Eugenix, NW3 5200 + grafts / MazAB's 2nd procedure on 10/8/2022 by Dr Pradeep Sethi

[MazAB]

1 hour ago, Melvin- Moderator said:

Everything looks great, how do you feel? Do you think you could travel back after a fee days if you had too? 

I feel great! Dr Arika called on WhatsApp the day I checked in and assured me I was in safe hands which really put me at ease since this is my first procedure. On top of being a great surgeon, she's also very a caring compassionate person. Could have easily traveled back, but just played it ultra conservative since it's all the unknown for me. Glad I did, as they have exceptional after care. A driver picks me up, takes me to the clinic every day for cleaning the donor, assessing the recipient area, and addressing any questions or concerns. Sunday will be the first head wash, then I fly out. Honestly, it worked out perfectly for me for the after care and they have been interviewing me as well on my experience. Gave HRN some plugs, hopefully they don't edit that part out.😉

[Abhinay Singh]

22 hours ago, MazAB said:

Hello All,

I wanted to thank you all for your support on this thread and for those of you that took the time to message me privately to wish me good fortune on my day of surgery. I was going to take pictures of my scalp in my hotel room, but knowing my clumsy self, I would have been likely to drop the phone on top of my head, so I waited for Eugenix to release the MUCH better quality pre and post op photos😁 

The Eugenix team came as advertised and Dr. Arika is truly amazing at what she does. I'm thrilled with the design and the overall clean work from extraction to implantation. I met with Dr Arika the day before surgery and we had our design session. The first thing I learned quickly is to just let her lead you down the path of customizing the right design based on the shape of your face and how the hair line should be framed. It turns out the v-shape design was not the right way to frame it, and she talked me thru how she envisions my hairline so it's customized to match me. She drew out the first design, I loved it, and committed to it. The following day I arrived at Eugenix by 7am, got my hair cut, pre-op photos taken, had breakfast, then began surgery by 8am. The surgery lasted about 10.5 hours ending at around 6:30.

On my initial video consultation with Dr. Arika she told me that I would need about 2300 grafts. It turns out that exactly 2300 grafts were implanted in the hairline and temple points. She got it down to the last graft for those areas. I did request for her to do some crown work as well. She assessed it and told me that the hair loss is stable in the crown and that I would only need 50 grafts for that region. Normally if I keep my hair slightly longer I don't have any noticeable hair loss in the crown, but I do like to sport different hair styles and go slim and trim from time to time. When it is too short, you can definitely spot small thinning areas, and it's nice to just get the full coverage front to back. Quite honestly it felt great to indulge in some hair greed as you don’t have many of those opportunities in your lifetime.

Dr Arika told me she was able to densely pack the hairline with 40 grafts per sq cm. She mentioned that the scalp condition and donor health was optimal for her to push it to 40. I get nervous when it comes to pushing the limits on density, but I know she only slightly went above the average density of her patients, so I am very comfortable with it. 

I included pre-op and post-op shots, and one other that breaks down the graft count. My only concern coming out of the procedure is that I had barely any singles. They needed to split doubles to obtain all the singles necessary for the hairline and temples. They did assure me that it was standard practice and that the techs perform graft splitting daily, but it’s just one more moving part in the procedure that gets me very nervous. I’d love for anyone to comment with any experience in graft survivability after splitting. @Looking for HT, if I'm not mistaken, I believe you may have dealt with this very issue of graft splitting in your first procedure. 

All in all though, a successful textbook procedure by Eugenix. I’m overwhelmed with anticipation of what the final result will be, but fully aware that this will be a painstakingly long process with no shortage of emotional highs and lows. I’ll be updating monthly. Thanks again for the support guys!

~ Maz

 

 

Thank you for posting your journey.

Edited September 2, 2021 by Abhinay Singh

[SLA]

@MazABThank you for the level of detail you have provided and the significant intel about the level of competency of the technicians.

Everything looks flawless. Take good care and keep us posted!

[GaryStruthers]

Looks great man. Following your story - along with other Eugenix customers, is going to be really helpful for when my time comes.

Did you go through any revisions of the hairline she proposed, or did you go with her initial suggestion? Either way, it looks like it was the right one!

[MazAB]

@GaryStruthers thanks man! I thought I would be going thru a ton of revisions as I can be a picky SOB when it comes certain things, hair transplants being one of them. She drew two versions of same design. One conservative and the other aggressive. I went with the more conservative approach, but did have her redraw the left temple so it was more symmetrical with the right, as well as having her give me a small center point in the middle part of the hairline. Not sure if you can see it or not in the photos, but wanted it to be subtle and less prominent. 

Edited September 2, 2021 by MazAB
*

[Abhinay Singh]

22 hours ago, MazAB said:

Hello All,

I wanted to thank you all for your support on this thread and for those of you that took the time to message me privately to wish me good fortune on my day of surgery. I was going to take pictures of my scalp in my hotel room, but knowing my clumsy self, I would have been likely to drop the phone on top of my head, so I waited for Eugenix to release the MUCH better quality pre and post op photos😁 

The Eugenix team came as advertised and Dr. Arika is truly amazing at what she does. I'm thrilled with the design and the overall clean work from extraction to implantation. I met with Dr Arika the day before surgery and we had our design session. The first thing I learned quickly is to just let her lead you down the path of customizing the right design based on the shape of your face and how the hair line should be framed. It turns out the v-shape design was not the right way to frame it, and she talked me thru how she envisions my hairline so it's customized to match me. She drew out the first design, I loved it, and committed to it. The following day I arrived at Eugenix by 7am, got my hair cut, pre-op photos taken, had breakfast, then began surgery by 8am. The surgery lasted about 10.5 hours ending at around 6:30.

On my initial video consultation with Dr. Arika she told me that I would need about 2300 grafts. It turns out that exactly 2300 grafts were implanted in the hairline and temple points. She got it down to the last graft for those areas. I did request for her to do some crown work as well. She assessed it and told me that the hair loss is stable in the crown and that I would only need 50 grafts for that region. Normally if I keep my hair slightly longer I don't have any noticeable hair loss in the crown, but I do like to sport different hair styles and go slim and trim from time to time. When it is too short, you can definitely spot small thinning areas, and it's nice to just get the full coverage front to back. Quite honestly it felt great to indulge in some hair greed as you don’t have many of those opportunities in your lifetime.

Dr Arika told me she was able to densely pack the hairline with 40 grafts per sq cm. She mentioned that the scalp condition and donor health was optimal for her to push it to 40. I get nervous when it comes to pushing the limits on density, but I know she only slightly went above the average density of her patients, so I am very comfortable with it. 

I included pre-op and post-op shots, and one other that breaks down the graft count. My only concern coming out of the procedure is that I had barely any singles. They needed to split doubles to obtain all the singles necessary for the hairline and temples. They did assure me that it was standard practice and that the techs perform graft splitting daily, but it’s just one more moving part in the procedure that gets me very nervous. I’d love for anyone to comment with any experience in graft survivability after splitting. @Looking for HT, if I'm not mistaken, I believe you may have dealt with this very issue of graft splitting in your first procedure. 

All in all though, a successful textbook procedure by Eugenix. I’m overwhelmed with anticipation of what the final result will be, but fully aware that this will be a painstakingly long process with no shortage of emotional highs and lows. I’ll be updating monthly. Thanks again for the support guys!

~ Maz

 

 

 

On 8/30/2021 at 12:18 PM, Issac said:

Would you mind talking about how you booked with them?

I'm not sure if the person talking to me is legitimate or not. I messaged this phone number listed on the Eugenix website  (+91 88264 73333). Then later a different person from a different number contacted me to talk details about my case.

They sent me a link on whatsapp and asked me to pay a booking fee of 100 euros there.

Did you have a similar experience?

The number +91 88264 73333 is legitimate and belongs to Eugenix. You are requested to pay the advance money if you are planning to block the date for the procedure.

[MachoVato]

14 minutes ago, MazAB said:

@GaryStruthers thanks man! I thought I would be going thru a ton of revisions as I can be a picky SOB when it comes certain things, hair transplants being one of them. She drew two versions of same design. One conservative and the other aggressive. I went with the more conservative approach, but did have her redraw the left temple so it was more symmetrical with the right, as well as having her give me a small center point in the middle part of the hairline. Not sure if you can see it or not in the photos, but wanted it to be subtle and less prominent. 

It appears you had more grafts added to your left temple. Was it unbalanced before?

[MazAB]

12 minutes ago, MachoVato said:

It appears you had more grafts added to your left temple. Was it unbalanced before?

Good catch @MachoVato! 😉 I was waiting for someone to notice that very thing. Yes, that is correct, less grafts were placed in the upper right temple. If you zoom in on the image you'll see that I have shaved down native hairs in front of the grafts to support it and according to Dr Arika, when those native hairs grow back it will fill that voided area and have visual symmetry on both sides.

[MachoVato]

14 minutes ago, MazAB said:

Good catch @MachoVato! 😉 I was waiting for someone to notice that very thing. Yes, that is correct, less grafts were placed in the upper right temple. If you zoom in on the image you'll see that I have shaved down native hairs in front of the grafts to support it and according to Dr Arika, when those native hairs grow back it will fill that voided area and have visual symmetry on both sides.

Makes sense to me!

I just had my temples done with Bisanga so now I look at everyone's temples. haha!

I see so many that are done poorly but yours is looking great. Keep us updated with monthly pics!

[MazAB]

@MachoVato you brought up a good point on the disparity between the number of grafts on each temple, so if you go back up to the post op shots, I just uploaded a different angle that shows exactly how her design created the balance necessary on both sides. My corner temples down to the points had way more recession on one side vs the other and it's clear as day why she needed to build it up the way she did. Again, thank you for taking note of that!

[MazAB]

Update on Day 5:

Wow, a lot has changed from my initial post after the procedure. I had a chance absorb the work done, then re-asses after speaking with Dr Predeep and Dr Arika on the potential of changing the initial design. Although conservative was my original choice, I felt strongly that the conservative approach was not framing my face appropriately to bring out my best look. Dr Arika 100% agreed and immediately drew out a design that was one step more aggressive filling and rounding off the end temples better, and also slightly coming down in the center point.

For me it was tough to fully picture how to frame my face to make it the best version of what I can be in the design phase, but this change was exactly me in every way hitting the sweet spot of not being too aggressive or conservative with more distinctive lines stylistically. Dr Arika’s original design suggestion was about as aggressive as this, but the modified version of the new hairline in my opinion, looks a lot better than the original. 

Friday September 3^rd – 277 grafts implanted across the hairline: My main concern heading back into this would be that hairlines are never designed with many rows of singles. After 3 to 4 lines of singles, doubles and triples are placed for density sake, but because the hairline is essentially a do-over, we would have anywhere from 8 to 10 lines of singles making the hairline more see thru, especially in direct sunlight. To avoid this, Dr Arika added triples to the back part of the new hairline to help aid in establishing a visual barrier between original and modified hairline as well as added density.

Saturday September 4^th – Dr Pradeep wanted me to head to the clinic early so he could specifically assess that last row of triple hair grafts. He too was concerned that multiple rows of singles may expose transparency if the triples were not enough to provide cover and create that visual wall. Under the highest magnification he was able to find adequate spacing between grafts. He also felt that I was a good candidate to handle more densely packed grafts, and thought better safe than sorry. Dr Pradeep wanted to be sure that the visual barrier of triples would be randomly scattered between the singles alternating from the 3rd and 4th rows, as well as squeezing in a new row with multiple triples where the original hairline ends and the new one begins. All in all, 128 triple hair grafts were extracted and strategically placed across the hairline. I could not believe that he was able to find the room to fit as many grafts as he did, but I must say the uneasy feeling that I may have put myself in tough spot modifying the original hairline completely vanished. Dr Pradeep and his magical hands set my mind at ease with a no loss everything gained scenario. Can’t thank him enough for his thoughtfulness and caring for my outcome just as much, if not more than me. His response to me after thanking him endlessly, “I do the same for you as my own son or brother. You are in my heart and your result needs to reflect that.” I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be going over the top with waving the Eugenix pompoms, but seriously, what hair transplant surgeon would ever say anything like that to his clients. Forget about being a great surgeon, this guy is such an amazing person. Both Dr Arika and Pradeep care for their clients with every ounce of their being. The most spiritually and ethically grounded people you could ever want to meet.

In hind sight, I could have avoiding this happening altogether if I was more decisive on how aggressive/conservative I wanted to be before the design with Dr Arika. Also, I would recommended to have several options drawn out with completely different shapes and arcs so you can see what works framed to your face. Trust me, when you see the one that truly works you will definitely know it right away, but without seeing it drawn on your head it could be easy to just move forward the first option and think it’s good enough. So be sure to take more time than I did in the design room.

Here are the updated shots taken at day 5:

[Britanium]

Absolutely amazing attention to detail from Dr Pradeep & Dr Arika. They are on another level for patient support. Thanks for the follow up 🙏

Edited September 5, 2021 by JohnAC71

[Gatsby]

@MazAB I think you have hit the sweet spot with the revised hairline! Was great to hear from you and Zoomster briefly yesterday. You sounded so over the moon which you should. Really looking forward to following your journey. From the very begging you have done everything right. Started on the meds, maintained great patience and pulled the trigger at just the right time. There's a lot of life ahead of you brother now also with a lot of hair. Wishing you all the best! I can't wait to hear from Zoomster soon too! 👍

[MachoVato]

Awesome! It's going to look so good, I know it!

[SLA]

Great write up!

[BoldnotBald]

On 9/5/2021 at 11:13 AM, MazAB said:

I would recommended to have several options drawn out with completely different shapes and arcs so you can see what works framed to your face. Trust me, when you see the one that truly works you will definitely know it right away, but without seeing it drawn on your head it could be easy to just move forward the first option and think it’s good enough. So be sure to take more time than I did in the design room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

that´s a good point mazab, to evaluate several hairline options before deciding on the final shape.

 

however, i understand that drawing different shapes of hairlines were / will be done when you have already been shaved. so, how were you able to imagine how you would finally look with the various options? did they at the clinic do eg. various photoshop versions of you with full hair (before you got shaved) including

hairline option 1

hairline option 2

hairline option 3

[BoldnotBald]

On 9/1/2021 at 10:06 PM, MazAB said:

 My only concern coming out of the procedure is that I had barely any singles. They needed to split doubles to obtain all the singles necessary for the hairline and temples. They did assure me that it was standard practice and that the techs perform graft splitting daily, but it’s just one more moving part in the procedure that gets me very nervous. I’d love for anyone to comment with any experience in graft survivability after splitting.
 

splitting doubles into singles is quite common practice - that´s for sure, in particular in the fut world, as this is eg. done on a daily basis at hasson and wong.

so, generally speaking this graft splitting procedure is not an issue - unless it is done with no magnification at all or with cheap microscopic devices that allow only for low magnification and which means that there might be a real danger of damaging the grafts.

 

as for eugenix i understand they use high quality stereo microscopes from mantis with a magnification rate of up to x20 for that.

but hey, they´ve got a rep here. and i am sure he knows and hopefully will tell more about the details.

[Melvin- Admin]

One of the reasons I decided to choose Eugenix was because of Dr. Sethi, he’s one of the nicest and most genuine people I’ve ever met. Great person, so enthusiastic about getting the best results possible, and the hospitality cannot be matched. It’s like your family when you get surgery there, as im sure @Zoomsterand @MazAB can attest.

[kirkland]

17 minutes ago, Melvin- Moderator said:

One of the reasons I decided to choose Eugenix was because of Dr. Sethi, he’s one of the nicest and most genuine people I’ve ever met. Great person, so enthusiastic about getting the best results possible, and the hospitality cannot be matched. It’s like your family when you get surgery there, as im sure @Zoomsterand @MazAB can attest.

Dr. Bansal, his wife, is the same. Genuinely interested in educating patients and ensuring that receive the best possible care.

[MazAB]

8 hours ago, BoldnotBald said:

that´s a good point mazab, to evaluate several hairline options before deciding on the final shape.

 

however, i understand that drawing different shapes of hairlines were / will be done when you have already been shaved. so, how were you able to imagine how you would finally look with the various options? did they at the clinic do eg. various photoshop versions of you with full hair (before you got shaved) including

hairline option 1

hairline option 2

hairline option 3

@BoldnotBaldno, they do not incorporate photoshop into the session. But just as easy to just take photos of each version, then decide I suppose. Wouldn't be a bad suggestion for any clinic to have that ability, but thank God we are all good and loving the design instead of being stuck with one that's less appealing to me.

[MazAB]

Hey guys, just performed a head wash and wanted to post an area that didn't look so good. Is this anything I should be alarmed about? I'm sure it's fine, just wanted to extra safe

Edited September 8, 2021 by MazAB
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[Melvin- Admin]

11 hours ago, MazAB said:

Hey guys, just performed a head wash and wanted to post an area that didn't look so good. Is this anything I should be alarmed about? I'm sure it's fine, just wanted to extra safe

Looks absolutely normal, nothing to be alarmed about 

[Britanium]

Agreed, looks totally fine 👍🏽

[BoldnotBald]

On 9/8/2021 at 6:41 AM, MazAB said:

@BoldnotBaldno, they do not incorporate photoshop into the session. But just as easy to just take photos of each version, then decide I suppose. Wouldn't be a bad suggestion for any clinic to have that ability, but thank God we are all good and loving the design instead of being stuck with one that's less appealing to me.

just had a closer look at your revised hairline. and yes, it suits you better since the now more roundish frontal appearance (caused in particular because of the smoother transition from the temples to the hairline) is more in line with the overall roundish shape of your face / chin...

i am not quite sure about your advice on how to best avoid of having to post-op revise a not yet perfect hairline.

from what you wrote i understand that at least 2 pre-op hairline options were drawn onto your head by a very experienced surgeon having probably drawn thousands of hairlines before. plus you showed your own design that you had already done as part of your meticulous preparation.

please correct me if i am wrong - but would you

a. advise to take pictures of the various hairline options and then first of all have a good and long meditation on them (whilst maybe also asking friends and partners and maybe sleep a night) before making a final decision? on the other side did you somehow feel under pressure to make a quick decision once the hairline options had been drawn?

b. maybe do and finish the homework completely at home prior to the visit?

[BoldnotBald]

@MazAB

as for the wallboard that shows the statistics of your graft count - what do "f", "p1" and "p2" stand for?