Input Needed- FUE 2521 Grafts 1 year post op results

[Swooping]

Would be unwise really to go for a 2nd procedure imo. Only a wastage of your donor. Your density is just to hard to work around with, you'll stay at risk of damaging your native hair and possibly your newly transplanted grafts now.

[ready4Hair]

After reviewing the clinics explanation it seems at very best they took a cautious approach. The logistics of the clinics protocol as well the patient’s medical hair loss regimen is irrelevant. We have a patient that is clearly unsatisfied. Blaming poor results on lack of topicals or internals taken afterwards is, IMHO, a weak justification for a subpar result.

 

Clearly he does not display additional or visually measurable loss so the clinic’s justification would have to be that while their grafts took, his native hairs were somehow lost in roughly the same amount and due to his not following a protocol unrelated to their surgery. In the end the images from the clinic still show a very subtle improvement given 2500 grafts were implemented. The hair line appears weak and needs refinement. There appears to be a good amount of transection of grafts and trauma to the native hairs as we have a zero sum net gain.

 

Again there are a multitude of examples of 2500 hairline grafts in a variety of Norwood patterns that show demonstrable to remarkable growth, and this I can say with certainty after view 100s from Dr. Feriduni, Dr. Erdogan, Dr. Lorenzo and others. I’d hope the clinic (which I notice the patient took pains NOT to mention and we only know which one it is since they responded to the thread as if he pointed the finger at them) would, instead of or in addition to justifying the results, try to make the patient happy. It is easy as a clinic who accepts multiple patients in a day or week or year to simply discount or explain away inferior results. Yet those results represent for most of us months or years of research and difficult decisions putting our trust in that clinic, saving up for weeks or months or years the $10s of thousands of dollars it takes to do so (I’m going out on a limb that most of us are not rich and don’t just have $10k-$20k to throw away and have made great sacrifices in other areas of our life to afford it), traveled far to get to the clinic, endured pain and discomfort and fear and boredom sitting in a chair for hours on end praying the Dr. has out best interests at heart and the skill to deliver, and then almost a year of anguish hoping to see the results while suffering through months of ‘ugly duckling’ phases, only to have to live the REST OF OUR LIVES with the result. For the Dr. or clinic the money is taken and spent. I’d hope that any HT Surgeon worth his salt who really cares about his patients (as many here such as Dr. Rahal, Dr. Feriduni, Dr. Erdogan to name a few clearly do) would understand exactly what a patient has invested and vested in them and take that responsibility to heart. We get the justifications provided, what we as prospective patients considering HT Surgery ourselves want to know is what happens now? It's 'great' a technician has reached out (was she your rep or technician originally?) but I wonder if the Dr. will. I'd want to know I was in the hands of a Dr. who would. I've seen Dr. Rahal himself post here that the only thing that matters in the end is that a patient is unhappy and that is all that matters. I don't have any experience or knowledge of this clinic so can't comment on their past successes or failures or responses to either, I'd just personally be very much comforted by more than a technicians explanation of why a clearly(to my eye at least) subpar result was not.

[Whereitgo]

God I can't believe the Doctor didn't give him a refund or free surgery WTF?????

[Sean]

Sean,

 

Wazaam scheduled as an ARTAS case from the onset. We would not have disregarded the technique he requested. What we charge for SAFE and the Artas are the same. However, because the Restoration Robotics charges for each punch/scoring, it ends up costing us more if patients use the Artas. From the very beginning of using the Artas at our clinic, our protocol was to use the ARTAS the first day and then use the SAFE device to even out the extraction pattern. There were two reasons as to why we chose this protocol: 1) there are certain areas of the head that is more difficult for the Artas to reach so we'd have to even out the extraction pattern with our motorized device. 2) Despite RR and other well known physicians stating the Artas extracts very good grafts, we wanted to see the donor and recipient areas for ourselves before we went full stream with the Artas.

 

The unknown physician is our Dr. Josephitis who also did the SAFE extractions and helped in running the Artas. Dr. Ron would have done the planning, overseeing the Artas & Safe and made all the incisions.

 

In the US, how each surgeon runs their surgery room differs depending on each state. In the state of Minnesota under direct supervision of surgeons, technicians can extract grafts.

 

So, I am assuming a doctor who was present on each day was present and monitoring each and every single graft extraction from the donor? This, without leaving the room at the time at all to focus on or if there were other patients that needed assistance. This would mean a doc does not pop in and out of the operating room during extraction. Is that correct and is that a fact? I mean is this TRUE for both extraction days, ARTAS and safe scribe extraction days? There were no breaks in attention to a patients extraction protocol set forth by clinic?

[jonnyalex]

This is not a good result, you should be refunding this patient, it's almost like the clinic didn't actually do anything - to me it looks exactly the same as pre-op

[ready4Hair]

Sean,

 

We would not have disregarded the technique he requested.

 

Dr. Ron would have done the planning, overseeing the Artas & Safe and made all the incisions.

 

 

 

The choice of words is very interesting to me: "would have done" suggests that the rep does not in fact know that to be true, that they are assumptions she made based on protocols in place now and only tell us that this should be the case but might not have been. Which means the OP's point of view could well be the case. Likewise "would not have disregarded' does not mean in fact "did not disregard". I think we'd all like some clarity of comfort on this result. We see a lot of the good ones posted here by reps and Drs. but would really like to know more about ones that did not go well or the patient is unhappy with because then we can make our own decisions better. Clearly this is either a case of a patient whose expectations were too high and/or did not understand the procedures he agreed to or a case where the clinic either undelivered on result or protocol. It is hard for us to tell on the sidelines not having more information to go on but the results can't help to give some of us pause.

[zx_toth]

While the result is not a transformation by any means, the hairline IS noticeably stronger/denser in the front from the pictures that the clinic provided. The pre-op pictures showed heavily minaturized hairs that were on their way out in a matter of years. Now the patient has a solid, male pattern baldness resistant hairs in the area so there shouldn't be further loss in the area. Likely a fair bit of shock loss but still he should know the results are an improvement from the comparison shots from the clinic.

[ready4Hair]

While the result is not a transformation by any means, the hairline IS noticeably stronger/denser in the front from the pictures that the clinic provided. The pre-op pictures showed heavily minaturized hairs that were on their way out in a matter of years. Now the patient has a solid, male pattern baldness resistant hairs in the area so there shouldn't be further loss in the area. Likely a fair bit of shock loss but still he should know the results are an improvement from the comparison shots from the clinic.

 

You must have eagle eyes my friend to tell the difference not only between post and pre-op pics but to see miniturization without a microscope.

 

That said, something Sean said about blonde hair/fda struck a cord so I googled it:

 

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS505US505&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=artas+approved+for+dark+hair&start=10

 

Endless articles about it not being APPROVED BY FDA in that search

 

ARTAS FUE Robot With Blond Hair? | Bernstein Medical

 

Artas Robotic Hair Transplantation | San Francisco, Bay Area and San Jose, CA

"Good candidates for this technique have straight, preferably darker hair"

 

Dr. Robert Jones ARTAS Robot VS Dr. Jones FUE Technique » Dr. Robert Jones

"8. Limited Hair Characteristics. ARTAS is only approved for use on patients with straight hair that is dark brown or black in colour. Dr. Jones can perform FUE on any hair colour or texture."

"At this point, Dr. Jones feels that the only advantage of the Artas Robot for an experienced FUE surgeon is a marketing one. It is slower, has a higher transection rate, is more expensive and has less choice of areas from which the grafts can be extracted."

 

and from the horses mouth, the FDA

 

http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf10/K103428.pdf

 

"The ARIASTM System from Restoration Robotics is indicated for harvesting hair follicles

from the scalp in men diagnosed with androgenic alopecia (male pattern hair loss) who

have black or brown straight hair. "

 

This is disturbing to me. Clearly OP has blonde (and fine) hair, and I do not recall him saying he was asked to dye his hair or that he did. Really not trying to bash here but as a potential HT candidate too I get very concerned when I see these. Yeah I love the great results as they make me feel better but I am sure I speak for others here when I say we'd like to find out when/why/how HTs go bad so we can figure out how ours will not. Again, expectations? Communication? Lapses in protocol? I feel bad for OP of course but I don't want to make the same mistakes if he did, even if that mistake turns out to be not asking the right questions or not being adamant about protocols at the clinic.

[1978matt]

While the result is not a transformation by any means, the hairline IS noticeably stronger/denser in the front from the pictures that the clinic provided. The pre-op pictures showed heavily minaturized hairs that were on their way out in a matter of years. Now the patient has a solid, male pattern baldness resistant hairs in the area so there shouldn't be further loss in the area. Likely a fair bit of shock loss but still he should know the results are an improvement from the comparison shots from the clinic.

 

Agreed. The result appears fit for purpose based on the limited photos.