Frontal NW2 Restoration @ Eugenix | M 26 | December 10th

[NARMAK]

1 hour ago, Captain Haddock said:

A lot of people have messaged me in the last few days regarding my temples. I'll try to answer some of those questions here to educate patients.

To those wondering why I haven't raised this issue with the clinic, I raised it 10 days post op and the clinic's official response can be seen in page 2 of this thread. The essence of the response was that the grafts would re-angulate themselves into oblique or slanting angles after a few months - this was something that never made sense to me and after 15 months, it factually never happened. 

Over the last year I've come to realize that temple reconstruction is a very customized job that needs good time spent on studying the patient's head, his needs and extensive discussion. All of that cannot happen as soon as you land in the clinic and now you have your procedure scheduled for the day. The time I spent discussing my procedure on site, with the doctors and techs at Eugenix in the planning and photography room was approximately less than 30 minutes. 10 of those minutes were probably spent discussing my temples. 

Moreover, patients also need to be educated that there are economics and time constraints on the clinic's end (not just Eugenix, but plenty of clinics that operate on multiple patients a day). Hair transplantation is a lucrative business, and the clinic can't afford to spend more than a day on you, while arguably there is a lesser chance of haphazard implantation and poor planning with doctors who work on a single patient/day, addressing hairline/mid-scalp on the first day, and then the temples on the second day etc. When I was being operated upon at Eugenix, the techs told me that there were 2 more patients who were undergoing procedures at the same time. 

Then there is also the problem of difference in skill difference between the techs that operate on you. You'd have plenty of them working on you, and it takes just one tech to fumble his part of the job and his mistakes will stick out and haunt you for the rest of your life - like I have to deal with constantly hiding my left temple, by growing out my hair, and styling them like I've never styled them for the last 25 years.

One last thing.

I'd try and take Melvin (or any other moderator's opinion on any forum) with a pinch of salt as they are financially compensated by clinics to be on the platform, and mods will always strike a balance between clinic PR and patient advocacy, and his reply above is a classic example of the same. 

I'm sorry to see that your temple point didn't work out as well as the other and i sincerely wish that it was something that could have been maybe better addressed. 

In terms of the planning stage, i think this is a true "Caveat Emptor" (Buyer Beware) moment for any person going for a hair transplant regardless of clinic. Even with the stellar reputation Eugenix has built, it is still somehow in a few cases where they do appear to have slipped a little from the high standard we have begun to hold them in. 

I think when specifically it comes to the temple points, a place where Eugenix has uniquely positioned themselves as a top clinic to address that area, there needs to be a little more focus there and perhaps even more care taken in hair selection and who implants it. The result between your left and right temples is stark and obvious to see at that low grade haircut. Fortunately masked at a longer length but i am sorry to hear it has resulted in you being unable to style your hair as you would wish to. 

I do hope the clinic and future patients including myself can successfully navigate these concerns to hopefully where they are back on track with every result they send out there. 

I am planning to fingers crossed document my own journey hopefully in May (Visa permitting) and share with you guys how my temple points are handled. Something that imo is really dear to my heart as something i have not even been able to remember having since my mid/late teens. It's literally the #1 reason i have personally chosen Eugenix. 

[MazAB]

@Captain Haddockdo you recall where they harvested your temple point hair grafts? Was it from the nap of the neck or behind the ear? Aside from the sparse growth factor on the bad side, it also looks like the hairs were harvested from a different region on the head which may also explain the disparity between them.

[mrmane85]

Thank you for sharing your concerns and highlighting this temple issue @Captain Haddock.

Through this post and recent others, I have learnt that temple implantation is such a fine art. On par or even more difficult than the crown swirl. 

I really think this particularly area needs to be done completely by the leading surgeon, from making the correct angled slits to extracting the correct grafts (nape of neck, behind ears as @MazABalluded to above) to implanting the particular grafts collected correctly. 

The rest of the work looks fantastic btw. 

[drawdownfx]

@Captain HaddockThanks for your detailed post bro. It's this honesty that needs to be kept alive as this is the only way we can keep the clinics honest. Hair transplant is a lucrative business, Eugenix is still producing amazing results I mean your hairline is prime example of this but as they ramp up their business, like with any other businesses there are scaling issues and I have clearly seen in the few recent posts how the temple work may have taken a hit. A good feedback to Eugenix is that maybe there needs to be specialist technicians just for the temples or a custom package where the doctor will do the implantation for the temples whether that be for an extra cost or not. 

Regardless, this is a start to hopefully an improvement to their temple work going into the future. @NARMAK you are going to be my guinea pig with the temples lol

[Captain Haddock]

Got a fade cut today and it's interesting to note how bad my extraction looks.

At the time I got the surgery I was under the impression that it was a shock loss and a lot of people affirmed but it seems like my donor wasn't operated on carefully. 

Especially when you're just 1.4K grafts down. It shouldn't really look like this.

 

[BDK081522]

@Captain Haddock Very sorry you're dealing with this situation after doing your homework and seemingly picking a top clinic. With that being said there's always options for repair. For less than 1400 grafts extracted, this is a very surprising and disappointing display of donor management. It's shocking for a clinic like Eugenix, who get so much praise on this forum to see a donor like this. Coupled to the poor temple point angles I think this result is certainly questionable. 

[asterix0]

@Captain Haddock Dang man I am sorry to see that, there are clinics that can fix your donor but with your good donor characteristics, and small number of grafts, I am really confused as to how this could have happened. 

 

[THE TRUTH]

1 hour ago, Captain Haddock said:

Got a fade cut today and it's interesting to note how bad my extraction looks.

At the time I got the surgery I was under the impression that it was a shock loss and a lot of people affirmed but it seems like my donor wasn't operated on carefully. 

Especially when you're just 1.4K grafts down. It shouldn't really look like this.

 

Waw really sorry bro. 

This looks pretty bad indeed

Not too bad (still pretty far from like "hairmill bad"...) 

But definitely bad for a clinic such as Eugenix and considering the little amount of grafts used...

There certainly shouldn't be nearly as much seethroughness with that length of hair. 

We all know that FUE is not scarless and  the white dots will be visible when the hair is cut very short however this looks to me like a pretty bad extraction. 

May I ask you two questions please 

Who performed these extractions ? Dr. Arika or the techs ? If so, which particular techs ? 

Did they at least offer to fix it for free ?

I think the minimum they should do is offer free SMP or some kind of free repair using beard grafts. 

I do believe Eugenix is an ethical clinic so let's hope for the best 🙏

Edited May 7, 2022 by What is your agenda here

[NARMAK]

1 hour ago, Captain Haddock said:

Got a fade cut today and it's interesting to note how bad my extraction looks.

At the time I got the surgery I was under the impression that it was a shock loss and a lot of people affirmed but it seems like my donor wasn't operated on carefully. 

Especially when you're just 1.4K grafts down. It shouldn't really look like this.

 

That is 100% a shocking reveal of the donor that long after surgery. Especially since i believe it was your first and only procedure. 

If you showed somebody that picture and told them to guess where you had it done, i genuinely think most would have thought a hair mill did it. 

I love a lot of work that Eugenix have shown off and even your frontal hairline and the one temple point which looks perfect. However, it's shocking that another temple point could be so poor and then on top of it, the donor management. The idea that retrograde alopecia could have forced them to make such an extraction pattern as any possible explanation would also be ludicrous. 

I think the clinic should seriously be offering you a free procedure led by Dr Pradeed and his elite technicians to address both the donor area and the botched temple point right now. 

[MazAB]

Sorry to see that you have had not one, but two major issues with temple points and now donor. I feel bad that I commented a while back that the angulations would course correct over time. Clearly that is not the case for you on that one side. For myself, the angulations did fix themselves over 5 to 6 months, but it's obvious that something went wrong during the procedure for both the donor and left temple to look the way it does. Goes to show you, the best clinics in the world sometimes have anomalies happen, but it's how they handle the aftercare for you that makes all the difference and defines the top notch clinics from the hair mills. My best recommendation for you is to reach out to Eugenix and schedule a "make good" session to repair the temple point, as well as donor. They perform donor repairs all the time with taking many repair cases. Typically they transplant beard hair right back into the donor, and you're good as new. As far as temples go, give them an opportunity to make it right and my guess is they knock the ball out of the park with giving extra attention to detail and getting it better then it would have ever been from even the first time around.

I'm rooting for you and am here for support if you need anything. 

 

[RTC]

Damn.. bad donor.. but yes they should be held to account and give you a free donor fix for sure

[drawdownfx]

4 hours ago, What is your agenda here said:

May I ask you two questions please 

Who performed these extractions ? Dr. Arika or the techs ? If so, which particular techs ? 

Did they at least offer to fix it for free ?

 

Dr Arika did the full extraction. As others mentioned I am shocked that this is the donor area for such a small amount of grafts taken. The question is what went wrong here? This is the question a lot of people on this thread will ask and I want to share a little story.

I am due to go to  Eugenix in a couple of months. When I booked it a couple of months ago I was very happy and confident as I had done my research and dodged a bullet with a turkey clinic (thanks to this forum)..... the happiness lasted until I saw the temple point on this thread which clearly looked like they were botched. I really wanted to get to the bottom of this because the temples are something I want to do myself and one of the reasons I chose @Eugenix Hair Sciences. What worried and puzzled me was the several members commenting on here completely brushing it off, it made me question the psychology of how we view different clinics from a different lens, if the clinic name was not given what would we have said about the OP's concern of his temple points? 

I demanded to get onto a call with Dr Arika which was granted and I asked her about the temples, she refused that anything had gone wrong and that they just needed to implant more grafts into that area. This didn't sit right with me but what do I know? so I sought out the view of an expert in JT who admitted himself that the angles were not correct and it was not a good job. 

The question now after seeing the extractions done here is not IF something went wrong but WHAT went wrong? I am not a Eugenix worker so I don't know but what I do know is that Eugenix has scaled their operation tremendously since gaining popularity and due to this the quality has taken a hit looking at few cases here. This was not a complicated case yet it took a hit, how many others have taken a hit that haven't been posted here? I understand no clinic is 100% but there is a difference in my opinion between lack lustre results and results that have been botched due to lack of care.

Me personally I have my surgery booked with Dr Sethi as I felt more confident in him but after seeing this picture and couple others in different threads I am worried. 

P.S. I am just being 100% transparent, I have no hate towards the clinic, I am booked to go myself  I hope they can bounce back. There is more things I can add but I will leave it here for now. 

@Captain HaddockHoping you get what you wished for initially, you have great hair and I know you will come back from this!

Edited May 7, 2022 by drawdownfx

[Ajamilo]

Have you contacted them @Captain Haddock? Wtf they over harvested you without anything necessarily. They could have spaced out the extraction and you would not have this problem

[THE TRUTH]

1 hour ago, drawdownfx said:

Dr Arika did the full extraction. As others mentioned I am shocked that this is the donor area for such a small amount of grafts taken. The question is what went wrong here? This is the question a lot of people on this thread will ask and I want to share a little story.

I am due to go to  Eugenix in a couple of months. When I booked it a couple of months ago I was very happy and confident as I had done my research and dodged a bullet with a turkey clinic (thanks to this forum)..... the happiness lasted until I saw the temple point on this thread which clearly looked like they were botched. I really wanted to get to the bottom of this because the temples are something I want to do myself and one of the reasons I chose @Eugenix Hair Sciences. What worried and puzzled me was the several members commenting on here completely brushing it off, it made me question the psychology of how we view different clinics from a different lens, if the clinic name was not given what would we have said about the OP's concern of his temple points? 

I demanded to get onto a call with Dr Arika which was granted and I asked her about the temples, she refused that anything had gone wrong and that they just needed to implant more grafts into that area. This didn't sit right with me but what do I know? so I sought out the view of an expert in JT who admitted himself that the angles were not correct and it was not a good job. 

The question now after seeing the extractions done here is not IF something went wrong but WHAT went wrong? I am not a Eugenix worker so I don't know but what I do know is that Eugenix has scaled their operation tremendously since gaining popularity and due to this the quality has taken a hit looking at few cases here. This was not a complicated case yet it took a hit, how many others have taken a hit that haven't been posted here? I understand no clinic is 100% but there is a difference in my opinion between lack lustre results and results that have been botched due to lack of care.

Me personally I have my surgery booked with Dr Sethi as I felt more confident in him but after seeing this picture and couple others in different threads I am worried. 

P.S. I am just being 100% transparent, I have no hate towards the clinic, I am booked to go myself  I hope they can bounce back. There is more things I can add but I will leave it here for now. 

@Captain HaddockHoping you get what you wished for initially, you have great hair and I know you will come back from this!

100% agree. 

I totally understand your concerns given the situation. 

At the end of the day, this is exactly what separates "elite" clinics from "good" clinics. 

We have witnessed several bad cases from both Eugenix  and HLC recently. 

Both these clinics are good but s*** does happen....

Often times they mess up easy cases like this one....Actually I feel like easy cases are often kind of neglected. 

I think the explanation as to what went wrong is pretty simple. 

Popularity = temptation of higher volume = bad cases & botched jobs. 

 

[digi23]

On 3/9/2022 at 9:35 PM, Captain Haddock said:

Well if I have to be completely honest I can't do these styles anymore because 1. The punch holes from the donor would be visible (I have a bit of a pattern at the back) and 2. My left temple looks horrendous. I've tried it and here are some pictures.

The right temple looks amazing but the left won't co-operate. 

In your case if your donor extraction is spaced apart well and the angulations match I don't see why you won't be able to rock it.

 

It was pretty easy to spot at Day 10 that the temples would not look good, I had the same problem with mine. Transplanted hair is supposed to follow the directions of the native hair, the directions can vary but the Dr need to follow it for it to look natural. Ontop of that, they used wrong hair, they used to thick grafts.

Black = Transplanted hair

White = Native

Edited May 7, 2022 by digi23

[NARMAK]

3 minutes ago, digi23 said:

It was pretty easy to spot at Day 10 that the temples would not look good, I had the same problem with mine. Transplanted hair is supposed to follow your directions, the directions can vary but the Dr need to follow it. Ontop of that, they used wrong hair, they used to thick grafts.

Black = Transplanted hair

White = Native

I kinda get what you're saying and by no means will you see me defending the temple point that went wrong but one is pretty much perfect looking even at a low fade. Thin hairs that actually match what a temple point should contain. I think the slight problem with the directions you drew is that they're already difficult enough to get right and as flat as possible to the angle needed against the skin. I don't know how much more "right" it would be trying to mimic that natural hair. After all, hair transplants are not a natural recreation to 100% of what was there but a close approximation to mimic by and large the same result within the limitations of what we have in todays technology. 

I sure as heck think like i said, they botched one temple with hairs that are much thicker rather than perhaps the angulation aspect being the more glaring issue. The donors just unacceptable by their own standards too. 

I do not also say any of this lightly or to hurt the OP, in fact, i'm extremely grateful to @Captain Haddockfor sharing this all for us to pick through to properly evaluate the clinic and hopefully ensure they do not ever repeat this again. Also, i do think it would only be fair for Eugenix to fix this for OP free of charge considering the lead surgeon was the founder themselves.

I once asked what happens if something goes wrong and a rep replied that its the responsibility of Eugenic Hair Sciences. Let's see what that means in practical terms now there's an actual example of something that requires genuine remedy. 

[digi23]

51 minutes ago, NARMAK said:

I kinda get what you're saying and by no means will you see me defending the temple point that went wrong but one is pretty much perfect looking even at a low fade. Thin hairs that actually match what a temple point should contain. I think the slight problem with the directions you drew is that they're already difficult enough to get right and as flat as possible to the angle needed against the skin. I don't know how much more "right" it would be trying to mimic that natural hair. After all, hair transplants are not a natural recreation to 100% of what was there but a close approximation to mimic by and large the same result within the limitations of what we have in todays technology. 

I sure as heck think like i said, they botched one temple with hairs that are much thicker rather than perhaps the angulation aspect being the more glaring issue. The donors just unacceptable by their own standards too. 

I do not also say any of this lightly or to hurt the OP, in fact, i'm extremely grateful to @Captain Haddockfor sharing this all for us to pick through to properly evaluate the clinic and hopefully ensure they do not ever repeat this again. Also, i do think it would only be fair for Eugenix to fix this for OP free of charge considering the lead surgeon was the founder themselves.

I once asked what happens if something goes wrong and a rep replied that its the responsibility of Eugenic Hair Sciences. Let's see what that means in practical terms now there's an actual example of something that requires genuine remedy. 

Yes the side I did looks much better than the other side according to his photos, but the photos is of very low quality. The side you mention is totally off yes.

This is the side I did, it did grow out pretty alright if you look at this pic, but its very pixelated, cant see any details.

Temple work needs insane skills. But what you see at Day 10 angulation wise is 99.9% of the time what you see when it later grow out after ugly duckling phase.

 

Edited May 7, 2022 by digi23

[A Fue Good Men]

@Captain Haddock I’m curious to know the clinics response in terms of why the donor looks uneven. Was it a result of unhomogenized extractions? Larger punches? Collateral damage? If you don’t mind sharing of course

[Euphoria]

 

For such a small number of grafts, you wouldn’t have this issue even at many hairmills. What’s worse in your case is you paid for the top tier most expensive package, had the doctor operate on you, did the extractions herself and still end up with this moth eaten donor, the absolute horrible thing of fue that can happen is this horrible donor result ie moth eaten looking donor, triggers my fear of patterns yuck. Absolutely ridiculous that it happened with such a small graft number.

Without seeing the donor, I was honestly thinking it was somewhat OK, so you didn’t get perfect temples despite the expensive package but you got great growth at hairline so it could be forgiven but then saw your donor and wow, I haven’t seen this bad donor on many hairmills.

I feel sorry for you mate, I said a few days ago I was worried about eugenix they might be giving less care to their cheaper package and local patients and focusing more on the expensive package patients and was quickly reprimanded by a member here for even suggesting this but I wasn’t expecting this by a doctor.

Hair growth, angles is somewhat unpredictable but graft extraction is not. 

[Mike10]

At 26 and NW1-2 I do not even see the point for a HT. An ethical clinic would have told you that

[Captain Haddock]

20 hours ago, BDK081522 said:

@Captain Haddock Very sorry you're dealing with this situation after doing your homework and seemingly picking a top clinic. With that being said there's always options for repair. For less than 1400 grafts extracted, this is a very surprising and disappointing display of donor management. It's shocking for a clinic like Eugenix, who get so much praise on this forum to see a donor like this. Coupled to the poor temple point angles I think this result is certainly questionable. 

There is indeed nothing more tragic than that my friend.

I spent two whole years reading about HTs, avoiding clinics that weren't too well known assuming that they knew nothing about angulations or donor management. I waited, and signed up for Eugenix after 2 separate consultations only to fall victim to the very same things that I feared the most. 

19 hours ago, asterix0 said:

@Captain Haddock Dang man I am sorry to see that, there are clinics that can fix your donor but with your good donor characteristics, and small number of grafts, I am really confused as to how this could have happened. 

It's simple. HTs can't be reduced to a haircut session. I could probably say that my barber spent more time looking at my hair than my surgeon before a transplant. I simply feel you need to properly study your patients head and hair characteristics for a while before you operate on them. Dr. Arika had a look at my head for a maximum of 10 minutes but this was more about hairline design eg where do we draw the lines etc. 

TBH It's unfortunately the business model they follow that limits them from completely committing to a patient fully - she has to juggle between multiple patients throughout the day and distribute her time. 10 minutes with patient A, another 10 minutes with patient B and so forth. 

When you have a situation like this and she still has to complete 100% extraction for me, you can't spread them out obviously. Because more spread = more anesthesia = more time. A lot of clinics in India (who juggle between multiple patients) for this reason keep the extraction area small because they have to be done with the patient quickly.

15 hours ago, drawdownfx said:

I demanded to get onto a call with Dr Arika which was granted and I asked her about the temples, she refused that anything had gone wrong and that they just needed to implant more grafts into that area. This didn't sit right with me but what do I know? so I sought out the view of an expert in JT who admitted himself that the angles were not correct and it was not a good job. 

Was told the same thing when I was paranoid about my temples post surgery. The angulations made zero sense. Since then we've seen more cases where the angles clearly took a hit for other patients on their temples and for some right on their frontal zones, and they're being passed around this forum like its absolutely normal. 

1 hour ago, Euphoria said:

I feel sorry for you mate, I said a few days ago I was worried about eugenix they might be giving less care to their cheaper package and local patients and focusing more on the expensive package patients and was quickly reprimanded by a member here for even suggesting this but I wasn’t expecting this butchering by a doctor.

This is very much true, but at the time when I got my surgery done there were only 3 packages and I chose the middle one. It was still the package where the founder docs would perform extraction and crucial implantation. 

I do believe that they are truly talented surgeons, and that given my case, barely NW2, great hair characteristics, virgin donor, they should've knocked it out of the park.

Yet those are probably the very same reasons why my case wasn't given the due attention and operated on rather casually without much thought. 

It's painful to know that your surgeon has the skill to do so much more, but for some reason did not put in the effort for you, and those skills are exclusively reserved for those who choose better packages. 

21 hours ago, MazAB said:

Goes to show you, the best clinics in the world sometimes have anomalies happen, but it's how they handle the aftercare for you that makes all the difference and defines the top notch clinics from the hair mills. My best recommendation for you is to reach out to Eugenix and schedule a "make good" session to repair the temple point, as well as donor.

This isn't an anomaly it's just lack of standard of care. I would understand anomalies in context of each patient's growth timelines or results, but a botched donor or bad angles is just a careless job. 

[jjsrader]

If you do temple reconstruction, it's imperative that the SURGEON looks over the entire shaved donor and cherry picks the areas that have the FINEST/THINNEST hairs that most resemble native temple hairs in thickness & obviously all singles (dissected down to singles if not enough regular singles) - w/your very thick hair the doubles you requested further back was a huge mistake & they extracted your temple donor hairs from the thickest hair zone.  It takes care & thought to make the slits for temple points and should not be rushed through, it's really both science and an art form - techs implanting in this critical zone & hairline should really only be the most experienced and skilled.    That's on them & being lazy & rushing you through.

 

 

Edited May 8, 2022 by jjsrader

[Hairy Henderson]

This is an eye opener for me and this clinic

[Eugenix Hair Sciences]

We are truly sorry to hear that you have had to go through this experience. We value you and it pains us to know that you have the issues as mentioned.

There are certain points we would like to keep:

1. The direction of the transplanted hair on the temples are purposely kept down and back so that the area behind the temple points do not look bald.

2. The transplanted temple hair are thicker than the natural temple hair.

3. The natural temple hair have more vellus/ baby hair whereas the transplanted temples do not.

4. The transplanted temples are 70% to 80% close to natural hair and not 100%.

5. There has been a loss of pre existing hair in your temples due to baldness that has also contributed to the look that has now dissatisfied you so.

6. The donor area will exhibit the absence of the extracted hair if you keep your hair very short.

However, we would request you to get in touch with us and tell us what you would want further. We would be very grateful and more than happy to comply. We wish you the best!

Edited May 9, 2022 by Eugenix Hair Sciences

[NARMAK]

I will allow other members to comment more in depth and respond to the above but suffice to say that @Zoomstercan certainly disprove #6 with significantly more extractions and having kept his hair very short.

I find the explanation with only 1400 grafts to be this visible at that grade almost alarming. 

Point #4 also doesn't quite address the difference between the correctly done (Left) temple and the more thicker pluggy almost looking difference for hair on the right temple. I do not believe OP has had a further increase of baldness which quite explains the point made above labelled #5. 

I do agree that OP should hopefully get in touch to discuss options but the above analysis of the situation seems somewhat incorrect to the case at hand with all due respect to whoever has done it at this initial stage.