Dr Ted Miln (London / Westminster Medical Group) - 3200 Grafts

[hrh93]

Background

 

31 year old male, I've had gradual hair loss since about 18. More rapidly between the age of 21-26 then a much slower but consistent loss since. Initially started with the hairline receeding and miniaturization in the frontal third, however in  the last couple of years further loss in the mid scalp and noticeable loss in the crown had occured. I remember going to a hair clinic in the UK (belgravia centre) about 10 years ago, they recommended finasteride to start with and the follow on for a procedure. At the time I was so anxious and embarresed about the whole thing so I made every excuse not to go ahead with another follow up and left it there, I remember really being put off by the side effects of finasteride at the time though I admit I barely researched it at all. If only I'd had been more confident in myself back then I could've addressed the issues before most of the recession started!

Fast track to this year, I've gone through the acceptance stage by now and was reasonably confident in myself. I still never liked the way it looked though never brave enough to shave it all off, I would also say especially since getting a ring doorbell I was constantly looking at myself from the front and back which drew more of my attention to where the loss was.

Once I hit 30 I made a promise to work on my mental wellbeing, health and appearance. I'm fortunate to say that my hairloss doesn't cripple me during everyday life, but it's always been a nagging feeling and I finally made my mind up to go ahead with a hair transplant.

 

Research

I started doing hardcore rearch for around 2 months before taking action during xmas 2023, I primarily was using clinical websites medical information but found a lot of useful information on r/tressless and r/HairTransplants and then finally hair restoration network.  Though I didn't rely on it for too much for medical guidance I was fascinated with all the sucesss (and not so much success) stories that I felt were from real people. I knew it would be wise to hop on medication around 6 months before surgery so I decided to start this first and in February began taking oral finasteride (1mg p/day) and topical monixidil twice a day.

After starting a treatment plan the next stage was to decide on a hair transplant clinic and surgeon, I knew that whatever I chose I'd want to be based near me in London. I will start off with saying the best advice I ever came across was to look for the surgeon and not the clinic. I didn't really think about choosing a surgeon until a few weeks into researching and at this point already had a few places I contacted for a consultation:

• Wimpole Clinic
• Dr Manish Mittal
• Westminster Medical Group (WMG)

Wimpole were the most well advertised and seemed like they had a good track record with reasonable pricing. When I went in person most of the meeting was with a salesman and one of the Dr's briefly came in and drew a rough line on the side of my head indicating where they'd aim for. I then went had an iniital consultation with Dr Mani's assistant who was really knowledgable, he mentioned Wimpole as being a bit of a "hair mill" which slightly put me off. Only thing that stopped me proceduing further was the price and his assistant saying they don't really do more then 2200-2400 grafts in a single session, and that I'd definitely need 2 transplants. I don't doubt he was somewhat right, but from seeing hundreds of hair transplant results I somehow knew I'd need about 3,000 to give me the density and result I was hoping for. Even though I didn't proceed I will say Dr Mani has an excellent track record, and would put him up with Dr Ted for consistently high results, ethical practice and reasonable price range.

It was by absolute chance I came across Dr Ted and found myself on his instagram, and coincidence that when I initially reached out to WMG they said they had a choice of surgeons at the time (Dr Sebastian Deme and Dr Ted Miln). I understand since the time of writing this post Dr Ted no longer performs surgery at WMG (I was his second last patient) and has setup his own practice in south wales. It seemed to me much of a coincidence that the place I had randomly found happened to have a surgeon who's results I thought were outstanding.

Consultation

WMG surprised me with being one of the rare places that offered an in-person consultation with the surgeon free of charge, upon arrival the place was smart & well presented but I will assume that it's pretty much the case for all clinics in Harley Street. The consultation got delayed by about 45 mins as Dr Ted was still in surgery which was completely understandable, I was kept well fed on water and chocolates so I couldn't complain.

Prior to meeting Ted I was pulled into a room with one of the team members who gave me a brief intro into hairloss and what the process was at WMG, this was a lot softer than at Wimple and genuinely felt like an informative session rather than a sales pitch. When Dr Ted met me shortly after he was exactly as he seemed on his Instagram, clearly very passionate about the work he does and took his time to ask me about my background and why I wanted a procedure done before even discussing the hair transplant. What sold it for me was when I asked him "If money wasn't an object, what would you recommend me do?" to which he replied, give the medication I'm on time to work on the crown and focus solely on the frontal third and recommended around 3,000 grafts to restore my headline and achieve a nice level of density. He then went on to spend about 5 mins drawing on a hairline and micro-adjusting me so he could get the right angles, at this point I was pretty much sold and felt like this was the place and surgeon I want to do it.

I was quoted £6,950 for 3,000 grafts.  (Feb 2024)

 

Surgery

Fast-forwards to July 12th, I arrived at 08.30am in Harley Street. Marzena intially greeted me, she has a very calming way of speaking and I quite easily settled down and changed into a gown. I was given a combination of painkillers/tablets to relax me which they said would help make the day go by faster and I'd be less fidgety over the next 8 hours. Dr Ted shortly arrived and gave me a full run down of what the plan was for the day, reiterating the number of grafts and then drew on the hairline we'd agreed on.

By far the worst part of the day were the initial anaesthetic injections, they were painful scratches to begin with but after a few minutes I was pretty numbed down and the tablets had kicked in, the first part of the day was the incisions which took around 2 hours. After a short break I then had the extraction which I kept dozing off, since the anaesthesia the whole experience had so far been painless and everything up to this point was solely performed by Dr Ted.

Extraction Numbers:

3230 Grafts (6729 hairs)

• 1's (888)
• 2's (1323/2646)
• 3's (871/2613)
• 4's (148/582)

After the extraction Ted mentioned that we were  slightly over on grafts, but there's no change to the original quoted cost so I was more than happy with these numbers which averaged 2.08 hairs per graft.

After a break with a nice lunch I was brought in for the final part of the day, WMG had a really lovely team who counted the grafts where they had to split a few of my hairs to create more single hairs for the temple points. I had between 1-3 people at a time perfoming the implantation with Dr Ted constantly in and out making a few extra incisions and checking how it was all going, again I was completely relaxed and couldn't feel anything. The team were all very happy, made light conversation and were patient with me when i asked to re-adjust myself a couple of times as my neck was starting to get a bit numb.

After the procedure was over, I was sat back down for a debrief and filled up again with some chocolate. Dr Ted gave me his mobile number and encouraged me to reach out if there's any issues which reassured me, Marzena kindly walked me down to the exit and I jumped straight in a cab home.

 

Photos

Pre-Surgery

These pictures are all at the start of my journey Feb 2024, before taking any medication.

 

The following pics are a couple weeks before surgery, I had been on Finasteride and Minoxidil around 4 months at this point so early days. I think there is a slight thickening around the crown/mid scalp so I tried to capture semi-wet hair in the same lighting, but will definitely wait till around 12 months to know for sure. I couldn't see any noticeable difference in the frontal third.

Post-Surgery

Day 0

Immediately post-op

A few hours post-op

 

Day 1

Recipient 24 hrs post-op

Donor 24 hrs post-op

 

Day 4

Very scabbed up and probably the peak of being uncomfortable/slightly sore with the donor area when sleeping

 

Day 7-8

Scabs ready to fall of & donor area looking good

 

Day 10

This is where I am at the time of writing this post, scabs finally came off and I can't believe I've got a visible hairline.

 

I've seen dozens of hairs fall out with the scabs and have read enough to know that this is completely normal, I'm still blown away with the difference it's made and I'm hoping that this will yield good results but only time will tell. I write this knowing that this look is temporary and there's  still a long way to go, I hope this may be of some interest/help to anyone interested in starting their hair restoration journey. I will be posting updates at key milestones around the 1, 3, 6 and 12-18 months mark.

Any feedback/comments would be welcome though I know it's very early days to tell, happy to answer any questions. I'm so glad I made this decision as the whole process is such a small sacrifice for a few days and only wish I'd started sooner, I'm hopeful that the changes to my hair coupled with an overall improvement to my well being/lifestyle and I'll be feeling like a new man! Thanks again to Dr Ted & the wonderful staff at Westminster Medical group.

Edited July 22 by hrh93
Fix extra images below text

[Melvin- Admin]

Wow that's some serious density. I think everything looks great, your donor was managed very well. Excited to see these results flourish happy growing. 

[WSR9351]

Thanks for sharing - it's great to see Dr. Ted continuing to recieve more exposure on the forums because I feel that it's richly deserved. He's one of the good guys for sure; both skilled and genuinely cares for and about his patients.

Scarily, our journey's are almost identical in nearly all aspects ...  age, hair loss progression over the years, experiences/thoughts about medication and the route/timescales to ultimately finding the same surgeon. The only real difference I can find is that I had a two day procedure with more grafts, but only a matter of weeks before you. Spooky, eh !

As is to be expected, it looks very well designed and executed from your pictures. I too noticed a very small number of hairs fall out during early washing, but nothing compared with when the dreaded shed came in to full force and just as it was starting to look quite impressive around Day 21. It's only day 49 now but whilst I'm definitely best described as an 'ugly duckling', there's already new growth pushing through and long, natural looking hairs from those that didn't shed. I share this as reassurance for the inevitable because whilst I was fully prepared and understood the process, it was still shocking when it actually happened !

Good luck with the coming months and I'll definitely follow along to watch your progress 😁

 

[TakeAction]

Will be following this one. I had a great experience with Dr. Ted as well.

[HairRoss]

Really great write up and it definitely matches my experience with Dr Ted and WMG. It's a shame to hear that he's no longer taking appointments in London but that must mean his new wales based clinic is going well, which I'm glad to hear. That density and donor management is insane and I look forward to seeing your results. Hopefully you haven't been finding the recovery too rough. I found sleeping to be the hardest part.

Edited July 23 by HairRoss

[Davies]

Nice write up of your decision making. Your hair loss is similar to mine. I’m also thinking about going to Westminster Medical Group with Dr Sebastian Deme. Like you I had a consultation with Wimpole Clinic and felt like I was being sold a car! 

[hrh93]

15 hours ago, WSR9351 said:

Thanks for sharing - it's great to see Dr. Ted continuing to recieve more exposure on the forums because I feel that it's richly deserved. He's one of the good guys for sure; both skilled and genuinely cares for and about his patients.

Scarily, our journey's are almost identical in nearly all aspects ...  age, hair loss progression over the years, experiences/thoughts about medication and the route/timescales to ultimately finding the same surgeon. The only real difference I can find is that I had a two day procedure with more grafts, but only a matter of weeks before you. Spooky, eh !

As is to be expected, it looks very well designed and executed from your pictures. I too noticed a very small number of hairs fall out during early washing, but nothing compared with when the dreaded shed came in to full force and just as it was starting to look quite impressive around Day 21. It's only day 49 now but whilst I'm definitely best described as an 'ugly duckling', there's already new growth pushing through and long, natural looking hairs from those that didn't shed. I share this as reassurance for the inevitable because whilst I was fully prepared and understood the process, it was still shocking when it actually happened !

Good luck with the coming months and I'll definitely follow along to watch your progress 😁

 

Hey thanks for the kind words, I remember seeing you on Teds Instagram a few weeks ago! I remember reading your post and thinking that you definitely have an eerily similar background to me and path to getting a hair transplant. I can definitely see the similarities from our procedures and hairline design, you had a hella lot of grafts and hairs so  I'm sure you'll have fantastic results despite you being in the thick of the shedding!

I knowingly posted this 10 days in whilst sprrits are high and before shedding started. I'd like to say I'm prepared for it but I guess it's like watching your hair fall out for a second time which is still gonna be a surprise, be interesting to see how my perspective on it changes when I reach your stage. Just gotta trust the process I guess. Will be following your progress!

[hrh93]

12 hours ago, HairRoss said:

Really great write up and it definitely matches my experience with Dr Ted and WMG. It's a shame to hear that he's no longer taking appointments in London but that must mean his new wales based clinic is going well, which I'm glad to hear. That density and donor management is insane and I look forward to seeing your results. Hopefully you haven't been finding the recovery too rough. I found sleeping to be the hardest part.

Hey as you can probably tell your post is very similar and a bit of an inspiration for me to post my experience, I remember reading yours which is a very similar case to mine, completely agree that it's such a great team at WMG and feel so lucky that I happened to stumble across Dr Ted as well.

I'll be following along with your progress as well, I remember looking at yours and thinking how dense it looked so I'm sure you'll have good results.It sounds like we're only a few weeks apart from procedures so it'll be interesting to see how things for us progress over the next 12 months!

[Sunshine09]

Hey, Looking good so far! Fun fact - i was at WMG getting a in person consultation with Dr Ted on the same day you got your surgery! He pushed my appointment back as he mentioned he had a tricky case! turns out it was you hahaha.

All the best growing and hope it goes well! will be following this one..

[hrh93]

23 hours ago, Davies said:

Nice write up of your decision making. Your hair loss is similar to mine. I’m also thinking about going to Westminster Medical Group with Dr Sebastian Deme. Like you I had a consultation with Wimpole Clinic and felt like I was being sold a car! 

I think WMG are a great choice, it's a shame about Dr Ted leaving but Ive heard really good things about Dr Deme. I recall seeing his instagram but he's not too active on it

[hrh93]

16 hours ago, Sunshine09 said:

Hey, Looking good so far! Fun fact - i was at WMG getting a in person consultation with Dr Ted on the same day you got your surgery! He pushed my appointment back as he mentioned he had a tricky case! turns out it was you hahaha.

All the best growing and hope it goes well! will be following this one..

Ha! Yeah that was me on the Friday you came in, he had to come back a few times to make extra incisions so that'll likely be the reason for the delay. I didn't realise he was still doing consultations at WMG!

[Sunshine09]

1 hour ago, hrh93 said:

Ha! Yeah that was me on the Friday you came in, he had to come back a few times to make extra incisions so that'll likely be the reason for the delay. I didn't realise he was still doing consultations at WMG!

it was one i booked around 6-8 weeks ago so it was pretty much one of the last consultations at the WMG. If i go ahead with Dr Ted it will be via his own clinic as he has now completely finished all jobs via WMG...

[balody]

Great write up and very clean work,still remember seeing hairline for 1st time 20 years ago,nothing quite like it.

[Lewis Horsley]

Looks great!

[Davies]

5 hours ago, hrh93 said:

I think WMG are a great choice, it's a shame about Dr Ted leaving but Ive heard really good things about Dr Deme. I recall seeing his instagram but he's not too active on it

He stopped working in London did he? That’s a big shame. I looked on their website and I see they have Dr Taleb Barghouthi also with Dr Sebastian Deme. I enquired about the Verteporfin treatment in London which they said they’re now offering to new patients. There’s a big post on the subject in the hair medication section of this forum 👍

[southsidesilver1]

Really interested to see how this one turns out. I'm also going to see Dr Ted and he's going to do 3500 FUE for me.
Mainly all going on the front , but I only have gaps on the sides and a bit of Mid Scalp hair thinning, 

So I'm sort of curious about yours and look forward to seeing the results.

[hrh93]

1 Month Update

Today marks 4 weeks since my surgery with Dr Miln. I started shedding from 14 days, It started becoming apparent to me everytime I'd run my hands through my hair there would be hairs coming out. After the first 10 days you get back into a normal way of life so nothing much to report, I think i'm a bit of an early shedder as I've lost most of the new hairs by now.

 

This was 2 weeks post-op, at it's peak just before any shedding:

 

 

Following pics are 4 weeks post-op:

 

Donor area 1 month post-op

 

No matter how prepared you are, it's still a slight bummer to see your new hairline dissapear so fast! I did go through a phase of getting slight red bumps on my scalp which I found aloe vera did help clear most of it up. Still some slight redness which is more apparent in the areas where the hairs were more closely packed together, overall I'm feeling positive despite it looking terrible right now

 

 

Edited August 9 by hrh93

[Doc94]

Does the doctor have a long waiting list?

[southsidesilver1]

On 8/9/2024 at 4:12 AM, hrh93 said:

1 Month Update

Today marks 4 weeks since my surgery with Dr Miln. I started shedding from 14 days, It started becoming apparent to me everytime I'd run my hands through my hair there would be hairs coming out. After the first 10 days you get back into a normal way of life so nothing much to report, I think i'm a bit of an early shedder as I've lost most of the new hairs by now.

 

This was 2 weeks post-op, at it's peak just before any shedding:

 

 

Following pics are 4 weeks post-op:

 

Donor area 1 month post-op

 

No matter how prepared you are, it's still a slight bummer to see your new hairline dissapear so fast! I did go through a phase of getting slight red bumps on my scalp which I found aloe vera did help clear most of it up. Still some slight redness which is more apparent in the areas where the hairs were more closely packed together, overall I'm feeling positive despite it looking terrible right now

 

 

Thanks for the update pictures, yeah the shock locks certainly sucks after you had a nice hairline and now the ugly duckling phase beings. Hope its not too long until we see some solid growth coming in.