Dr Zarev 11,941 grafts. 1st procedure 8,321, 2nd procedure 3,620

[mtb]

On 12/19/2022 at 8:49 PM, Gatsby said:

All the best @mtb 👌

Thanks Gatsby. You're documentation of your journey has been very helpful for me and for many others on this forum. Thank you for your contributions.

 

On 12/20/2022 at 9:22 AM, asterix0 said:

Excellent consultation and how every clinic should do it. Analyze the whole donor area, calculate the densities, full transparency with the patient. Not just draw a hairline and let's jam pack it with as many grafts as possible. 

Yeah man, the level of detail is excruciating but Dr. Zarev really seems like he's having the best time doing it. 

 

On 12/20/2022 at 10:10 AM, hairman22 said:

Was messaging Zarev today

Current waiting list for op is 2025

But my case wont be that big he said so he said he will try fit me in before then. 

I will know more after March consult in my case.

So if your a small case i think its very likely you may get a nearer date but you need to get consult

Yeah, it's tough to wait so long. I think Dr. Zarev is one of the very best but there are other clinics that provide great results and can get you in sooner. My brother is going to a different clinic specializing in high Norwood because he doesn't want to wait until 2025. However, Dr. Zarev plans on training new surgeons in his techniques and equipment in the next few years. 

 

On 12/23/2022 at 10:37 PM, johnto said:

Did you message him directly? Or did you just message their generic Whatsapp number?  

 

I booked a consult with them in 2025. I paid the $150 euro but have not received a confirmation email or anything (even after asking for one 😂). I called to book the consult and have been chatting through whatsapp with whom I assume is their receptionist. 

I'd say to be consistent in your messaging with them. They have more office staff now so that should be getting better. 

 

On 1/12/2023 at 7:10 AM, shiba1985 said:

Last login 4 hours ago. Last update 4 weeks ago.. hmmm

You caught me. I'm actually Romanian bot designed to spam this server. Busted. 😆

[hairman22]

thats remarkable that you have 12k scalp grafts available.

Im sure he will get a great result when it is finished

[davidn]

12k from a donor with small total donor area, a slick bald nw6 AND retrograde?

What kind of wodoo magic is that?

[HugoX]

Looks great and over 8000 grafts.. Wow, I think in total after your second procedure we got around the same total grafts, but one difference is we have different hair type /texture. 

 

 

[mtb]

2 hours ago, HugoX said:

Looks great and over 8000 grafts.. Wow, I think in total after your second procedure we got around the same total grafts, but one difference is we have different hair type /texture. 

 

 

Yeah, I would have been at about 7k if he didn't lower the hairline. And yes, we have different characteristics. I have thinner hair but he says because I'm slightly lighter colored hair the contrast with my skin tone will be less. And yeah, no curl at all. So I'll still get a solid result just maybe not quite as profound as yours. 

[mtb]

He also said I have the second most difficult scalp he's ever worked with. It soft but tough, if that makes sense. That made it very challenging for him to have the hair leave the implanter pen and stay in my scalp. 

[Fox243]

I’m curious if you have beard grafts as well

[mtb]

6 hours ago, Fox243 said:

I’m curious if you have beard grafts as well

No beard grafts yet. Dr Zarev prefers to use scalp hair first. Once that’s depleted he’ll use beard hair. But he thinks scalp is all I’ll need. He says in many instances the beard hair has too different a texture/color than the scalp hair. Also, he noted that beard hair typically grays before scalp hair so it looks unnatural. Personally I’m open to beard grafts. If it comes to that I’ll be happy to have them. Would rather have hair I have to color on top of my head then not enough hair for good coverage and density. 

[HairEnthusiast101]

Some redness in the donor. Good to know doctor Zarev is human lol I’ve seen so many cases of his where the donor didn’t even look like it was extracted from. Good to see a case on here that I think will be a homerun when said and done. I’ll be interested to see what your donor looks like a couple months from now. His ability to make the donor look untouched months later is supernatural. Keep us updated on that!

[shadowcast]

Wow. I'd say you're NW7. That's a big crown dip. Anyway, doesn't matter now. In a little over a year you'll look awesome. Zarev's extractions look very close together. I guess he's able to do that with whatever magic vacuum technology he uses.

Actually you may already look quite good even before you go back for 2nd surgery. I am (was) NW5/6ish, also thin calibre/high hairs per graft. Have ~6,700 grafts and I'm pretty damn happy.

Edited January 31, 2023 by shadowcast

[MaximusEastwood]

Jeez how is Dr. Zarev able to extract so many grafts, especially using FUE

[mtb]

7 hours ago, JoDimaggio22 said:

Some redness in the donor. Good to know doctor Zarev is human lol I’ve seen so many cases of his where the donor didn’t even look like it was extracted from. Good to see a case on here that I think will be a homerun when said and done. I’ll be interested to see what your donor looks like a couple months from now. His ability to make the donor look untouched months later is supernatural. Keep us updated on that!

Yeah, I believe some of that is due to my difficult scalp conditions. I probably had bit more blood that than the typical Dr. Zarev patient. And yes, a great looking donor area was on of the several reasons that I chose Dr. Zarev. @JoDimaggio22

 

6 hours ago, shadowcast said:

Wow. I'd say you're NW7. That's a big crown dip. Anyway, doesn't matter now. In a little over a year you'll look awesome. Zarev's extractions look very close together. I guess he's able to do that with whatever magic vacuum technology he uses.

Actually you may already look quite good even before you go back for 2nd surgery. I am (was) NW5/6ish, also thin calibre/high hairs per graft. Have ~6,700 grafts and I'm pretty damn happy.

Yes, I'm not sure how he does it but I'm hoping my difficult scalp will still yield a minimally scared donor area. Yea, he said it's possible that I might not be interested in the second surgery. Another leading clinic offered a surgery of 5,900 grafts and thought I'd be happy with that. So maybe my 8,300 will be enough. 

 

1 hour ago, MaximusEastwood said:

Jeez how is Dr. Zarev able to extract so many grafts, especially using FUE

He does go outside of what some consider to be "the safe donor area". There are several reasons I was okay with that:

- My balding has been fairly stable for 10 years so lower risk of my NW getting all the way to 7, of course not guaranteed

- I can tolerate oral finasteride and respond well to it which will greatly slow down my possible progression to NW7, of course not guaranteed

- No one in my extended family is a NW7, of course that's only a slight indicator and not a guarantee that I won't

- I still have 4k grafts in reserve from my scalp with Dr. Zarev if I start to head toward a NW7

- I have a pretty thick beard and can likely get 2k-3k grafts from it if need be

- NW7 is only achieved by 7% of the population so lower probability that I'll get there

- I'm also okay with SMP to add the illusion of coverage/density

- Dr. Zarev says in extreme cases he can take up to 70%-80% of scalp grafts for very advanced Norwoods (so an additional 1.5k to 2k grafts for me), however this does require the patient to keep donor areas very short which I saw as an acceptable option. (Euro dudes seemingly all have the skin fade so it definitely works there. Not as popular in North America but I'll have to be the start of the trend here. ha!)

So yes, we went outside the safe donor area but there are options to fight further progression of hair loss. He thought I would be fine. And there is always that risk of further loss but it was a risk I was okay taking. Some may not be comfortable with that.

[MaximusEastwood]

On 12/20/2022 at 8:22 AM, asterix0 said:

Excellent consultation and how every clinic should do it. Analyze the whole donor area, calculate the densities, full transparency with the patient. Not just draw a hairline and let's jam pack it with as many grafts as possible. 

Interesting that you mention that because at my procedure with H&W they just a drew on a line and off we went lol.  but i guess you can do it that when you've been performing top-tier surgeries for a few decades

[asterix0]

35 minutes ago, MaximusEastwood said:

Interesting that you mention that because at my procedure with H&W they just a drew on a line and off we went lol.  but i guess you can do it that when you've been performing top-tier surgeries for a few decades

No dude, not to derail the thread but that's not the way to go. Your donor should be closely analyzed by the doctor, as well as your recipient. Anyway I hope your results turned out well.

[MaximusEastwood]

1 minute ago, asterix0 said:

No dude, not to derail the thread but that's not the way to go. Your donor should be closely analyzed by the doctor, as well as your recipient. Anyway I hope your results turned out well.

It was done by Dr. Wong himself so I kind of just trusted him to do a good job...

[uu777]

On 1/30/2023 at 8:41 AM, mtb said:

Thanks Gatsby. You're documentation of your journey has been very helpful for me and for many others on this forum. Thank you for your contributions.

 

Yeah man, the level of detail is excruciating but Dr. Zarev really seems like he's having the best time doing it. 

 

Yeah, it's tough to wait so long. I think Dr. Zarev is one of the very best but there are other clinics that provide great results and can get you in sooner. My brother is going to a different clinic specializing in high Norwood because he doesn't want to wait until 2025. However, Dr. Zarev plans on training new surgeons in his techniques and equipment in the next few years. 

 

I'd say to be consistent in your messaging with them. They have more office staff now so that should be getting better. 

 

You caught me. I'm actually Romanian bot designed to spam this server. Busted. 😆

This is the only bot I knew who had a hair transplant, bots nowadays have gone a long ways and improved a lot just to spam this forum lol 

[Melvin- Admin]

This will be the second review from Dr. Zarev, can't wait to follow your progress. When is your surgery scheduled? Btw so many people have asked me to have Dr. Zarev on our podcast. I would appreciate you bringing it up to him. I'm sure many in our community want to engage with him and a podcast would be a great and easy way. 

[Big Rome]

On 1/30/2023 at 2:31 PM, mtb said:

Hello everyone. Back in my home country now after my trip to see Dr. Zarev. All-in-all the experience was quite pleasant (of course, final result will tell how successful). I had 8,321 grafts in my procedure. I'm meant to go back in October for another ~2,000 grafts for added density.

I had the procedure on 16 and 17th of January. They were absolute marathon days. Dr. Zarev and his nurses/techs are very hard working. I was asked to come in the Saturday before for bloodwork and to talk about the general plan of the procedure. The Monday I showed up at 8 am and we talked further about expectations, hairline (got him to lower it about 1 cm), the surgical plan, and then did more measurements and markings. You leave those meetings with confidence in Dr. Zarev and abilities. 

The surgery began at about 11am and I have to say it was doozy. 6 straight hours of lying perfectly still while he extracted each graft one by one. The only painful part was the administration of the local anesthetic. After that it was just a challenge to lie perfectly still for two 3 hours stretches, one on my stomach and one on my left side. We took a 1.5 hour breaks for his nurses to sort the grafts. Then we went in for another 6 hours for the implantation. We didn't leave his office until 1:30am. All of the extractions that day were taken from the right side of my scalp and placed into the back half of the recipient area.

The second day we started late so everyone could get some sleep. The surgery started at 11am again and we did not finish this surgical day until 3am. The extractions were taken from the left side of my donor area and placed into the front and mid scalp. 

The first couple nights I had to be careful when sleeping or there would be some slight pain. But overall, the whole things was pretty painless. I swelled up ALOT in my face. One eye closed and the second closed after the first eye had opened back up. I was staying with a friend in Bulgaria who helped with that part. That amount of swelling probably isn't common. And really, if you're just leaving a hotel to go to the airport it's not that big of a deal. 

I did go back at the 7 day mark for final inspection and he said that I was healing perfectly. He told me to continue my meds til they were gone and to then begin his min/fin topical solution. I was also given the fabled yellow screen and told to send him pictures on a monthly basis. There were shampoos he recommended and a supplement gave me to start taking. 

Overall I'm happy with things. I came from over a decade of a hair system and was used to a super low and unnaturally aggressive hairline. I was worried when he had it drawn higher initially. As I mentioned he did lower it some. He also said that we could lower it further in the second procedure. As time goes on I'm getting used to the higher, more age appropriate hairline, so I may choose to use all of the grafts of the second procedure in my existing recipient area for density. After the second procedure he reckons I should have a final 2,000 grafts in reserve for future balding. He says my parietal humps will likely be gone in the next 5 years.  

Now to sit in dread as my hair that I have been enjoying the last two weeks dies off and begins to grow anew. The ugly duckling phase....

wow 🤯🤯 looks incredible 

[mtb]

17 hours ago, MaximusEastwood said:

Interesting that you mention that because at my procedure with H&W they just a drew on a line and off we went lol.  but i guess you can do it that when you've been performing top-tier surgeries for a few decades

Yeah very interesting. Different clinics with different methodologies. Zarev seemed to make the most sense to me but it's hard to argue with H&W. They're one of the most elite in the world. Hope you get an awesome result! @MaximusEastwood

 

16 hours ago, asterix0 said:

No dude, not to derail the thread but that's not the way to go. Your donor should be closely analyzed by the doctor, as well as your recipient. Anyway I hope your results turned out well.

I feel comfortable about how Dr. Zarev handled it. Seemed very calculated and deliberate. @asterix0

 

15 hours ago, Melvin- Moderator said:

This will be the second review from Dr. Zarev, can't wait to follow your progress. When is your surgery scheduled? Btw so many people have asked me to have Dr. Zarev on our podcast. I would appreciate you bringing it up to him. I'm sure many in our community want to engage with him and a podcast would be a great and easy way. 

I'll be happy to ask him about being on the podcast when I send my next update photos. He's insanely busy. Like multiple nights a week working til 11pm and Saturday, it's pretty wild. My next surgery is in Octoberish. Still waiting for him to give me a firm date. @Melvin- Moderator

 

10 hours ago, Big Rome said:

wow 🤯🤯 looks incredible 

Thanks, man. Feeling very good about it. Wish there was a way to fast forward the next 3 months. lol @Big Rome

[mrmane85]

Incredible! Please keep us updated! 

Zarev is like a unicorn, so hard to get in contact with. He seems like an incredible surgeon.

 

[uu777]

On 1/30/2023 at 8:41 AM, mtb said:

Yeah, it's tough to wait so long. I think Dr. Zarev is one of the very best but there are other clinics that provide great results and can get you in sooner. My brother is going to a different clinic specializing in high Norwood because he doesn't want to wait until 2025. However, Dr. Zarev plans on training new surgeons in his techniques and equipment in the next few years. 

 

 

Care to elaborate which clinics provide great results who can get a patient sooner? Which clinic that specializes in high NW is your brother going to?

[mtb]

49 minutes ago, uu777 said:

Care to elaborate which clinics provide great results who can get a patient sooner? Which clinic that specializes in high NW is your brother going to?

I mean Eugenix and Pitella are the ones that come to mind if you’re a slick bald NW6 and don’t want FUT. Others on this forum might have helpful suggestions. My bro is going to Pitella in a few months. 

[MC117]

Finally, the update from mtb. Was very much expected. Everything looks perfect, you went with the best surgeon in the world !!

Can't wait for the next pics. 

[MaximusEastwood]

I wonder why Dr. Zarev says FUT is the "least effective" way to transplant hair?  Looking at his website here, it goes into low survival of grafts and "strand effect".  But kind of surprising given many other surgeons highly recommend FUT for high norwood to maximize lifetime grafts and reduce the chance of transection 

Edited February 2, 2023 by MaximusEastwood

[hairman22]

8 hours ago, mtb said:

I mean Eugenix and Pitella are the ones that come to mind if you’re a slick bald NW6 and don’t want FUT. Others on this forum might have helpful suggestions. My bro is going to Pitella in a few months. 

I had consult with Pitella as well.

I will probably go with Zarev & just wait.

Both are brillant not really too much of a difference

I just prefer Zarev's methods very very detailed