Hasson and Wong really say this?

[lorenzo]

Anouar I dont watch enough cartoons to know what that means. I am only stating my opinion which if you read the bottom states

 

My comments and opinions are 100% mine.

Thanks for your opinion but I respectfully disagree. I have recieved many emails from people that ask me about all sorts of doctors and I have been helpful. In 95% of all cases these are not H&W. So instead of looking at me as a H&W translator look at me as somebody that helps people that have question and concerns. I do this 100% of out of the goodness of my heart to help people and dont make a penny from it.

 

Thanks again for opinion

[Anouar]

It's too bad. It was a great cartoon. I realize you just state your opinion but you come off a bit brash almost right hand man of Hasson&Wong ready to break some legs if some people have something negative to say about your clinic. This may not be this case but your comments come of this way.

[Dutch]

Come on gents.

 

Dr Hasson, your outstanding reputation precedes you, but what can be done now to help this gentleman NotHappy?

 

Regardless of photos & concealers & IP addresses, what can be done to make NotHappy's life better? No one here wanted to see anything like this & I hope communication between NotHappy and the clinic would take place through Joseph & something can be done.

Edited April 13, 2011 by Dutch

[EpilepticSceptic]

Wow, this thread is getting pretty heated !

 

IMO we have seen this before and we will almost certainly see it again, guys with severe balding and large areas to cover whose expectations are way out of line and who expect to have rock star hair with 2500 grafts spread over a NW5/6 area. Then, when the final results are in and expectations are not met they suddenly only remember the clinic/doc promising them the stars and forget all of the sobering warnings given by the doc and staff. I know for a fact that H & W are brutally honest in their assessments during consultation and give very sobering warnings of what to expect, because I have been thru those doors myself. I am quite fortunate that my results have turned out better IMO than what they predicted for me.

 

The problem I have with NotHappy is that he makes so many contradictory statements that it's hard to believe that he is being completely honest. He says in his blog that he received 2695 grafts ONLY in the front third, yet the post op photos clearly show he is not telling the truth here. Then he goes on to say he is angry because he cannot shave his head anymore as a result of this surgery, yet he is a repair patient so he had already lost that option BEFORE going to H & W.

 

And then the removed photos where he claims he used dermatch, but to me (and many others) it looks very suspect. If he did use dermatch it had to be very, very little.

 

Bottom line is that he is not happy though, so I do indeed feel for him. Most repair patients who were butchered by a sub par clinic will very likely have a difficult road to travel and never arrive at where they wanted to be before they stepped in the HT ring -- this is just the sad, sobering reality for patients who don't do their research from the start.

 

I hope he can post some new photos where he attempts to style his hair properly and we can all see if it looks good or not.

Edited April 13, 2011 by EpilepticSceptic

[Jotronic]

I agree with some of the other posters that NotHappy should be able to find some sort of peace through all of this and I am sorry that he is so upset. No one wants that. I know I don't. However, I feel he has taken this in completely the wrong direction. If you were to believe everything he has written one could take from this that we had abandoned him with a final answer to his issue. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

When he posted the quote from my email about his result being very good he did not include the context of the email as a whole. The reference to it being good was based on the area of loss with the available donor hair. At no time did we ever say it was full and thick and I can assure everyone reading this that Dr. Hasson never told him his result would be thick and he'd be able to style it anyway he wanted to. I've had over three times as much hair transplanted with not much more loss to address and I am far from having thick hair that I can style any way I want so to say this would be grossly irresponsible on our part. In the same email I offered to speak to him more about this should he wish but he said he was at work and couldn't talk. Instead of opening up for more dialogue he went on the offensive with his blog and the rest is history. All of this occurred in the span of less than a full business day so the speed at which this has escalated has been rather shocking for us.

 

Nothappy, you said that if we want to see your result we should come to California to see for ourselves. Ok, we will. Mike Ferko will be in Los Angeles from April 25th to April 29th. You are welcome to schedule an appointment with him to let him see your results in person. That is all that we can offer you at this point.

[lorenzo]

It's too bad. It was a great cartoon. I realize you just state your opinion but you come off a bit brash almost right hand man of Hasson&Wong ready to break some legs if some people have something negative to say about your clinic.

 

Send me a link I want to see it . I am Sicilian so I can get emotional. I dont believe in breaking legs . When you break someone legs you have to heard they whine for hours, its alot easier to put them in cement. :rolleyes:

 

Dutch I agree with you. I would like nothng more for this gentlemen to have some sort of piece of mind. It would be nice to have him and Joe have an honest worthwhile dialoge.

 

 

Wow, this thread is getting pretty heated !

 

 

 

Who me? Never!!

[TC17]

To my eyes the area covered looks much smaller than 200cm, and because this man had a decent amount of hair in the recipient area prior to this surgery, I would have expected a better result for 2,700 grafts.

[bonkerstonker]

Not happy could you brush your hair in the same direction and take a new photo at the same place as you did like the photo you removed.

 

If you do this and it still looks bad you'd win your argument without even saying another word but we both know you wont because you know it will look its best as it was designed to do with your last 2700 grafts.

[HARIRI]

Guys please, not everyone complains means he is lying or a hater or something like that. Perfection is only for God. A top big clinic like H&W should call that patient to calm him down and offer him a repair either free or at least 50% discount. Reputation is very good. I do respect H&W and especially Jotronic. The clinic should be the one to fight back not customers or previous patients.

 

What makes me upset is, if anyone writes bad about other clinics or surgeons, like feller or Rahal then no big deal. But if anyone dared to criticize H&W then R.I.P dude, cause they will eat you alive. I don't know if its because of Bill was their patient before. We need some democracy in the forum.

 

To be honest I didn't really like how you treat that poor guy who is just showing his poor growth after spending a big amount of money. Lorenzo put yourself in his shoes. If he tried to contact H&W and they answered him with this answer as he said. Then I wouldn't blame him taking it to the forum. For all of us we believe in this forum as we think and believe its our court of justice in HT industry because of credibility of it.

 

Please guys take it easy on him and feel his pain. You started to make remember my ex surgeon in how to put the blame on me and try to make me feel that i look good while I'm crap. All what he done was to introduce me to Toppik. Full stop.

Edited April 14, 2011 by HARIRI

[Bill - Seemiller]

NotHappy,

 

Specifics aside, it's obvious that you're unhappy. Hasson and Wong have a long standing history of standing behind their patients. But ultimately, in order to truly determine the success or failure of your results, they will need to see you in person. Joe stated that Mike Ferko will be in CA. Will you be able to meet with him?

 

I trust that if after they see you in person and determine that you've had poor growth that they will offer to do whatever it takes to make things right for you.

 

There is now enough information presented for the adult members of this community to draw their own conclusions regarding the specifics surrounding your case. However, an in-person consultation will end the debate and also help to resolve your concerns. I feel that now the best way to proceed is to focus on a resolution of your concerns rather than continue debating the specifics of the presentation of your concerns and results.

 

Best wishes,

 

Bill

[multiplier]

Regardless of photos & concealers & IP addresses, what can be done to make NotHappy's life better?

 

Definitely sounds like NotHappy should meet with H&W again and look at the results in person and sketch out a reasonable gameplan. Another surgery to improve density (FUE?) at a reduced cost, if indeed it was some fault of the doctor? What exactly are the options?

[hdude46]

I have been researching hair transplants for a number of years now and there is no doubt in my mind H&W are one of the elite HT clinics in the world. I don't use that term lightly and would only consider SMG and maybe one or two others in that category. I have seen great result after great result from them for a very long period of time.

 

With that said, I have noticed that NotHappy isn't the only unhappy H&W patient these days. There have been/are a number of patient blogs that I have read on this site in the past 6 months-1 year from H&W patients who are not happy with their results, and if i were them i wouldn't be either. A lot of these patients are younger ones who have received mega sessions and or dense packing and have had less than optimal if not downright poor growth. Donor hair is a finite resource and to see so much of it not being able to get good yield and subsequently wasted forever b/c of bad growth is troubling.

 

I thought this would be a good thread to prompt some discussion as to why this is happening lately? In other words, I think this is a slightly bigger issue than just one unhappy patient, rather several. I understand there is no clinic that bats 1.000, that there are numerous factors that go into a good result, and that there are A LOT of HT clinics that are essentially hair chop shops, but given H&W's sterling reputation and great history of patient results I'm left wondering why I keep seeing less than optimal results from some of their patients on this sites blogs. (And this isn't to say i don't see great results either, I do, plenty of them. But have seen more troubled patients recently than I can ever recall).

 

Is it b/c they might have too many techs who haven't perfected graft cutting/planting and are damaging FU's? Are their mega sessions, which requires the grafts to be left out of the body for a longer period of time than what other clinics require from smaller sessions causing poorer yield. Are they packing too much into too tight an area for one pass. Is it a combo? I have no idea, I'm just throwing a few possibilities out there. I am in no way trying to slander H&W or question their methods. As I have said their reputation, results, and professionalism put them in a league of their own in my opinion. True world leaders in the field of HT's. In addition, Joe has always been great dealing with some of my questions and Im not even a patient. I'm just trying to connect the dots b/c there seems to be some type of discord.

Edited April 14, 2011 by hdude46

[azn_guy]

I haven't been posting the past couple of months but I've still been quite active on the site by reading and keeping up to date on the site.

 

I personally think one of the reasons why we're starting to see more and more "issues" come up is because the site itself is doing a great job of marketing Hair Transplants.

 

I look at this site as helpful, informational, and most importantly an online support group.

 

The fundamental problem here is many of the post (for example the ones coming from the clinics) are all VERY positive. I have never really seen results that were really that bad (perhaps I need to look harder?) The only time you see bad results is in the patients section, and when a patient does complain, there's a lot of opposition to that particular patient who was willing to share his bad experience.

 

With that said, many people that come to this site are in a way encouraged that a hair transplant is the way to go.

 

Thus, with all the negative posts lately, I wouldn't be surprised if the not so happy patients are the ones that have done their research on this site.

 

I personally would like to see that the HT Surgeon is judged on the results.

 

What I've noticed a lot of times on this site is, IF a Coalition Doctor does a surgery on a patient and the results are bad, the automatic response is "I trust he will stand behind his work"

 

"standing behind his work" is great, but if he continues to showcase bad results, then what?

 

In this situation, H&W is open to "fixing" it, but what guarantees the patient will be happy if the results are yet again, bad?

 

This is where we need better transparency. If NotHappy showcases terrible results (due to physiology) I think situations like this should be showcased on the site, not shunned upon.

 

I want to see more results from clinics showcasing not-so-common issues. This will then truly educate readers of the type of complications that can occur.

 

I'm actually going to ask my HT Doctor to post something about me in a few months. While I've done my research, I've had issues with my Donor Scar (which my HT Doctor agrees is poor results). So that readers understand that there are complications and potential poor results.

[TC17]

hdude46, I know what you're talking about, but I don't think that H&W have any more dissatisfied patients than other doctors. Because H&W are two different doctors, it's fair to say that they're performing roughly twice as many surgeries as those clinics that employ only one physician. That doubles the chance that a bad result will happen. Further, H&W seem to be the most popular clinic on this forum, so we see more results posted by patients of them than we do from patients of Rahal, True & Dorin, Konior, SMG, Cooley, etc.

 

I think the question we should be asking ourselves is what percentage of all hair transplant patients achieve poor results? Unfortunately, it appears as though that percentage is higher than many of us would like to admit, even if you go to one of the top physicians. And, if you're one of the unlucky ones who gets a bad result, well the fact that your doctor has a great reputation is of little consolation to you, and I think unfortunately, many members of this community will attack you if you post your negative experience, and blame you for having "too high of expectations."

 

*I think, if you want to discuss the pros/cons of dense packing and megasessions, you should start a new thread, but it's an interesting topic that has produced very different views from doctors and patients.

[kaounis]

I would like to give my opinion. I wouldn't say that nothappy's results are awful, I would say that it is thin....There is a difference! I don't beleive that any respectable surgeon will preform a HT with the intentionof deceiving the patient, (hacks excluded), I think that this is the reality of HT's, or any other cosmetic surgery for that matter, everybody expects miracles and perfection, sorry to say that only God can create such results! I was a NW 4a, have had over 4,500 fu's in two surgeries, and I still would like to have fuller apperance, why, because that is human nature! Sometimes we have to accept reality and move on....By the way, I don't know H&W, never had surgery with them, but I do think they are one of the best in the world.....

 

 

Just a thought from the peanut gallery.....

[NotHappy]

Lorenzo, you are way over zelous in trying to back your clinic up. I beleive you do more harm in promoting your clinic than you are helping. You should stick to translations instead of questioning whether this guy is being deceitfull or not. You remind me of the looney-tunes cartoon with the big bull dog and the little dog keeps jumping around saying ""hey spike we're buddies ain't we spike, we're pals,ain't we spike, huh, huh, huh?"

 

Thanks for the support and again, stating the obvious !

[NotHappy]

Yes 90% of the grafts were placed up front in the front 1/3 of my scalp, I should know, it's my head. My head was shaved in a much larger area as Dr Hasson put it "in case there are enough grafts to go back there" in fact the grafts were highly concentrated up front with VERY few sprinkled towards the back. Regardless of this fact, a small percentage actually grew in

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wow, this thread is getting pretty heated !

 

IMO we have seen this before and we will almost certainly see it again, guys with severe balding and large areas to cover whose expectations are way out of line and who expect to have rock star hair with 2500 grafts spread over a NW5/6 area. Then, when the final results are in and expectations are not met they suddenly only remember the clinic/doc promising them the stars and forget all of the sobering warnings given by the doc and staff. I know for a fact that H & W are brutally honest in their assessments during consultation and give very sobering warnings of what to expect, because I have been thru those doors myself. I am quite fortunate that my results have turned out better IMO than what they predicted for me.

 

The problem I have with NotHappy is that he makes so many contradictory statements that it's hard to believe that he is being completely honest. He says in his blog that he received 2695 grafts ONLY in the front third, yet the post op photos clearly show he is not telling the truth here. Then he goes on to say he is angry because he cannot shave his head anymore as a result of this surgery, yet he is a repair patient so he had already lost that option BEFORE going to H & W.

 

And then the removed photos where he claims he used dermatch, but to me (and many others) it looks very suspect. If he did use dermatch it had to be very, very little.

 

Bottom line is that he is not happy though, so I do indeed feel for him. Most repair patients who were butchered by a sub par clinic will very likely have a difficult road to travel and never arrive at where they wanted to be before they stepped in the HT ring -- this is just the sad, sobering reality for patients who don't do their research from the start.

 

I hope he can post some new photos where he attempts to style his hair properly and we can all see if it looks good or not.

[NotHappy]

I spoke with Joe, we have decided to meet in Vancouver, it's on my blog

 

As a side note, please refrain from any more personal attacks on my character , it only makes YOU look bad

 

Thanks

[lorenzo]

I never knew that sorry.

 

Good luck in Vancouver!!

[Bill - Seemiller]

NotHappy,

 

I'm pleased to hear that you will be meeting with Hasson and Wong in Vancouver in order to discuss and hopefully resolve your concerns in person. I encourage you and Joe to keep us posted on the outcome.

 

Best wishes,

 

Bill

[Bill - Seemiller]

P.S. I've removed the last several posts starting with Tsakalos' nonsensical, unrelated comments and personal attacks on Lorenzo. I've also removed all replies to this particular post since they are not related to this topic and serve no purpose but to exacerbate a pissing match.

[Atomic]

No-one likes to post bad results & rarely do from a coaltion Dr. But it doe's happen & when it doe's happen people like to start placing blame & finding fault.

It seems posters who post bad results comes under attack. Maybe thats why bad results from coaltion dr's are rarely posted.

 

In my opinion H&W are not capable of doing inferior work. After performing this surgery countless times what would Dr. Hasson & staff do wrong to compromise this one?

 

So unfortunately it comes down to Our Individual Characteristics. And when I look at the pictures it is clear that more than just the front third of the scalp is transplanted with the 2700 grafts. Maybe the area covered should have been smaller.

 

Expectaions are sometimes too high, partly because of the number of positive results & reviews posted here & partly because we want to believe we will get back our orginal density. Which can never happen.

 

I think almost all of us who have had HT's that had real hairloss (not just fill in the temples) could have complained that we didn't get what we wanted or hoped for. But most of us are realistic when it comes down to it.

 

IMHO I believe if this is to be considered a failure, it comes down to the previous surgery & the characteristics of Notsohappy.

 

Dr. Hasson has shown he has no reason to hide from this & I'm sure if at fault would have no problem trying to resolve it.

[lorenzo]

Atomic very well said post. I agree with alot of what you are saying Generally speaking a doctor can only work with what he has. In my experience whenver you are dealing with repairs your #1 goal is not neccessarily density but repairing the past mistakes. This could mean putting a less density in a bigger area in order to camoflouge the previous work. The doctor and patients discuss the game plan before doing anything.

On the postive note I have noticed thanks to the internet and forums like this repairs are gettting less and less every year. With all the information and knowledge on the internet a person is now able to make a well informed and correct decision concerning hair transplantation.

[TheEmperor]

I think the question we should be asking ourselves is what percentage of all hair transplant patients achieve poor results? Unfortunately, it appears as though that percentage is higher than many of us would like to admit, even if you go to one of the top physicians. And, if you're one of the unlucky ones who gets a bad result, well the fact that your doctor has a great reputation is of little consolation to you, and I think unfortunately, many members of this community will attack you if you post your negative experience, and blame you for having "too high of expectations."

 

I think the % is higher than anyone is willing to admit. I have noticed that complaint threads do not have a particularly long life expectancy. If someone goes to the forums, they will see Bobman and Jotronic reposts all over the place, but complaint threads get buried and disappear pretty fast. You have to watch for forums to get a clear read on the signal to noise.

 

Its clear that H&W dont have complete control over all the factors causing poor growth. THe most curious thing from both of my procedures is the "jaggies" that Wong placed in front of my hairline using singles. These individual hairs all grew very well, so well in fact that the jaggies are very visible and stand out. The hairs themselves are thicker diameter than the hairs in the hairline behind them. Also, they grew better than the singles placed between them in HT#2, so they are still visible!

 

So how could this happen? How could certain hairs placed in one way grow so well, and others grow not so well? There were different technicians planting throughout the day, so that could be an explanation. It was an 11 hour procedure and there were at least four different techs. Maybe a master tech planted the jaggies at the end of the day?

 

Another explanation, that I think is more plausible, is the fact that the jaggie grafts were placed so soon after the incisions were made, and this helped those hairs grow to their potential. I suspect this is the answer.** Most of the incisions made sit for an hour or more before the grafts are placed. I suspect they start to close up and this may impact the growth rate/thickness/yield.

 

There are a few doctors who advocate the "stick and place" method and I suspect this will help give better growth, at least in my case. The assembly line approach of making 500 incisions and waiting two hours for them to be filled may not be optimal, but it cuts down on work for the doctor. Also worth considering is the use of needle vs blade. The needle docs seem to get more density per incision, imo, maybe for the same reason.

 

All the jaggie grafts were placed within minutes of the incisions being made and they had significantly better growth that the majority of singles placed in my hairline.

 

There are variations in doctor technique and even the "top docs" dont have all the answers. An assembly line approach like H&W will generally give more impressive results because more tissue is moved, but it may impact density and yield.

 

The OP has every right to be dissatisfied. He had every right to take down the Toppik + Hairspray + low light pictures because they obfuscated what he was trying to communicate.

Edited April 18, 2011 by TheEmperor

[bonkerstonker]

That's quite a interesting post. The slits healing before planted makes sense but i doubt it, I can't remember if the front part of my head was slit then planted then back slit and planted. Jotronic can you tell me which will have been done for me? It's likely to be the first, infact I'm 80% sure it was done in 2 halves so the slits couldn't heal before planted.

Edited April 18, 2011 by bonkerstonker