ready4Hair

Thanks David. I just took a look at your recent HT posting it looks great, really nice hairline I think. I sort of favor the "Bird Wing" as I call it but in any event it looks great, astonishing price point too. Great growing to you!

Well after much much much much research, I scheduled a FUE with Dr.Erdogan on April 21/22. I am very excited and happy with the choice and will update this thread later today with a link to the blog I am starting to document it.

From another study: "After 24 weeks of treatment, the LLLT group showed significantly greater hair density than the sham device group. Mean hair diameter improved statistically significantly more in the LLLT group than in the sham device group. Investigator global assessment showed a significant difference between the two groups, but that of the subject did not. No serious adverse reactions were detected." The mean-hair diameter result is IMHO more relevant than the terminal hair growth.

I think if I ever test anything again (hopefully won't after HT) I'd do microcamera on temples, occipatal, etc and make some objective analysis vs subjective visual analysis. I might just do that with the LLLT once I start.

I found the study: Efficacy and Safety of a Low-level Laser Device in the Treatment of Male and Female Pattern Hair Loss: A Multicenter, Randomized, Sham Device-controlled, Double-blind Study though to tell the truth doubt the findings: "Based on previous testing data on lasercomb use, change in terminal hair count from baseline to study endpoint was found to be a mean increase of just under 30 hairs/cm2 with a standard deviation of 18.6 hairs/cm2." Which would be a mean increase of ~ 15 grafts/cm2. Given that HTs range from 30-50 gradts/cm2 I find those #s hard to believe, and the other larger scale studies with some serious LLLT wattage steadily applied (cap vs comb) resulted in about 8 graft/follicles/cm2.

Sounds good, thank you. While I'd be on the fence for LLLT as hair growth I am not on the fence at all about HT healing. I won't be using a lasercomb however, I will be using a custom made 400 laser custom cap. All you need to do first month/week is hang it or otherwise support it just above your head. Check one of the links in my prior post (the one with OMG in it) for a couple HT patients experience with LLLT directly post surgery.

Hi thanks for the input. One of the issues with any of these treatments is people believe they are going to get visible regrowth. If you read the studies and do the math, the increase in hair counts was about 8-10 hairs per sq cm. Seeing as the average head of hair is about 100-250 hairs per sq cm clearly this is not a huge increase. On the other hand it works out to about 5 follicles per sq cm. Again that is not a transplant which would generally be in the 30-50 follicles per sq cm. So expecting an HT level improvement with Lasers (of Fin or Minox etc) is unrealistic. The point is that LLLT improves scalp and follicle health and in some cases enough to increase hair count by 5%-10% which should tell you a lot about what is going on. More to the point, the real benefit comes during wound healing, which is exactly what is going on after a HT be it FUT or FUE. Which again brings me to the point that it would be most effective in the 3-4 weeks post HT and immediately after. To really test the benefit of any treatment in the future btw, I'd buy one of those micro camers, find a spot on your vertex and temples and take pictures once every month to get a clearer idea not only on growth but on the health and width of the existing hair.

Funny the hair counting method(s) in this quite detailed study don't seem suspect at all: OverMachoGrande.com: Long Term (1 year) Results of LLLT - improved hair growth and slowed further progression [with pics] I know some Drs are equivocal, some are downright hostile (and pull the Al Gore trick of calling anyone who doesn't agree dishonest by implication, see Dr. Feller i.e. http://www.hairrestorationnetwork.com/eve/150351-list-doctors-who-consider-lllt-quackary.html), but there are many who do support it: Lasercap a list which includes Dr. Cooley and Dr. Wong. Then of course there is this publication in PubMed which summarizes a dozen studies to conclude that "LLLT for hair growth in both men and women appears to be both safe and effective": Low-level laser (light) therapy (LLLT) for treatment of hair loss. - PubMed - NCBI not to mention this thread of patients who used LLLT IMMEDIATLY after HT successfully: WorldHairLoss.org Forums | Laser use after Hair Transplant OMG and this one: http://www.regrowth.com/hair-loss-forums/topic/close-up-post-transplant-progress-pictures-with-lllt-to-aid-recovery/page/2/ which among other things includes this post: "your healing progress with the lasers parallels my experience last August. With the aid of lasers my transplant healed 5 days earlier. Having gone through 3 transplants I agree that lasers should be a standard post-op procedure" Not to mention dozens of studies on the efficacy of LLLT on post surgical healing and especially dermatological post surgical healing: Low-level laser therapy (LLLT) efficacy in post-operative wounds. - PubMed - NCBI Low Level Laser (Light) Therapy (LLLT) for Cosmetic Medicine and Dermatology http://www.rheumatologynews.com/fileadmin/content_pdf/san/scms_pdf/vol27_i4_Light-Emitting_Diodes.pdf http://lasercap.com/science-efficacy-safety.php I get that 'detractors' will find ways to discredit these studies (and gloss over the ones for their own pet treatments) yet the evidence is pretty solid. The issue as with other treatments is no one every put on LLLT and grew a head of hair. Which for some reason discredits it. Yet the impact of LLLT on the quality of the skin/scalp/hair itself is far better then continued application of minox and it's additives. Now that the thread has been hijacked to (yet another) debate on LLLT can we just get someone without an agenda or axe to grind (LLLT didn't grow me a new head of hair wah!) to weigh in on any good reason to NOT use LLLT immediatly after HT if it's efficacy is based on wound healing?

It's interesting; I prefaced this thread with the fact that "I am very sold on LLLT for both non-surgical and post-surgucal hair beneftis...because I beleive that hair growth aside it definitely has been proven to provide beneftis to follicles and tissue. There are countelss studies of it's beneftis for post-surgical healing, speeding recovery, aptosis, and preventing necrosis to set up my question as to "why so many HT Drs. who do recommend it say to wait 4, 12,24 weeks?" Yet so far mostly I am getting posts from believe trying to dissuade me that it works at all. So to clarify I don't really care to debate it, I didn't set up an LLLT: Does it Work? thread, I set up a thread for patients and especially Drs (er no not Feller or any of the other 'honest' Drs) to weigh in on why if they too believe in LLLT for healing they wouldn't recommend it until later on. Feel free to reply off-topic, it is a free world, yet just be aware this thread is not meant to debate the efficacy of LLLT and I'm sure you can find threads to do just that if you want.

I guess all the studies on healing post-surgery are all bogus then.

You must have eagle eyes my friend to tell the difference not only between post and pre-op pics but to see miniturization without a microscope. That said, something Sean said about blonde hair/fda struck a cord so I googled it: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS505US505&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=artas+approved+for+dark+hair&start=10 Endless articles about it not being APPROVED BY FDA in that search ARTAS FUE Robot With Blond Hair? | Bernstein Medical Artas Robotic Hair Transplantation | San Francisco, Bay Area and San Jose, CA "Good candidates for this technique have straight, preferably darker hair" Dr. Robert Jones ARTAS Robot VS Dr. Jones FUE Technique » Dr. Robert Jones "8. Limited Hair Characteristics. ARTAS is only approved for use on patients with straight hair that is dark brown or black in colour. Dr. Jones can perform FUE on any hair colour or texture." "At this point, Dr. Jones feels that the only advantage of the Artas Robot for an experienced FUE surgeon is a marketing one. It is slower, has a higher transection rate, is more expensive and has less choice of areas from which the grafts can be extracted." and from the horses mouth, the FDA http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf10/K103428.pdf "The ARIASTM System from Restoration Robotics is indicated for harvesting hair follicles from the scalp in men diagnosed with androgenic alopecia (male pattern hair loss) who have black or brown straight hair. " This is disturbing to me. Clearly OP has blonde (and fine) hair, and I do not recall him saying he was asked to dye his hair or that he did. Really not trying to bash here but as a potential HT candidate too I get very concerned when I see these. Yeah I love the great results as they make me feel better but I am sure I speak for others here when I say we'd like to find out when/why/how HTs go bad so we can figure out how ours will not. Again, expectations? Communication? Lapses in protocol? I feel bad for OP of course but I don't want to make the same mistakes if he did, even if that mistake turns out to be not asking the right questions or not being adamant about protocols at the clinic.

There is a lot of 'real research' out there both on LLLT for hair-loss but more importantly for research on LLLT for surgical healing especially dermatological surgical healing. I invite you to search for yourself...

Good luck on your regrowth! I wonder though how that would translate to a lasercap? You are talking between 7 and 12 lasers moved over the head, whilst a commercial or custom build lasercap can have up to 400. I'd still love to get some Dr. input on this as it seems to me that after week 1 this would make great sense.

The choice of words is very interesting to me: "would have done" suggests that the rep does not in fact know that to be true, that they are assumptions she made based on protocols in place now and only tell us that this should be the case but might not have been. Which means the OP's point of view could well be the case. Likewise "would not have disregarded' does not mean in fact "did not disregard". I think we'd all like some clarity of comfort on this result. We see a lot of the good ones posted here by reps and Drs. but would really like to know more about ones that did not go well or the patient is unhappy with because then we can make our own decisions better. Clearly this is either a case of a patient whose expectations were too high and/or did not understand the procedures he agreed to or a case where the clinic either undelivered on result or protocol. It is hard for us to tell on the sidelines not having more information to go on but the results can't help to give some of us pause.

I am very sold on LLLT for both non-surgical and post-surgucal hair beneftis. I know many people on here are not and think it doesn't grow hair (despite studies to the contrary) yet I beleive that hair growth aside it definitely has been proven to provide beneftis to follicles and tissue. There are countelss studies of it's beneftis for post-surgical healing, speeding recovery, aptosis, and preventing necrosis. I wonder then why so many HT Drs. who do recommend it say to wait 4, 12,24 weeks? Wouldnt the greatest benefit BE in the first weeks when the tissue is in fact healing? It would be great if any HT Dr.s on this board could reply, I am quite curios and would like to get the most benefit out of post-HT LLLT w/o dong any harm.

Hey Alex we spoke via PM but I hadn't looked at your pictures yet. The good news is you can pull off the shaved look, not everyone can. So it won't hurt your dating changes I don't think. As I mentioned in PM, I think that combined with the recent nature of your hair loss would argue against doing anything right now. See what the loss was all about and how it progresses. Recent loss is often reversible, at least more so than long term loss. I wold get on Finasteride, maybe minox (not such a fan mysel), look into RU55841, get some good shampoos (Revita, Nizoral, Cayenne/Saw Palmetto I can give you a link for), and IMHO (many will disagree) get a decent LLLT Cap (you can buy one or have one made for $1k-$3k which is a fraction of the cost of an HT, many will disagree, they are wrong). Do this for one year. Dr. Erdogan will still be there and you will then a) have a better idea of progression b) have strengthened your native hair and tissue and maybe even resersed some loss. I think Dr. E is great at implanting around existing hairs and could give you a great resut. Your choice are really get an HT young or wait 15-20 years (stabilize loss etc). I don't get the feeling you want to wait until you are an old old man of 43 so I'd put in the time this year to create an hair situation that Dr. E can work with favorably. He is not hard to get an appointment 3 months or more out. Heck you might even just put a hold on May 2016 and start now with Fin/LLLT etc. The nice things about the FUE is you will not have a scar, the down side of the 5k is it will take up most of your donor hair. I'd think though that with a year of strengthening your hair, a 5K FUE from Dr. R with say anohter 2500 left over for touch-ups you'll end up with something you like and can maintain with meds and LLLT. Also I'd say in yuor lifetime there may be advances you can take advantage of. But again the thing is since you have a good head/face if ALL of this goes to pot you can shave and not have a scar to boot.

I think this advice is dead on and often ignored by both patients and Drs. In the quest to look like a full normal head of hair they end up with a thin and unatural hairline. I'd think that building a solid but good looking receding hairline (e.g. Jude Law) wouold be the idea; rebuild the temples to frame the face better (critical!) create a natural looking recession and keep that hairline dense.

Um the quality of US surgeons Is not second to none; it is second to Euro and Canadian Drs and by a long shot. uS surgeons are way behind on FUE ( one reason they do things like promise only 80% yield) and the ones who are (purportedly) not charge 5x more rhan their euro counterparts. The fact you can get an actual master like Dr Feriduni for $4 or Dr Erdogan for less than $3 vs US drs whose skill, yield and patient interaction doesn hold a candle to either of those drs is a case in point Lastly, people travel overseas all the time for operations. Just do the smart thing and stay 2-3 weeks. Will it add some time and money, sure. But if you are trying to skimp on the cost or time you are ask g for trouble and let me tell you the money you save on say Dr. Erdogan vs Dr. Shapiro for a 4k FUE you could stay in a nice hotel room nearby for a year.

The 80% yield quote for FUE is nonsense many top FUE surgeons get yield as good as Fut eg Feriduni, Erdogan etc. One thing you are missing is the ability to cherry pick with FUE which is probably even more critical with your limited donor. One thing that sparked my move fro. FUE to FUE (I was scheduled for a fut before reconsidering and doing more research). This mean being able to get a better hair per follicle yield. A 2000 fut can yield as low as 3500 hairs while surgeons such as dr. Reddy routinely get 5600 from the same # of grafts. I do not think you will find a $3 surgeon in the uss remotely as good das Dr. Erdogan. Lastly I would reconsider your price emphasis.nyeah I get you want to make this possible to yourself but when you start saying things like Dr X is 2.5 Eurex and I only want to spend 2.5 US you are making a bad decision. I don't mean you have to choose Dr Erdogan by any means just that if you decide against the right Dr. Because he is 10% more than your budget you are asking for a bad result. If you cannot afford to do this right do NOT do it until you can. If you can't accomodate a long trip vs a short one do not do it until you can. If you think US surgeons means higher quality vs Euri ones thing again, IMHO ALL of the top ht surgeons are US (and maybe Canada if you. Consider Dr Rahal). My hair is not close to you thinnes donor wise and I realized myself that fut was a bad path. A bad of ineffective ht can leave you with that and a scar you will be very hard pressed to hide and few options for styling or further HTs.

I would recommend Dr. Erdogan. Turkey, $2.5 per graft FUE. He is going to recommend way more than 2500 for you probably closer to 4k. His yield and hairline are fantastic and his clinic is second to none. He offers PRP ($250 extra) and offers (additional fee) recovery rooms in his private clinic/hospital.

Yes and yes From all reports on this forum and from PMs with his patients yes, Dr. Erdogan spends time the day before to discuss patients needs and to draw a hairline as close a possible based on the patients donor, loss and facial features. To me just the fact that this is done the day before and not a few moments before is critical. It puts the patient in a far less stresful sitiation to both communicate his desires and hear/process any feedback and adjustments fron the Dr. Likewise I believe it gives the Dr. time to process even if it is just subliminally. In any event onf the prime considerations for me was a Dr. that really cared about the patients goals and took the time to understand them and develop a realistic solution/game-plan and from my research anbd experience that is most definitely the case.

Hi and thanks for contributing to the thread. Yes I agree Dr. Lorenzo and Dr. Feriduni are spectacular surgeons, probably in anyone's top 3-5 worldwide. In fact both of them helped change my mind about FUE just before I was about go go FUT and am so glad to have had them as examples of what is actually possible with FUE vs a lot of the negative hype surrounding it which originally had me NOT consider it. However I'b be sitting here with a healing scar if I had not had the opportunity to see their work. That trek in the end did lead me to decide on Dr. Koray based on fulfilling all of the criteria I had; density, mega FUE, beautiful hairlines and great yield, great techs, state-of-art-clinic, patient interaction. I also agree that, unlike most hard decisions, this was one of those where I could not have gone wrong with any of the three choices as regarding any of that critieria. I feel terrific about the one i made though and am extremely excited about it and look forward to sharing my experiences and results on this board to help future patients on the same path.

After reviewing the clinics explanation it seems at very best they took a cautious approach. The logistics of the clinics protocol as well the patient’s medical hair loss regimen is irrelevant. We have a patient that is clearly unsatisfied. Blaming poor results on lack of topicals or internals taken afterwards is, IMHO, a weak justification for a subpar result. Clearly he does not display additional or visually measurable loss so the clinic’s justification would have to be that while their grafts took, his native hairs were somehow lost in roughly the same amount and due to his not following a protocol unrelated to their surgery. In the end the images from the clinic still show a very subtle improvement given 2500 grafts were implemented. The hair line appears weak and needs refinement. There appears to be a good amount of transection of grafts and trauma to the native hairs as we have a zero sum net gain. Again there are a multitude of examples of 2500 hairline grafts in a variety of Norwood patterns that show demonstrable to remarkable growth, and this I can say with certainty after view 100s from Dr. Feriduni, Dr. Erdogan, Dr. Lorenzo and others. I’d hope the clinic (which I notice the patient took pains NOT to mention and we only know which one it is since they responded to the thread as if he pointed the finger at them) would, instead of or in addition to justifying the results, try to make the patient happy. It is easy as a clinic who accepts multiple patients in a day or week or year to simply discount or explain away inferior results. Yet those results represent for most of us months or years of research and difficult decisions putting our trust in that clinic, saving up for weeks or months or years the $10s of thousands of dollars it takes to do so (I’m going out on a limb that most of us are not rich and don’t just have $10k-$20k to throw away and have made great sacrifices in other areas of our life to afford it), traveled far to get to the clinic, endured pain and discomfort and fear and boredom sitting in a chair for hours on end praying the Dr. has out best interests at heart and the skill to deliver, and then almost a year of anguish hoping to see the results while suffering through months of ‘ugly duckling’ phases, only to have to live the REST OF OUR LIVES with the result. For the Dr. or clinic the money is taken and spent. I’d hope that any HT Surgeon worth his salt who really cares about his patients (as many here such as Dr. Rahal, Dr. Feriduni, Dr. Erdogan to name a few clearly do) would understand exactly what a patient has invested and vested in them and take that responsibility to heart. We get the justifications provided, what we as prospective patients considering HT Surgery ourselves want to know is what happens now? It's 'great' a technician has reached out (was she your rep or technician originally?) but I wonder if the Dr. will. I'd want to know I was in the hands of a Dr. who would. I've seen Dr. Rahal himself post here that the only thing that matters in the end is that a patient is unhappy and that is all that matters. I don't have any experience or knowledge of this clinic so can't comment on their past successes or failures or responses to either, I'd just personally be very much comforted by more than a technicians explanation of why a clearly(to my eye at least) subpar result was not.

After viewing literally 100s of Dr. Erdogan results (I am scheduled with him in April) you look like the type that is going to have stellar results.

What is it that would return such amazing results? I mean what qualities about the users hair? His hair caliber seemed average-low, his density low-average, his donor supply on the lower side, his coverage required was pretty extreme. Yet I've seen a few results like this from Dr. Erdogan that are almost beyond belief. This is in addition to his fantastic, excellent, super, really good, good and acceptable results. I'm just trying to see if there is some common denominator. So far all I can find is dark hair.