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2500 FUE grafts with Dr. Laorwong at Absolute Hair Clinic in Bangkok


PeterHT

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Hi everyone,

I am a 42 year American living in Vietnam. It seems to me I am a Norwood classification 3. I started progressively losing my hair in my thirties and have been thinking about doing a HT for some years. Finally, I am going to get approximately 2500 FUE grafts implanted thanks to / with Dr. Kongkiat Laorwong on November 22 2018 and I will be posting on a regular basis to share my story and pictures with those interested. Below is my story and situation. 

Story: after researching the subject of hair transplant for some months, I decided to go with FUE as it does appear to be the best procedure today but then still needed to find the right surgeon for the procedure. I looked at options in Vietnam where I live first. Price with a surgeon in Ho Chi Minh City was only USD 2 per FUE graft but the impression I got was not good so I decided to exclude the Vietnam option. After, I looked at Turkey and Thailand. There were certainly many more recommendations for surgeons in Turkey when searching in English on the internet but I finally opted for Dr. Kongkiat Laorwong in Bangkok for the following reasons (from most to least important)

1. the reviews of patients here for his work were mostly positive (not all but most).

2. this network recommended him and his work. Also, Thailand has a reputation for good surgeons (as does Turkey).

3. he was closer to my home in Vietnam.

4. At 90 Thai Baht per graft, the surgery was not really cheaper than with top Turkish surgeons but I could save about USD 1000 on plane ticket and avoid travelling to Istanbul in the winter. 

So far, I have met Dr. Laorwong and his assistant yesterday for the check-up visit and things went well. Dr. Laorwong is not a talkative man but he is pleasant and seems concerned enough with his patients. Also, his diagnostic was the same as mine: 2500 grafts in total, mostly on the frontal sides, plus some added grafts to the existing hairs on the front and on the temples in order to increase density.

I want to take a quick minute here to thank Hair Restoration Network for the work you do and the previous bloggers who have posted on their personal experiences because without you I might not be envisaging the surgery I am about to have. I also want to thank Dr. Laorwong for taking me on as a patient and I hope he does a great job on me. Wish me luck! Here are a few pre-op pictures to get started. I will post more pre-op and post-op pictures after Nov 22 and thereafter tell and show you how things progress month by month. Hopefully well. Cheers!

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Hi everyone,

As promised, here are my post op pics 6 days after as well as my personal feedback on the following:

1. pre operation process

2. operation day on November 22 (6 days ago)

3. follow up.

I will be glad to receive comments from the contributors with enough experience to judge the work performed. I had according to the Doctor about 2400 grafts placed up front and a total of 150 grafts on my temples. I am still waiting for Dr. Laorwong and his assistant Whan to send me their professional pre and post operation pics. They have not yet send them yet but I will share them if they add another light when they send them.

FEEDBACK:

Pre operation process: generally good. Email responses were next day and precise enough. I was given a drawing of my new hair line and a brief overview of the process and who does what. Doctor Laorwong and his assistant don't address you when they write to you so the responses dont seem very personalized and I would recommend to him they start doing that to increase their conversion rate but that's just a detail. The visit before the operation went ok too. The exchange was more informal than you would probably have in a top US or European clinic and you need to ask your questions on the process but professional and informative enough answers are given so good enough for me. 

Operation day: also generally good with a couple of points for improvement to improve quality a little. Arrived at 8am and did not wait. Dr drew new hairline, shaved donor area hair, proposed I keep some hair upfront (which I agreed to). Then moved to operating room where like 4 or 5 staff were waiting. Operation was about to start without briefing me on the specific steps of the procedure so I asked the Doctor to run me through the process, which he kindly did. This is one of my two recommendations for the Doctor as patients having never undergone this need to know what will happen in order to be informed and feel more secure. Otherwise, I think the procedure was as announced with the "Doctor making all the incisions on donor area and grafts being extracted by himself and his assistant" and "Doctor making all pre-made incisions on recipient area and then him or his assistant placing the grafts with the Lion implanter". I could not see everything for sure and was sedated (not sleeping but sleepy) but I trust the Doctor here and what matters is the end result for me anyways.

Operation finished around 4:30 or 5 pm I believe with only a short break for lunch so the Doctor and his team worked hard. After the operation, I did not see the Doctor. I was told by his assistant what to do and given my maintenance kit and sent home. Here I want to make my second recommendation to you friends and to the Doctor. When I got home and exited the car, a part of the recipient area of my head accidentally hit the roof of the car. I hope this will not have a negative impact on my results but I want you guys to be very mindful of this as it could. The drugs cloud your range judgement so better to be warned in order to be extra careful. I hope this recommendation gives me brownie points with the guy watching up there and he gives me a pass on this one. :) Make sure you are careful and Doctor please tell Whan to include this in her warnings for future patients. Having it in the brochure that a patient reads after getting home is not enough. Thanks.

Follow up: I had some swelling following the operation. This is normal on occasion and not linked to my little hit. Your head feels very hard post op (still now though less so) and I still sometimes feel a slight itching where my head hit the car roof but overall I feel good. Whan and Doctor were good at answering my post op questions. The tough part was not being able to sleep on my sides as I usually do. The Doctor gave me sleeping pills for the first 2 nights which helped but after that I have been having some sleep deprived nights. Tonight, I feel the hairs are rooted enough that I can carefully indulge in a good night`s sleep.

Conclusion: I will post pics every month so you can see the progress. I hope this write up and future posts helps people. It is a little too early for me to fully endorse Dr Laorwong but so far so good. Guys, feel free to let me know your feedback based on pics, especially those with experience. I cannot promise to answer every questions but I will do my best. To answer Elduterino`s question for now, I have not taken any specific hair medication but the Doctor recommended Finasteride so I will look into that shortly.

Kind regards.

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Thanks for the update! Looks very clean and a tight packing of grafts 

To prevent further hairloss behind it look into topical Clascoterone this is the upcoming finasteride replacement with no side effects. I would start with finasteride first for the first months until you can use topicals, you may not even notice any side effects 

Edited by elduterino
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Hi Peter HT 

Thanks for sharing your experience. The graft inserts look dense and I very much like the hairline design.

Did you pay in cash for the procedure? If so, where/ how did you withdraw that much money in Bangkok? 

Your hair is going to look so good in a couple of months!

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I am having surgery there next week and I wired the total via bank transfer this is the usual way to safely send large amounts of money, same as the other hair transplant docs.

Why take risks and carry all this cash around? 

Edited by elduterino
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Thanks elduterino

Got the impression the only options were either credit card (with % fee) or cash - which sounds very risky. Anyway its good news.

Sounds like you’ve already wired the money and your surgery is next week. Have you already met for a consulting and agreed the number of grafts (hence the price) or just consulted through mail?

im doing an ht there in April

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Apparently he takes wire transfer, credit cards and PayPal so the options are quite open for payment 

I sent pics and the number of grafts he suggested was in line with what I had in mind as well and also based on other docs I met in person for consulations  such as Dr Arvind 

This will be my second Fue 

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Hi guys, 

I hope everyone is well. 

@Edulterino: to answer your question, the Doctor told me he would do and did PRP but I did not get a chance to see it or feel it performed as you don't get to see the ops (your eyes are covered) and you are in a half asleep state. I just trusted the Doctor. Maybe you can ask him to notify you when he does it?

@Tor: thanks for the compliment. I really hope it pans out well in the end. So far so good. To answer your question, I totally concur with Edulterino. Myself, I paid the initial deposit through wire transfer then brought like 6000 Euros which I converted to Thai Baht and paid cash but looking back, I would totally do the wire transfer in advance if you are pretty sure of the number of grafts if I were you as that is the easier and less stressful solution.

Happy end of year all.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • Regular Member

Hi everyone,

A quick update 1 month post-FUE.

I am doing well I think. I developed some folliculitis after 2 weeks (aka. some pimples) but using the local antibiotic the Doctor and assistant gave me, it has gone away and I keep it in check with that.

I also developed some relative pain at some point on the donor area. It did not prevent me from sleeping so it was bearable but I wanted to understand the issue and get rid of the problem so I went to consult a Doctor where I was at. She was not a specialist but said she could not see anything out of the ordinary and said there was no infection. She thought it might be due to folliculitis and just prescribed me some anti-inflammatory meds. The pain went away on its own 2 days after consultation. Doctor Laorwong, who I also reached out to, thought it could be due to nerve pain, due to some superficial damage but he was rightfully cautious in his response as he could not see me. I think his call was the right one though. I want to end it here by commending Dr. Laorwong for being really reactive in answering my emails when I had some issues and questions. That was really pro and appreciated as it provided me some guidance and was reassuring.

Finally, top of scalp is still a little numb but the Doctor said that is normal and should last 2 to 3 months so all is well! Here are the pics after 1 month. As you will see, my newly grafted have started thinning and possibly shedding too. This is normal.

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Good Stuff

Just had my  HT yesterday with Dr Laorwong and I am extremely pleased with the results so far 

Much better density than the previous fue I had and for less than half the price per grafts 

Did 2600 grafts  in total with 200 each for eyebrows 

Will post pics in a few days

Yes scalp being numb takes months it's by far the last  piece to heal after  scalp redness but eventually nerves will reconnect 

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Edited by elduterino
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
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Hi everyone,

I am posting and commenting on the progress of my hair 3 months after the transplant operation. You will forgive me if I did not post an update after 2 months. I was a little lazy and in my opinion nothing changed between month 1 and month 2.

Speaking of changes, I also do not see much even any change at all 3 months post-op but from my previous readings, this is normal as hair is only supposed to "start" growing after 3 months so nothing to worry about for now. Hopefully, next month we can start to see a difference. 

What has surprised me most so far is that I did not shed as much as I expected. Feel free to comment. I should add I have still not taken any medication such as Finasteride or the likes. Regards.

Peter.

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Edited by PeterHT
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