NW6/7 advice?

[TakeAction]

On 8/13/2024 at 6:39 AM, davidoz said:

man @baldforawhile I got similar donor situation as you (I believe, different hair type tho) and also progressing towards same level of baldness. Many clinics rejected me already and said that my donor was crappy and too thin and not suitable for HT at all. One clinic said I got maximum 3K scalp grafts only. This when I sent them pictures of my donor with the same length you show in this thread (first pic with short hair), saved some more hair now to see donor with more length (usually I shave). Just saw over your result with Dr Bansal and wow now I got some hopes back for me.

My top picks currently are Pitella or Eugenix (Bansal or Sethi) as Zarev seems impossible, still havent decided how and if I should proceed with HT..but definitely got some hopes back after seeing your result. Thanks for sharing your story!

 

In my experience doctors' estimates of donor availability are widely inaccurate. I had a similar donor situation and hair loss pattern as you, probably worse. I was told by some highly regarded doctors that I had maybe 4k FUE grafts total, pretty much ruling me out of getting a hair transplant entirely.

I ended up getting 6k grafts with FUT + FUE 2 months ago and my surgeon thinks (based on actually seeing my donor in person instead of just pictures) that I can get another 4k more in the future. So the other surgeons were wrong. Using FUT also helped, of course. I wouldn't have 10k total with only FUE.

My FUT strip yielded about 100 FU/cm which is well above average.

Donor hair always looks worse when short, but if you get a USB microscope and actually analyze it, you'll likely find that most of your donor is fine.

I used this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CLHY6D9V?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details it's a USB microscope and it has a camera that easily connects to your phone. I measured the area within the camera and it's about 0.5 sq cm exactly. So you can shave down your donor to a zero and take pictures, then count the number of follicular units and multiply by 2 to get your average donor follicular units per sq cm. You should do this in different zones throughout the scalp and take the average of each calculation.

You could do the same with any similar camera, just measure the area that's being captured and multiply the number of grafts within by (1 / the surface area of the camera in sq cm).

75-80 FU/cm is around average, and the sides tend to be less dense in almost everyone, including myself.

Last but not least you have plenty of great beard hair. With FUT, FUE and beard hair it may take 2 or even 3 procedures but I don't see why you couldn't restore your hair to a cosmetically desirable state. Especially if you're on a 5AR inhibitor.

Edited August 14 by TakeAction