FUE ARTAS Seven months little growth

[Valgreats]

I had an ARTAS seven months ago. Minimal growth on hairline. No visible growth on crown. Any advice?

 

2000 grafts. Age 52. No meds due to side effects. Healthy. Feels like I wasted 13K.

 

Before and after posted. The after pic actually looks a little worse.

[patrick1916]

I'd go back to them myself. I know everyone says you need to give it 12 months but I don't see it happening but I'm not an expert. Does age be a factor in these things?

[Benjno]

Unfortunately, your after picture does look much worse. At this point, I think it is unfortunate to assume that the procedure was a failure. Who is your doctor?

[mosd]

13k for artas? Where was this doen?

[Valgreats]

California. I don't want to name the doctor currently as I want to give it a chance. I was told I should wait until a year. I'm just concerned, that the procedure did not work. I have read that at seven months there should be 70%. My hairline area shows some very minor improvement. My main problem has been my crown.

[Dutchie]

The good news is you look to be about a Norwood 5, so you'll have plenty of donor hair to get a good result

[DavidAnderson]

Sorry to hear this. Your hair type with the curl should lead to a nice result. Do you have any placement shots straight after surgery?

 

My advice would be to contact the clinic that provided the surgery but if you have already done that and they said wait until 12 months then there is not much else you can do. You need to establish the cause of the lack of growth before having a second procedure if you can.

 

If things don't improve I would see a dermatologist specializing in hair and get a third party opinion to make sure your scalp is healthy. This might include a biopsy of the skin.

 

Good luck, you may just be a very late bloomer I hope so for your sake.

[Dutchie]

I hope this puts another nail in the ARTAS coffin.

 

I dont trust that machine at all

[ChadCooper3]

How did your donor area heal after the procedure? Was there any shock loss or are the dots visible from the extractions. I ask only to see if there is any connection in the growth rate.

[Valgreats]

Donor area healed well. I attached another pic to show seven month progress.

[Szotz_257]

If you look at the Glassdoor page for Restoration Robotics (the makers of ARTAS), there are comments from former programmers there that the code base is messy and that the development leads are gone from the project. Most of the former employees complain about high turnover and bad management. So you are likely looking at a machine running software that was written by programmers who may not have a good handle on the code. Not exactly what I would entrust to handle my finite number of grafts. Moreover, I think the nature of robotics itself puts a limit on how close the machine can get to the performance of a skilled surgeon or technician.

 

No reputable surgeon should use this equipment, IMO. And I think most are moving away from it seeing how dismal the results have been.

[JohnCasper]

I'm sorry for your frustration. Let's hope you're a late "grower". Also, 2,000 grafts is not a lot if you're producing a hair line AND the crown area. It seems as though the ARTAS process favors the doctor more than the patient. I'm sure that could be debated. All of my grafts were extracted and placed by the doctor at a much lower price. Best of luck. Post more pictures in a couple more months. Let's hope you show good progress at that point. I do know of a patient that showed no growth until the 7th month and then had good results.

[Valgreats]

Thanks for the replies. 2000 should be enough as I was a 3V, with little frontal recession. It does seem that there are some people who grow later. Another doctor told me that if there is none at 10 months it is a failure. Fingers are crossed