Am I a good candidate for a hair transplant?

[Dman48]

I have consulted with several Turkish clinics about getting a hair transplant and half of them say I am a good candidate and half of them say I have a weak donor area/diffused unpatterned alopecia and would not be a good candidate. What are your thoughts? 

*I have been shaving my head for a few years now and this is the longest I have grown it out since 2020.

[Dman48]

 

[A_4_Archan]

Donor area seems to be sparse so a good doctor may not take your case...you may consult dr pittela ..he is an expert when it comes to high grade baldness cases...

[BackFromTheBrink]

Have you had any thoughts on what you'd be happy to achieve through the hair transplant? Despite the obvious, it'd be useful to consider what density would be 'ok' and which areas bother you the most.

 

Outside of that, I would expect most to ask you about medication; Finesteride may help to improve your hair and donor area, thats assuming you do not take it already?

[Dman48]

I would just like to recreate my hairline and have decent density. I understand I won't have a fully thick dense head of hair but I would want a decent hairline and majority coverage over the top. I don't mind some sparse spots as long as the average person would look at me and see a normal head of hair. I just don't want my donor area to be overharvested or the transplanted grafts to eventually fall out.

[Dman48]

I have not been on any medical therapy but would begin after the surgery. I imagine if the grafts transplanted are thin, hopping on finasteride afterward would help strengthen the transplanted grafts?

[BackFromTheBrink]

I'm not an expert by any means. However I see it like this:

- You have lost hair in a somewhat diffuse way so would need grafts across most of your scalp, with more at the front.

- your donor looks weak, especially around the sides and below your vertex. That said, it looks fairly dense in a strip across the lower part of the back of your head.

- You haven't mentioned body hair or whether you'd consider using that. 

- to frame your face and provide reasonably coverage across your head I'd guesstimate 4-5k grafts. I don't think you have the scalp donor for that.

- finesteride is generally effective on diffuse thinning and for donor strengthening. However, you may not be able to tolerate it.

 

What I would consider doing in your position is to take finesteride for 6-12 months to assess how it affects you and your hair. Choose a surgeon that can mix body and scalp hair. Consider 2 procedures with the first focusing on your hairline and mid scalp and a second for the crown.

 

 

[BackFromTheBrink]

34 minutes ago, Dman48 said:

hopping on finasteride afterward would help strengthen the transplanted grafts?

Not usually. It may help a bit (as with donor hair), but would have the largest impact on DHT sensitive follicles - your existing hair that if left untreated are likely to miniaturize.

 

 

[Melvin- Admin]

Unfortunately, you are not a good hair transplant candidate. You have a large crown dipping downward and retrograde alopecia dipping upward. This leaves you with a very fine line of suitable donor hair.  I don't know whether you are on medication, but my advice is to get on medication for at least a year to see if some of the miniaturized hair in the crown can recover. If you're happy shaving your head, you should continue. It will be a LONG and EXPENSIVE road if you decide to get surgery and remember, there are no guarantees.

[Rafael Manelli]

Sadly I would not say you’re a good candidate. But try finasteride for a year.

[TorontoMan]

I'm sorry but some of these comments are not being completely transparent with you. You are not a good candidate for a hair transplant. You can certainly get a hair transplant as there will be doctors willing to take your money for it for sure, but this is a game of mathematics and your donor does not have enough supply to cover nearly enough of the balding area. You will in the end have paid to move a small amount of hairs and leave scars on your head to not be able to achieve enough coverage, the result will not bring much marginal benefit and if anything imo would make the situation worse. 

You can try finasteride and see if you are able to recover something, but that isn't the case for the majority of people on medications. There are treatments in the pipeline right now such as HMI-115, and a few others that are showing a lot of promise for hair treatment, I think you should save your money and be gearing up for the chance that we get a novel treatment soon. 

[Mike10]

you are not a good candidate. 

[Rahal Hair Transplant]

@Dman48,

Based on what I see in the photos, you have very sparse donor and you’re in the advanced balding stages.  To be completely honest with you, you don’t appear to be a really good candidate for surgery. That’s not to say that nobody will perform it on you. But in terms of goals, you are going to have to be exceptionally realistic as what can be accomplished and frankly even then, I’m not convinced that you will be happy.

in addition, you look pretty young. As a result, hair loss is likely going to continue bringing you to a full-blown Norwood class 7.  

Photos can obviously be deceiving but in my opinion, you just don’t have the donor necessary to provide you with enough hair to make surgery worth it.

Best wishes,

Rahal Hair Transplant

[Dman48]

1 minute ago, Rahal Hair Transplant said:

@Dman48,

Based on what I see in the photos, you have very sparse donor and you’re in the advanced balding stages.  To be completely honest with you, you don’t appear to be a really good candidate for surgery. That’s not to say that nobody will perform it on you. But in terms of goals, you are going to have to be exceptionally realistic as what can be accomplished and frankly even then, I’m not convinced that you will be happy.

in addition, you look pretty young. As a result, hair loss is likely going to continue bringing you to a full-blown Norwood class 7.  

Photos can obviously be deceiving but in my opinion, you just don’t have the donor necessary to provide you with enough hair to make surgery worth it.

Best wishes,

Rahal Hair Transplant

Thank you for you opinion. Do you think it would be worth my time to get on finasteride and minoxodil for a year and reasses?

[ThePerseverantWarrior]

If I were in your position, I would : 

1) Try finasteride and minoxidil (preferably oral) for 1-1.5 years, and see the response. 

2) If the response is decent (near complete stabilisation of hairloss and possibly slight regrowth in some areas), I would go for an FUT procedure at one of the accordingly reputed clinics (such as Hasson & Wong). A good strip should be able to yield ~5k+ healthy grafts in your case. Obviously it won't give you a headfull appearance, but it can still result in a significant improvement. You can use other options such as SMP to enhance the results thereafter.

3) If the response to medication isn't significant, you would probably be better off without a hair transplant. Naturalness+Headfull appearance would be rather difficult to achieve in this case, and yet the process will bring along a lot of discomforting hassles (I'm talking from personal experience!). You could try to sport a buzz cut appearance via an SMP if you aren't comfortable with rocking the bald look. 

All the best!

 

 

 

[Berik]

Sorry, but under no circumstance should you consider a hair transplant. At this point, it's really too far gone - your donor looks like you've already had a couple transplants to be honest. You'd need too many beard grafts, which by the looks of it, lack there too. Body hair almost never yields well and looks very strange on the head when grown more than a couple cm if it grows at all. 

 

And even if you decide to disregard everything I and a couple of other people have said and do get a transplant, please do not do it from these turkey clinics. You would need a specialist, such as Zarev, to ensure your grafts chosen are DHT resistant and minimize the transection rate as much as possible. 

[MissMyLongHair]

I feel like this is also my genetic destiny without meds, I'll go the hair system route if Dut stops working. You should look into that OP.

[mrmane85]

I have a feeling you will be a good responder to medical therapy which could in turn after 12 months allow you to also be a good candidate for a hair transplant.

Look into oral Minoxidil (2.5mg daily) and oral Finasteride (0.25mg-1mg daily) and re consider again in 12 months. 

[Gatsby]

15 hours ago, Dman48 said:

Thank you for you opinion. Do you think it would be worth my time to get on finasteride and minoxodil for a year and reasses?

It's always worthwhile getting on medication for at least one year so you can see what it can do. But in spite of that as you stand now you look very young to me (and I can never pick ages) and if you are younger than say 30 then looking at your pattern now at a young age unfortunately MPB is progressive and the crown will continue to open up and the donor will continue to miniaturize also. If you were say 50 presenting your current hair loss then you may be able to get away with a conservative frontal third. Even then this does not sound like something (if our were 50) that you would be happy with. In all honesty you're a good looking guy with a great shaped head. Save yourself the scars, lotions and potions and forever chasing the tail of the MPB tiger for the rest of your life. Not to mention the tens of thousands of dollars and then some. I've been through it all from 18 to 56 today and looking back with what I know now I would have just shaved back then even if I was a candidate. Wishing you all the best.

[Dman48]

Thank you all for your input. Much to consider but I certainly believe I’ll be holding off the transplant for now. I’ll just rock the shaved head for now!