A Norwood 7 Receives A Life-Changing FUE Hair Transplant

[Melvin- Admin]

I had the pleasure of speaking with Rahul, born of royal blood in India, his story is amazing and reminds me of the power of hair transplant surgery. This man was botched, and now thanks to Dr. Pradeep and Dr. Bansal, has been redeemed. 

A Norwood 7 Receives Life Changing FUE Hair Transplants

[paddyirishman]

Great post @Melvin-Moderator and a truly inspirational story from Rahul.

You deserve a lot of credit for sharing stories like this from real patients and highly recommended Surgeons on this marvellous forum,  for doing this it gives patients great hope, when it looks like there is no hope, Well done .

........Paddy.....

[Lohvisa]

He looks so much better. It's strange how much hairline frames the face and makes the person look more natural and young..

Edited January 24, 2020 by Lohvisa

[147break]

That's impressive! It's hard to find results where body hair has been used. I found this video which shows the before a little better

 

 

[Melvin- Admin]

WOW the change is huge by looking at that video. 

[Melvin- Admin]

 

[Future Hair Doc]

Amazing results. He looks 20 years younger

[Melvin- Admin]

The island of hair, in many cases is worse than having no hair at all, because it looks so unnatural. I'm glad he found a quality clinic that sorted him out, and I agree he looks at least 20 years younger.

[147break]

I think all of us who have transplants hope that our sides don't drop to leave a gap

[JohnCasper]

Wonderful transformation.  Thanks for sharing his journey....Melvin.

[Melvin- Admin]

8 hours ago, 147break said:

I think all of us who have transplants hope that our sides don't drop to leave a gap

I agree, but Norwood 7 level of hair loss is rare, keep in mind his father was also a norwood 7. Unless you have NW7 in your family, I wouldn’t worry too much.

[Blackweasel]

What a result! If this man could do it, why couldnt other NW7 sufferers  

I always wonder why people that end up with the island of hair and general transplanted bald look dont just shave their head. I would guess its because of the FUT scars in this case? 

The shaved low guard look is so much better vs the high norwood balding look. 

[Melvin- Admin]

19 hours ago, Blackweasel said:

What a result! If this man could do it, why couldnt other NW7 sufferers  

I always wonder why people that end up with the island of hair and general transplanted bald look dont just shave their head. I would guess its because of the FUT scars in this case? 

The shaved low guard look is so much better vs the high norwood balding look. 

Yea it's because of the strip scar(s), Rahul had two nasty strip scars, this is one of the reasons why I chose to go FUE. 

[LonelyGraft]

What are the main differences between a nw6 and a nw7? Is it the lateral humps dropping and/or a shorter occipital donor area?

[Melvin- Admin]

6 minutes ago, LonelyGraft said:

What are the main differences between a nw6 and a nw7? Is it the lateral humps dropping and/or a shorter occipital donor area?

The lateral humps and the crown height.

[mrax]

9 hours ago, Melvin-Moderator said:

Yea it's because of the strip scar(s), Rahul had two nasty strip scars, this is one of the reasons why I chose to go FUE. 

From your videos, it seems you get well informed before making any decision. Did you ever check whether your FUE-scars are unnoticable when shaving your head?

I've seen quite a a few pictures of people with very noticable white-dots on the back of their heads. Having the option to shave my head, in case the hair loss progresses and leaves me with a hair island on the top of my head, is a really important for me.

However, I'm not sure how unnoticable the scars of the latest FUEs performed by good surgeons can be. From what I've heard, the punch size can play a major role.

[Blackweasel]

Just now, mrax said:

From your videos, it seems you get well informed before making any decision. Did you ever check whether your FUE-scars are unnoticable when shaving your head?

I've seen quite a a few pictures of people with very noticable white-dots on the back of their heads. Having the option to shave my head, in case the hair loss progresses and leaves me with a hair island on the top of my head, is a really important for me.

However, I'm not sure how unnoticable the scars of the latest FUEs performed by good surgeons can be. From what I've heard, the punch size can play a major role.

Ive seen some white spot FUE scars also.

I did my op 3175 grafts at DR Cinik in Turkey on 13 th December 2019. So about a Month and 2 weeks ago. I have shaved my head to 0 guard. This is what it looks like, nobody around me realised anything was done. This is only a month after the procedure. I use Fresh Aloe vera  gel on my whole scalp and it seems to help. 

 

Punch is 0.7mm and I think im very lucky with my tanned skin colour. Im almost positive the scars will be completely invisible in a few years. 

[Melvin- Admin]

4 hours ago, mrax said:

From your videos, it seems you get well informed before making any decision. Did you ever check whether your FUE-scars are unnoticable when shaving your head?

I've seen quite a a few pictures of people with very noticable white-dots on the back of their heads. Having the option to shave my head, in case the hair loss progresses and leaves me with a hair island on the top of my head, is a really important for me.

However, I'm not sure how unnoticable the scars of the latest FUEs performed by good surgeons can be. From what I've heard, the punch size can play a major role.

Scars will be visible if you shave your head. That said, some guys can get away with buzzing down to a zero guard. I can get down to a #1 guard without scars being very visible. Being left with an island of hair is everyone's worst nightmare. But the fact is that a Norwood 7 level of hair loss is very rare, and most guys are likely to progress to a Norwood 5 or 6 level of hair loss.

[Al - Moderator]

I wish they showed some before and after pictures or video of the crown and back. I'd really like to know how much hair he had in the back.

 

[Al - Moderator]

On 1/26/2020 at 2:19 AM, Blackweasel said:

What a result! If this man could do it, why couldnt other NW7 sufferers  

Some of us other NW 7 sufferers have even less donor area hair than he has. He had 12500 grafts in several sessions plus the ones he had done years ago. He used more than 1000 scalp grafts and still has what looks like decent sides and back. My donor area hair is so thin that I need to add hair to the traditional donor area rather than take from it. That makes it MUCH harder to do. I've had 4600 beard and chest grafts done so far.

On 1/26/2020 at 2:19 AM, Blackweasel said:

I always wonder why people that end up with the island of hair and general transplanted bald look dont just shave their head. I would guess its because of the FUT scars in this case?

It's the same reason everyone else gets a transplant. They don't like being bald or having a shaved head. If you try shaving or buzzing your head and decide to get a hair transplant because you can't stand the shaved/buzzed look on you, then believe me you will like the shaved look MUCH LESS when it includes scars. I personally never understood people who get a hair transplant because they felt their hair was so bad that they had to do something about it turn around and try to tell someone who has even less hair than they do that he should not get a hair transplant as if having even less hair would somehow suddenly magically make a person be OK with that.

 

[Blackweasel]

21 minutes ago, BeHappy said:

It's the same reason everyone else gets a transplant. They don't like being bald or having a shaved head. If you try shaving or buzzing your head and decide to get a hair transplant because you can't stand the shaved/buzzed look on you, then believe me you will like the shaved look MUCH LESS when it includes scars. I personally never understood people who get a hair transplant because they felt their hair was so bad that they had to do something about it turn around and try to tell someone who has even less hair than they do that he should not get a hair transplant as if having even less hair would somehow suddenly magically make a person be OK with that.

 

Well to each his own, unless I get my hair to grow thicker itll be a buzz cut for the rest of my life. I cant stand balding/thinning head and prefer short cut. FUE 3000 graft has given me a frontal hairline again and theres a MASSIVE difference between bald head buzzcut and short cut/buzzcut with visible hairline framing the face. 

I already shave my head 2 months post op and will do so until I get growth in another 6 months and in the same time frame thicken the mid scalp and crown. If that doesnt happen it will forever remain buzzed. Scars are barely visible in my case, nobody noticed on 0 guard. Im very happy about this as can keep shaving low guard until I need to...

[Al - Moderator]

1 hour ago, Blackweasel said:

Well to each his own, unless I get my hair to grow thicker itll be a buzz cut for the rest of my life. I cant stand balding/thinning head and prefer short cut. FUE 3000 graft has given me a frontal hairline again and theres a MASSIVE difference between bald head buzzcut and short cut/buzzcut with visible hairline framing the face. 

 

So you're kind of agreeing with me. You would rather have a buzzcut instead of shaving and you're willing to have surgery to get 3000 grafts so you don't have to shave. Right now you got very lucky that you don't have much visible scarring in your donor. Most guys aren't that lucky. So let me ask you a few questions. What would you do if you did get lots of dot scars in the donor area? What if the 3000 grafts don't grow or only 10% grow? Will you then start shaving your head? Or will you try another hair transplant? What if next year (not 10 years later, but 1 year) you lose more hair behind the transplanted hair? Will you get more grafts? Or will you now suddenly start shaving your head only a year after getting all those grafts? What happens if you get another 3000 grafts to fill in the additional areas and one year later you get a very large bald crown? Do you shave your head or do you try even more grafts? What happens when you run out of donor area and now that you had several 3000 graft sessions you now have thousands of donor scars and very depleted looking donor area? What will you do then? Even if you don't have scars now you may scar more with further procedures due to scarring under the skin that exists from the previous transplant. What then?

I don't wish any of this on you, but I'm just trying to point out that it's easy to say what others should do or should have done when it's not happening to you.

Also you need to remember that a lot of us men who had previous hair transplants and end up a NW 7 had their first hair transplant many years ago, so you can't look at current technology and think you would have done what's currently available. I had my first hair transplant over 30 years ago. I had 25 hair transplant surgeries in less than 6 years. I think I have 7 rows of scars on one side of my head and 8 rows of scars on the other because a new scar was created with each hair transplant back then. I also had 5 scalp reductions and I think over 100 4mm punches taken out and sewn together to try to eliminate some space between grafts. So on me it isn't just the donor scarring that you would see if I shave my head, but red dots and scars all over the top of my head as well.

So, do I shave my head or do I try to get some beard and chest grafts to try to get enough coverage to look somewhat decent with hair. It's not an easy decision.

 

EDIT Because I wanted to add this: I can tell you that when I cut my hair short and I can see the scars and thinning and baldness really showing I absolutely hate it and if I let it get to a certain length, it looks a bit better and I feel a bit better when I look in the mirror or when I go anywhere, so that leads me to the decision that I'd like it better if I can get more hair. As bad as it is I never wear a hat to cover it because I don't want to hide under a hat all my life, although it is very hard to go places sometimes.

 

Edited January 28, 2020 by BeHappy

[Blackweasel]

Yeah I get your point,

its a hard one, but having NW7 in my immediate family and being a nw6/7 diffuser myself it was important to me that scarring is minimal so I can resort to shaving my bald head if I ever loose the fight or decide to give up meds for some reason which someday will happen (hopefully im 40+ years old). People change, mentalities change and I wanted to be safe. I also researched a good FUE doc with small punch size and my doctors used 0.7mm and implanted with choi pens. 

Its hard and hair loss is a cunt. I dont think I will ever extract more follicles from my scalp, If I had to do more HTs itll be chest and beard hair or shaved head for life. This is why im going hard on meds with dutasteride etc for regrowth as I basically have 1 shot to make this work.

[Melvin- Admin]

4 hours ago, BeHappy said:

Some of us other NW 7 sufferers have even less donor area hair than he has. He had 12500 grafts in several sessions plus the ones he had done years ago. He used more than 1000 scalp grafts and still has what looks like decent sides and back. My donor area hair is so thin that I need to add hair to the traditional donor area rather than take from it. That makes it MUCH harder to do. I've had 4600 beard and chest grafts done so far.

It's the same reason everyone else gets a transplant. They don't like being bald or having a shaved head. If you try shaving or buzzing your head and decide to get a hair transplant because you can't stand the shaved/buzzed look on you, then believe me you will like the shaved look MUCH LESS when it includes scars. I personally never understood people who get a hair transplant because they felt their hair was so bad that they had to do something about it turn around and try to tell someone who has even less hair than they do that he should not get a hair transplant as if having even less hair would somehow suddenly magically make a person be OK with that.

 

I still think you should give concealers a try, in my opinion they’re perfect. 

[SLA]

This is an extraordinary story and shows what is possible!

Thanks Melvin