maxgraft

Thanks for the feedback. I’ll post an updated picture in a couple months to show how it’s progressing. I certainly hope Al is right in that I can’t expect 60-70% more growth from here. I just feel that I shouldn’t be able to see my scalp with this number of grafts. Fingers crossed

Hey Al Yes, I just hit 5 months. Here it is so far

Thanks for your feedback. Do you mean to say that I should have more than 5500 grafts for coverage?

This is all very concerning. However, I have 6 months left so I’ll see what happens. DGC comes off as a reasonable person to me, so I’m not giving out on hope that he would be willing to find an amicable path forward if results don’t prove out. I think a time lapse video of his process in placing these grafts and showing the after might help showcase why it’s not visible to see all the grafts. I’d love to see an example of these clear grafts that don’t leave a scab and can’t be seen in the scalp post implantation. It would be more comforting.

Is he responsive to all these cases? My family member also had it done with Glenn Charles at the same time and it’s a similar result. I have those pictures to also prove it but I don’t want to share without their consent. In either case, this is far more systematic than I originally thought. Maybe he doesn’t give lots of credence to this forum so he might not care much. I suspect Google Reviews will be more powerful to get the message across that something is wrong here

I already did. The feedback I received is in my prior reply. Like I said, I am going to give it the full twelve months. To your point, I should see superb coverage and results. It’s possible that I may have missed something and that I did receive every bit of grafts and that not every graft creates a scab and blends into my scalp and therefore I can’t see the other 3500-4000 grafts.

I want to be fair and give it twelve full months like it’s stated. On a positive note, I do feel like my receding hairline looks better than the first surgery. Not sure if it’s 5500 grafts better but I do feel like it’s better than it was before my first OP. My crown, not so much thus far.

To be more clear the crown isn’t 5500 grafts. The first surgery was 2949 grafts for my receding hairline and my crown. The second surgery was 2533 grafts to touch up my receding hairline and to “bomb” my crown like he said. In either case, I agree that my whole head doesn’t look like 5500 grafts when looking at others. I mean, I’m not completely bald so it should’ve filled in all these areas quite nicely.

Yeah. Pretty much everyone I show says that Charles group did not provide me the number of grafts they told me I got and charged me for. I took a scope to my head today as I’m at 6 months post op and I could only count around 15-20 hairs that I could see growing in. My crown still looks the same after two surgeries. It’s unfortunate because I really have trusted him and his staff. They were the kindest people but I feel I’ve been taken advantage of basis these results thur far. I did a manual count of my original surgery and could only count approximately 825 grafts in total, yet I paid for 2,949. I put the image through a neural Network and it estimated 600-800 grafts. All I want is to know is the actual grafts used between both surgeries. Did he only actually take 1500 grafts out of my donor between both surgeries and put those in? Or did he actually take 5500 grafts out, and combined say 3-4 grafts per hole, like plugs? Or did he take out 5500 grafts and toss out 4000 grafts due to poor quality control during slicing or to reduce total time in surgery? I just want to know what I can do into the future. I spoke with him and I told him I’d give it the full 12 months to see what happens. He was adamant that they don’t throw out grafts and that he doesn’t let his staff share grafts counts among themselves so there isn’t any competition between techs during slicing because he wants quality grafts. He also said that other doctors split grafts and do single hairs and count those as grafts and that he doesn’t do that. He said that it’s not possible to count grafts because you really can’t see them all so he advises his clients to not do it. During the procedure I was counting in my head the number of holes to get a feel for his rate because I was concerned it was going too fast. I estimated he could’ve only done like 800 holes in the timeframe which is similar to what I counted manually. I didn’t say anything at the time because I didn’t want to make the staff feel like I doubted them because they’re good people and I trusted they were doing their best but I really am having doubts. I see others FUE post results and I see thousands of little holes and I don’t see that in my mine. If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck…

I embedded them into the original post for your viewing

Thank you for sharing. Curious, did you have FUE or FUT done? Also do you know if they split your 2s and 3s grafts into singles?

Looking back it was about 30-40 minutes of incisions and about 3-3.5 hours of graft placement. Doing the math…it’s about 75 incisions every minute, non stop for 40 minutes and navigating between all existing hairs. As for grafts it would be placing 14 grafts every minute. At two techs a piece, that’s 7 each per minute. To be more conservative, If he doubled up 50% of all my 1s in both procedures then it would be about 67 incisions per minute and 13 grafts placements per minute. Basically his hand incision speed is faster than one hole per second. Considering I’m not bald, I think maintaining this speed would be quite difficult navigating between existing hairs. Graft placement is about 1 every 8 seconds. I suppose that’s possible? Timeline and pictures below. Google trackers confirmed my total time while there. 2019 -3,000 FUT grafts Surgery started at 1040am. Strip harvest was done at 11:18am. Between 11:18 and 12:53 all 3,000 holes were placed and my front temples grafts were completed and portion of my crown had already been done. The whole procedure ended by 3:25-3:30pm. I was in the car by 3:45 driving home. 11:18am. No incisions made yet. Picture below. By 12:53pm all alleged 3,000 incisions made, front temples completed and crown started. Had lunch and finished by 3:30pm 2024- 2,500 FUT grafts Surgery started at 11:00am. Strip harvesting was done by 11:40am 12:00pm picture below. No incision made yet. By 2:22pm, all 2500 incisions made, lunch was ate, temples were done. Crown was being worked on. I was done by 4:00pm I think it’s unfortunate that I am having to do rate of speed calculations to confirm or deny whether I got what I paid for. If the results aren’t obvious after 5500 grafts then maybe I just didn’t get what I paid for. Ultimately, it’s not even about the money. I’d be fine knowing the simple truth of what I got so I know if my precious donor was tapped out or thrown away. Maybe the techs embellished their count? I hate to think that. Frankly, the emotional cost, far exceeds the actual monetary cost. There is an actual value, even monetary ones, to emotional costs. If my 5500 grafts were actually consumed or misused, I have nothing else I can do. Again I’m willing to wait the next six months to mark my final opinion but so far it’s not looking good.

I’ve added more pictures to my original post to show 6 months and 4 years later after 1st surgery. The people at Charles Medical Group are excellent. Warm and comforting. As for the results, I am wanting to wait the full twelve months before I make my final opinions known. Currently, I am quite displeased. I have thick coarse brown hair and I shouldn’t be able to see my scalp in my crown after 5500 grafts but you can see the progress thus far. It took quite the mental and emotional toll on me when I counted my scabs as I couldn’t reconcile the numbers from what was harvested in my donor and what I count in the implantations from the images. I am pretty meticulous person so during the 2nd procedure I was counting the number of holes being put into my head as I had read some concerns on these forums prior. I expected a couple thousand but based on rate of holes being cut and the amount of time it took to make the holes, I extrapolated to somewhere around 800-1000 holes which is highly concerning to me. I started to wonder if my grafts were thrown out or if they were planting two/three grafts per hole. This would be roughly 5-6 hairs per hole but looking at the images you can see that’s not the case. I didn’t mention it at the time because I didn’t want to make the staff feel like I was doubting them and I like to trust that there is still good in people but I am highly concerned with my progress thus far. We’ll see how it goes.

I had 5500 grafts done by Glenn Charles. I made a post for all to see today as well.

I saw Alex270 place his post today so I wanted to share my results with you thus far… I did two procedures with Dr Glenn Charles in Boca Raton, FL in 2019 and again earlier this year in 2024. Below are pictures of my before any surgery back in 2019, post op of my first surgery of 3000 grafts and second post op of 2500 grafts. Both methods were FUTalong the same donor in the back. Numbers: 1st procedure alleged numbers 1's - 889, 2's - 1631, 3's - 429 Total 2949 grafts. Weighted average = 1.844 hairs/graft. Total Hairs = 5,437 2nd procedure alleged numbers 1's - 823, 2's - 1371, 3's - 339 Total 2533 grafts. Weighted average = 1.8089 hairs/graft Total Hairs = 4,581 He said that I had lots of ones so that he had to double those up. If you double all my ones then I would expect to see 889/2 + 1631 + 429 = 2504 holes at a minimum in the first procedure. If you doubled all of the singles again on the second procedure then it should be at 2121 total holes at a minimum.

I’ve done 5500 grafts with Dr Charles over two surgeries. I am a several months out from my second surgery with him. I was concerned with my density and he told me that I had a bunch of 1s and that he had to double up. However, if he doubled up 100% of my 1s, I still should’ve bad 2000 holes on my head. I counted no more than 800 tops on my second surgery. He said that you can’t count the holes and that he discourages patients from doing that because you can’t see them all. Similar to others, I trusted the list on here in 2019 when I did my first procedure. I didn’t really compare my results to others on here but time I have and I feel that I may have been shorted on my grafts by at least 50% or more. In trying to be fair to the process, and clinging on to hope that I truly can’t count grafts via images I took, I am waiting for the full twelve months prior to drawing a conclusion. Btw, My friend also got theirs done by him and their density looks far worse than mine. He’s a nice guy with a great staff but I get the sense like others that he is actually doing less than he says he is. People talk and this is how class actions form

Temp

What kind of prices have you all paid per graft for FUT in the USA in the past year?

How much did he charge per graft?

Exceptional result. Did the patient take propecia or so rogaine or anything for the one year post his surgery?

Really a solid result. Great work

This result looks real good. Considering you had hair loss pretty far down which also impacted your donor area. This looks good. Perhaps consider another 1,000 or so in the future. Make sure to do preventatives like minoxidil and lllt

I received a transplant about 3.5 months ago on the crown of my head. While doing some work outside for a few hours, my crown looks to ha w gotten sun burnt. Should I be worried? Will this impact hair growth in the area? My initial thought is it shouldn’t matter but would like to hear others opinions. thanks!

Looks like a good transplant. You will undoubtedly lose a few grafts. Try not to panic and stop looking in the mirrors and touching the hairs and driving yourself crazy. You won’t miss one or two grafts. Just don’t inflict damage to your transplant by picking at it

Really solid result Dr. Charles. Did the patient stay on 1mg daily finasteride and LLLT for the entire year after his surgery to attain these results?