Regular Member maxgraft Posted July 21 Regular Member Share Posted July 21 (edited) 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. Edited July 22 by maxgraft Adding more pictures Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valued Contributor Berba11 Posted July 21 Valued Contributor Share Posted July 21 Could you show us the results of the first surgery? You've jumped straight to the second surgery in the pictures so we can't get a proper view of things. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Senior Member HappyMan2021 Posted July 21 Senior Member Share Posted July 21 @maxgraft how do you feel yourself about the surgery? you don't seem to say Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member maxgraft Posted July 22 Author Regular Member Share Posted July 22 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member Alex27O Posted July 22 Regular Member Share Posted July 22 19 hours ago, maxgraft said: 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. How long was your 2nd surgery in terms of duration? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member maxgraft Posted July 23 Author Regular Member Share Posted July 23 16 hours ago, Alex27O said: How long was your 2nd surgery in terms of duration? 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. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member Alex27O Posted July 24 Regular Member Share Posted July 24 I’d be curious to hear what other forum members have to say about the duration of your surgeries. Seems pretty similar to mine. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Senior Member Chetman2112 Posted July 25 Senior Member Share Posted July 25 For comparison I had 2003 grafts and my surgery started around 7:30 am and ended around 6:45 pm, with a short afternoon break for lunch. My doctor was Dr Nadimi and I’m very happy with my results. She performed the entire surgery. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member maxgraft Posted July 25 Author Regular Member Share Posted July 25 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? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member maxgraft Posted July 25 Author Regular Member Share Posted July 25 On 7/21/2024 at 7:37 AM, Berba11 said: Could you show us the results of the first surgery? You've jumped straight to the second surgery in the pictures so we can't get a proper view of things. I embedded them into the original post for your viewing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Senior Member Chetman2112 Posted July 25 Senior Member Share Posted July 25 (edited) Fue was performed, couldn’t tell you what Dr Nadimi’s specific process is but my graft breakdown is listed on my blog at Dr Nadimi 2003 grafts 11-14-22 I know she performed the entire surgery, there were two techs assisting but she made all incisions and placements. Edited July 25 by Chetman2112 Added 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member Stewie Posted July 25 Regular Member Share Posted July 25 ah man, gutted for you, I went to a hair mill first time for first two surgeries because I knew no better, but looking at your pics its more like 300 grafts not ten fold that, gutted for you and others who have gone to this charlatan of a doctor 1 4 x HT - 10806 Scalp - 1800 Beard Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member Stavros Posted July 26 Regular Member Share Posted July 26 Honestly should we start a class action against Dr Charles… this is not 5500 in the crown.. I’ve seen 5500 cover MUCH more skin… THANK GOD I didn’t allow him to redo a surgery for free after his net negative result on my first surgery… how can he claim that he is a top tier surgeon and continue to gas light us all Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member maxgraft Posted July 26 Author Regular Member Share Posted July 26 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… Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member maxgraft Posted July 26 Author Regular Member Share Posted July 26 8 minutes ago, Stavros said: Honestly should we start a class action against Dr Charles… this is not 5500 in the crown.. I’ve seen 5500 cover MUCH more skin… THANK GOD I didn’t allow him to redo a surgery for free after his net negative result on my first surgery… how can he claim that he is a top tier surgeon and continue to gas light us all 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member Stavros Posted July 26 Regular Member Share Posted July 26 4 minutes ago, maxgraft said: 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. I mean it’s good to know that 5500 grafts weren’t all in the crown but holy crap you should have complete coverage at this point. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member maxgraft Posted July 26 Author Regular Member Share Posted July 26 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member Stavros Posted July 26 Regular Member Share Posted July 26 1 hour ago, maxgraft said: 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. What is Dr Charles saying? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tetr Posted July 26 Share Posted July 26 5 hours ago, Stavros said: What is Dr Charles saying? Men you sleep with the photo from Dr Charles under you pillow 🤣 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member Jamos1982 Posted July 26 Regular Member Share Posted July 26 8 hours ago, Stavros said: Honestly should we start a class action against Dr Charles… this is not 5500 in the crown.. I’ve seen 5500 cover MUCH more skin… THANK GOD I didn’t allow him to redo a surgery for free after his net negative result on my first surgery… how can he claim that he is a top tier surgeon and continue to gas light us all How come he is still recommended on this forum as a top tier surgeon? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member CharlesBarkley Posted July 26 Regular Member Share Posted July 26 On 7/22/2024 at 4:32 AM, maxgraft said: 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. Hello Max. In relation to the number of holes, I think you should reach out to the clinic with your concerns instead of dropping such a concerning opinion here. If you talked to them I am sure they will clarify it for you. Now, with your type of alopecia and those 5500 you should get a superb result. Thanks for sharing! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member maxgraft Posted July 26 Author Regular Member Share Posted July 26 (edited) 52 minutes ago, CharlesBarkley said: Hello Max. In relation to the number of holes, I think you should reach out to the clinic with your concerns instead of dropping such a concerning opinion here. If you talked to them I am sure they will clarify it for you. Now, with your type of alopecia and those 5500 you should get a superb result. Thanks for sharing! 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. Edited July 26 by maxgraft Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member Stavros Posted July 26 Regular Member Share Posted July 26 4 hours ago, maxgraft said: 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. When people question his graft count his answer ALWAYS is… “you can’t tell from pictures some grafts are “clear” and we double up some grafts to increase density”. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regular Member maxgraft Posted July 27 Author Regular Member Share Posted July 27 (edited) 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. Edited July 27 by maxgraft Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Melvin- Admin Posted July 29 Administrators Share Posted July 29 Update, Today, Dr. Charles informed us that an unidentified man wearing a motorcycle helmet and sunglasses came up to the front door of his residence Friday night and threatened him and his family if he “didn’t make things right on the website.” He is understandably concerned for his family. In light of the recent issues and developments, we have come to the mutual agreement that it is in Dr. Charles and his family's best interest that he withdraw his participation from this community. It is important to reiterate that we stand firmly against threats of violence and the use of this forum as a tool of coercion. We do not tolerate any attempts to extort excess conciliations from physicians, whether they are recommended or not. Posting negative reviews to coerce a refund violates our terms and conditions. We thank him for his long-time support of this community, including his posts over many years, and wish him the best in resolving the issues brought forth in this topic and others. We hope there is an amicable solution for all parties involved. In the future, he would like to compile and present compelling before-and-after results to re-establish his name in our community. After participants can voice their opinions and input, we will close this topic to further discussion. Onwards and upwards, Pat, Melvin, Valued Contributors I’m a paid admin for Hair Transplant Network. I do not receive any compensation from any clinic. My comments are not medical advice. Check out my final hair transplant and topical dutasteride journey: View my thread Topical dutasteride journey Melvin- Managing Publisher and Forum Moderator for the Hair Transplant Network, the Coalition Hair Loss Learning Center, and the Hair Loss Q&A Blog. Follow our Social Media: Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and YouTube. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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