who saw him in person) so he is very angry and has reacted with understandable fury. When I told you to look on the internet about me I think I meant to my Web site which will give you a better idea of what I believe, what I do and why I do it, as well as my contributions to the field. I have never promoted myself on the internet or otherwise and have therefore never attempted to join a site such as this, so you are unlikely to find objective evaluations of my work good or bad (until this recent salvo) on this or other similar sites. You are assumed inadequate or worse, if you have not joined a site like this, but I have always had enough referrals from my prior patients, doctors and hairstylists who have seen my work, to make joining this kind of site unnecessary. (The current complainant was in fact referred to me by his father who had his transplant done by me) You will have to decide if you want to take the advice of the physicians who referred you to me , I suppose because they know my work and ethics, or those of the members of this site who are not doctors and apparently are relatively unaware of either. The photos on my website (drwalterunger.com) hopefully will help you as might photos of my patients in the five textbooks on hair transplanting I have edited, or the over 30 chapters on hair transplanting that I have been asked to write for Dermatology and Plastic Surgery textbooks, that are listed on my website. (Somebody on this site actually thought someone might be asked to write such chapters if he wasn't an expert and if his results weren't exemplary, so that might give you some idea of the value of the advice of a small but very active minority of individuals from whom you are getting information here) The current complainant's hair has grown back and although he refers to a bad donor scar, Dr. Jerry Cooley who is a recommended expert hair restoration surgeon on this site and who saw him at my request emailed me that his scar was "fine" and Dr Elise Olsen who is a world expert on medical causes of hair loss and treatment, and who also saw him for another opinion at my request, also emailed me that "The transplants and scar look great." He is most disturbed currently because of a perceived asymmetry in his hairline though we chose the hairline together and that's what I followed, and it is not yet fully grown in as noted above. In any case I expect you might go elsewhere because of what you've read on this site and if you do, I wish you good luck.

try writing in paragraphs. its really annoying reading one long sentence and gives readers a headache....:rolleyes:

[DrWalterUnger]

I am going to try to make something positive out of tracherat’s problems so over the next 2 weeks or so I will elaborate a bit on concerns he has had over and beyond his very real, incredibly severe (but thankfully, temporary) post-operative hair loss.

 

Today, I’ll talk about his current grave concern with his hairline. The main reason he has this fear of an are on the left side of his hairline is because he “didn’t see” any sign of grafts having been put into this area even in the first few days after the procedure.

 

Attached is a photo of one of my patients (on the left) the morning after his surgery. The entire frontal area, including areas where he had hair but where I thought he would eventually lose it, was transplanted. The grafts were placed evenly throughout the entire frontal area, but look at the areas that have no hair and are within the frontal ? to 1 inch.

 

In most areas you can see varying degrees of scabbing over grafts. Scabs are the result of a small amount of bleeding over the graft. In some areas there is a bit more and some areas a bit less scabbing, but on the patient’s right side (“left” side in the picture) there are areas that have no scabbing at all, and while the skin in generally reddish, in those areas for some reason, the skin color is nearly normal. It would be easy for him to have thought I skipped those areas – and, of course, I didn’t because there would be no reason to have done that (also note that in the area that had pre-existing hair the graft noticeability is far less – an advantage to operating in an area before it is totally bald).

 

You can see the same phenomenon on another patient (in the photo on the right 3 days after surgery), but the different degrees of scabbing are less clear because of the light coverage of his original hair. So, you have to look more closely.

 

The second exhibit is a before and after photo of a patient with a very similar before photo to the one in the first exhibit (I don’t have the “after” photo of the first patient, but will look for it when I return to Toronto at the end of the week), but it will give you an idea of what he would have looked like 12 to 18 months after his surgery. Many of you will probably be very surprised to know that he was transplanted at “only “ 30 FU/cm2.

 

The third exhibit is a before (dry and wet to clarify actual hair density) and after photo of another patient 10 months after a frontal area FUT done at “only” 30 FU/cm2. Food for thought for some of you who believe you have to have “dense packing” done to look dense. It looks as thick as it is because I have added hair to existing hair. When he loses the existing hair, he won’t be as thick but will be older and he will have a choice of either doing another HT in the same area or using it to do further back in a new area of hair loss or a combination of both. (If you look at my website, you will see what 30 FU/cm2 looks like when you start with very little or no hair so you’ll see what the patient I’m showing above will look like when he’s lost his existing hair.)

Edited March 19, 2013 by DrWalterUnger
add photos

[Peter5]

I am scheduled to have surgury with Dr. Walter Unger but to be honest I haven't read many good posts about him, although most of them were from a long time ago. Does anyone here have any updated opinions on him and his work, and do you recommend I reschedule with another doctor? Thanks in advance for your help...

 

I had a hair transplant surgery by Unger two years ago and it went very badly for me. I have permanent pain in my scalp. Serious pain that I have no choice, it seems, but to live with. I often have to take Tylenol now. I am health conscious, exercising, in good shape. This was the first cosmetic surgery I ever even contemplated. I'm so sorry I ever did it.

[Samo]

Peter5, what was Dr. Unger's response to your complications? What do you feel that he performed any errors in the procedure that may have been averted by another doctor? Have you consulted with any other doctors?

[Peter5]

I had a hair transplant by Walter Unger in Feb 2012. The results are not pleasant. I deal now and probably will have to always with pain, headaches and soreness. Constantly.

Edited March 22, 2014 by Peter5
Just being careful

[Peter5]

I visited Unger twice after. He had the same reaction: "oh, I just nicked a nerve ". Well, I've read nerves just don't grow back. No, I haven't consulted others. I would like to. How is it he's allowed to perform this op?

[Peter5]

Unger talks about how he gives you hair. Who is to say what hair loss he has stopped or not. Sure, he has a pleasant manner and a great address on Yorkville. Why does he not talk about how the process may also cause permanent pain. There is no solution for the permanent pain.

[Blake Bloxham]

Peter,

 

I'm sorry to hear this. If there is anything I can do to help, please don't hesitate to ask.

[Blake Bloxham]

Peter,

 

I'm sorry to hear this. If there is anything I can do to help, please don't hesitate to ask.

[track_rat]

On 3/16/2013 at 12:35 AM, DrWalterUnger said:

I am going to try to make something positive out of tracherat’s problems so over the next 2 weeks or so I will elaborate a bit on concerns he has had over and beyond his very real, incredibly severe (but thankfully, temporary) post-operative hair loss.

 

Today, I’ll talk about his current grave concern with his hairline. The main reason he has this fear of an are on the left side of his hairline is because he “didn’t see” any sign of grafts having been put into this area even in the first few days after the procedure.

 

Attached is a photo of one of my patients (on the left) the morning after his surgery. The entire frontal area, including areas where he had hair but where I thought he would eventually lose it, was transplanted. The grafts were placed evenly throughout the entire frontal area, but look at the areas that have no hair and are within the frontal ? to 1 inch.

 

In most areas you can see varying degrees of scabbing over grafts. Scabs are the result of a small amount of bleeding over the graft. In some areas there is a bit more and some areas a bit less scabbing, but on the patient’s right side (“left” side in the picture) there are areas that have no scabbing at all, and while the skin in generally reddish, in those areas for some reason, the skin color is nearly normal. It would be easy for him to have thought I skipped those areas – and, of course, I didn’t because there would be no reason to have done that (also note that in the area that had pre-existing hair the graft noticeability is far less – an advantage to operating in an area before it is totally bald).

 

You can see the same phenomenon on another patient (in the photo on the right 3 days after surgery), but the different degrees of scabbing are less clear because of the light coverage of his original hair. So, you have to look more closely.

 

The second exhibit is a before and after photo of a patient with a very similar before photo to the one in the first exhibit (I don’t have the “after” photo of the first patient, but will look for it when I return to Toronto at the end of the week), but it will give you an idea of what he would have looked like 12 to 18 months after his surgery. Many of you will probably be very surprised to know that he was transplanted at “only “ 30 FU/cm2.

 

The third exhibit is a before (dry and wet to clarify actual hair density) and after photo of another patient 10 months after a frontal area FUT done at “only” 30 FU/cm2. Food for thought for some of you who believe you have to have “dense packing” done to look dense. It looks as thick as it is because I have added hair to existing hair. When he loses the existing hair, he won’t be as thick but will be older and he will have a choice of either doing another HT in the same area or using it to do further back in a new area of hair loss or a combination of both. (If you look at my website, you will see what 30 FU/cm2 looks like when you start with very little or no hair so you’ll see what the patient I’m showing above will look like when he’s lost his existing hair.)

 

It’s been many years since I’ve had the courage to revisit this pain. For several years now, I’ve been shaving or plucking hairs in my upper temple/corner area. It’s gotten to a point where I finally reached out to a professional to have these removed. My immediate post-op concern for a completely misaligned hairline was true. I still don’t understand why this happened. I’ve lived many days since 2012/3 under the safety of a hat. The other days were riddled with crippling anxiety. This surgery effectively ruined my life.
 

I’ve never seen a male hairline like that. It’s a cursory line/triangle drawn to connect my temple and hairline. It’s a poor waste of graphs, screams hair transplant, is very unpleasant to look at, and was not mirrored on the other side. 

The first two photos show what I dealt with everyday for many years:

FUE removal of grafts in 2021. The doctor went very conservative here. I’m going for a second pass now that I see it can heal somewhat well, with minor redness. There are many more to be removed: 

 

And FUT post op shock loss mentioned earlier in the thread from 2012/3. Quality is lacking, not sure what kind of phone I had back then.

 

Adding another to show you the opposite side. Natural looking temple here. Implanted hairs are well behind and above my thin corner for a more natural look. Night and day from the other side. Also very little support in the hairline on this side.

Edited August 16, 2021 by track_rat