2874 Grafts for Norwood V, Dr. Bhatti 24/25 July 2016

[Hayden87]

Background

 

I am a 29 year old white male. The first signs of hair loss occurred in my late teens with weakening of my temples and slight hairline recession, with frontal hairline recession continuing slowly into my early 20s. During my mid 20s my crown also began weakening, with rapid hair loss from 26 - 28 years of age.

 

I have never used any form of hair loss treatment to combat my hair loss, for a long time convincing myself that it 'wasn't that bad' or that it wouldn't continue to worsen. Boy was I wrong!

 

Pre-Op

 

After becoming increasingly displeased with my appearance in photographs, I finally decided to see what I could do about my lack of hair. I had been occasionally researching hair transplants for a couple of years online and after ramping up my efforts, came down to a choice between Dr. Path, Dr. Bhatti and Dr. Erdogan. I was initially very keen on Dr. Path, due to the fact I spend a lot of time in Bangkok, however after many hours trawling through results and experiences on this site, Dr. Bhatti emerged as the man-to-see for those considering FUE.

 

I made contact with Dr. Bhatti and true to the word of all others who have reviewed him, he made very prompt contact in reply!

 

However his initial assessment of my photographs was that I am a poor candidate for a hair transplant due to my sparse donor density, low crown area and major evolving hair loss pattern.

 

This only increased my confidence in him as a surgeon, as he was clearly not trying to 'sell' me something and I urged him to see what he could do for me in at least recreating something of a hairline.

 

So we proceeded to set a date for July and I set about making my travel arrangements.

 

I do wish to stress again that Dr. Bhatti did, from the outset, assess me as being a poor candidate for HT and I am certainly not expecting a head of hair as I had when I was 15 or 16, but for me, any result will certainly be preferred to what I had prior to the procedure.

 

The Procedure

 

After arriving at Darling Buds Clinic for my pre-op consultation, the day before the procedure and after examining my beard and chest as well as my scalp, Dr. Bhatti estimated he would be able to extract approximately 3,000 grafts.

 

He drew a few hairlines on my forehead and we agreed to a reasonably straight hairline with a little filling in of the temples. I was given a few pills to take and a blood test, then dropped back at my hotel.

 

I was picked up the next morning just before 7, taken to the clinic and prepared by Dr. Bhatti's technicians, as well as having blood taken for PRP.

 

I was taken into the operating room shortly after 8.30am, where Dr. Bhatti proceeded to anaesthetise my donor area and give the hair a final scissor trim, before beginning the extraction.

 

The extraction took three or four hours, I couldn't feel much of it and drifted off to sleep a few times. After this time I had 1948 scalp grafts and 497 beard grafts extracted.

 

After this was completed, I was laid on my back, the recipient area was anaesthetised and Dr. Bhatti proceeded with the slit making, after which implantation commenced. After about 45 minutes of implantation, our food had arrived so we took a short break for lunch and a trip to the toilet.

 

After returning to the operating room, implantation continued, fresh dressing was applied to my donor area and I was given my care instructions for that night.

 

I returned the next morning and the procedure was completed with a further 429 chest hair grafts.

 

The final breakdown was:

Scalp 1948 (815 singles, 772 doubles, 361 triples)

Beard 497 (All singles)

Chest 429 (All singles)

 

Post-Op

 

I was very careful with my head following the procedure, wanting to give myself the best chance of a good result, given my initial poor candidacy.

 

I stayed in my room for most of the following few days, keeping my head back and ensuring nothing came into contact with the recipient area, other than when performing my prescribed post-operative cleaning.

 

I had absolutely no bleeding, not even during the procedure. The only blood was a few dots on the dressing of the donor area.

 

I had no swelling in my face, on the second day post-op I had some minor swelling in my forehead which I attribute to looking down at my phone a little too often.

 

I did have some discomfort in my stomach from the medication, however this quickly subsided after completing the course of antibiotics.

 

I had little-to-no itching in my recipient area and for those times I did feel the need to scratch, I would just give it a spray with saline, which did the trick.

 

On the fifth day post-op, I had some minor pain in my donor area which made sleeping difficult, however after taking 2 tablets of Paracetamol the pain disappeared and I have felt almost no discomfort since that day.

 

Photographs

 

Earlier in my 20s:

 

 

Photographs sent to Dr. Bhatti, a few weeks prior to the procedure:

 

 

7 Days Post-Op:

 

 

Review

 

While it is certainly far too soon to assess the results, my opinion of Dr. Bhatti and Darling Buds clinic is very positive.

 

Dr. Bhatti is without a doubt a very skilled surgeon, clearly very experienced and performs his procedure with efficiency and confidence. I think the fact he was able to make, between the extraction and implantation, over 5,000 incisions into my scalp without any noticeable bleeding or pain speaks to his skill as a surgeon.

 

His technicians are exceptionally well trained, hygienic and everyone speaks surperb English.

 

You are cared for well in the clinic and are never left thirsty nor hungry.

 

Post-operative care instructions are comprehensive and are repeated to you several times by his technicians, you are not left with many questions needing asked!

 

I stayed in Chandigarh for four days following the procedure and popped in each day, they were more than happy to give my head a professional clean each day and check my progress.

 

At this stage I appear to be healing very quickly, have no pain at all and am certainly a happy customer!

 

Time will tell if my hair is good enough to provide me with a result. I have begun Minoxidil on my crown area to see what I can do to improve the miniaturised hairs that still cover it and will begin Minoxidil on the recipient area after the second week.

Edited August 2, 2016 by Hayden87
Typos

[TakingThePlunge]

Hayden,

 

Thanks for taking the time to share a detailed account of your hair transplant experience with Dr. Bhatti. I look forward to your continued updates. Best of luck!

[n00b]

I am surprised that only ~2000 scalp grafts were available. Can someone help me understand why...

[mahhong]

Thanks for the detailed write-up Hayden and I very much hope this procedure turns out a success for you! Dr. Bhatti is a top FUE surgeon and it sounds like both you and he have come up with an achievable plan of action - I'm excited to see how this develops!

 

n00b - Hopefully Hayden will be able to answer your question, but there's probably a very good reason. As Hayden has mentioned, he is relatively young with fairly extensive loss and maybe some concerns about his donor area too. In circumstances like that, it's far better to be cautious and plan a more conservative procedure and see how things go. Perhaps Dr. Bhatti wanted to see how the donor area looked after 2000 grafts and not risk too much thinning in that area. It's always possible to schedule further procedures if the capacity and desire is there, but it's nigh on impossible to fix mistakes related to overharvesting, so perhaps Dr. Bhatti had this in mind and thought it better to be safer than sorry.