Advice of Hair Transplant

[mic28]

Hey guys,

Need a bit of help. I am a 29 year old male been losing hair mainly on the crown for the last 4 years or so that I have noticed. In the last couple of years I have been diffusing thinning/loss throughout. I have been on finasteride and to be honest it seemed to be the trigger for the diffuse. I am currently on Kirkland minoxidil and seem to be going through a massive shed. Scalp I'd very itchy and rough. Hair has also gone very thin. Crown looks awful.

Anyway, I have been seeking to get a hair transplant in Turkey in the next couple of months as it works well for me in between jobs. I know this will be the first of 2 or 3 procedures so I obviously don't want to waste all my grafts on my crown as I know in a couple of years il need to more. I was tempted to hold out longer but the crown is starting to look really bad and everyone is mentioning it. The depression from it is getting very bad!

I have been talking to doctor Maral in Turkey who said he reckons it would take 800-1500 grafts for this area.

Would anyone have any advice/information on what I should do? I don't want to have to wait another 2 years with this severe depression, it's ruining my life!

Please see photos below. Thanks in advance!

[mic28]

[Mpbman]

You could use Topik or Caboki on that part of your crown that's balding. It does wonders.

[mic28]

Thanks for the response Dr. Rashid. My main reason for Turkey is the cost and the experience of FUE surgeons in the area. Around the middle of August I will be travelling from Australia to the UK so I will be heading that direction anyhow. I have also considered travelling the other way through the US, however pricing there seems to be at least double.
My plan is to hang around for at least a few days after to allow for healing and go for a follow up appointment.
I believe I probably have a good donor area but obviously I won't know without an examination. I don't want to deplete my donor area as, although hard to see, the rest of my scalp is actually diffuse and I will need numerous grafts for my hairline in the future.
I am currently looking into other surgeons in Turkey, however I am afraid that 7 weeks is too close to get appointments. Do you reckon I will struggle to organise transplants from other surgeons at such short notice as I believe they are normally booked out well in advance?

Hey MPBMan, I do have toppik, however it takes a lot to provide coverage now and I'm sick of having to put it on everyday.

[Driver]

I dunno...believe me, I understand the pain of hair loss and I am sorry you are upset about it, but I suspect in a few years you will need a lot more than crown coverage if you decide to go for HT. Maybe wait and save your donor for the top and front down the line. You can sink a lot of grafts into the crown and not do yourself much good.

[JoeTillman]

mic28,
I suggest that if you are going to go to Turkey for your hair transplant you should understand that "surgeons" with experience in FUE are few and far between. Almost none of the doctors in Turkish clinics do the work themselves so you should be aware of this fact if you are counting on a doctor performing your surgery. I would also suggest you stick to IAHRS recognized clinics as a starting point and then let them know ahead of time that you are a member of Bald Truth Talk forum and that you will be documenting your experience, for better or for worse, online. I suggest this tact as it will help to keep things on the level and ensure that what you are promised has the highest probability of being delivered. This applies to whether you are going to Turkey or anywhere else. Also, discuss with the clinic you choose the pattern of extraction that you can expect because whomever performs the extractions should take the donor hair from the widest possible pattern possible. This is to ensure that no single area of your donor is cosmetically less dense than any other area of your donor.

Regarding the scheduling, I think that if you let any clinic know that you are available for last minute openings then they can consider contacting you. Cancellations happen in every clinic.

[mic28]

Guys,

Thanks for the replies.

Driver, this is something I have very much thought of. I have so far been given graft numbers of between 800-2000, therefore quite a large range. I certainly believe that 2000 will be too large, with the assumption that I will have to complete the hairline and frontal region down the track.
My problem is that the hair loss is getting me down so much that I'm not enjoying myself and have to do something about it, even if I means starting to fill the crown partially now. I'm not sure how I'd go another 2 or so years like this.

Joe, I have responded to a couple of the doctors regarding being a member of this forum in the hope that they will perform the procedure themselves. What is your take on have the crown performed on now with the frontal region a couple of years later?

Thanks

[Cheke1979]

Koray Erdogan for fue in Turkey sounds like a no brainer very good prices compared to Canada and Usa

[mic28]

Hi Cheke,

I have emailed Erdogan and waiting on a response, however I have heard he likes to dense pack grafts which I am wary of doing now that I am only looking for a crown procedure.

I see this is your first post? Have you used him before?

[JoeTillman]

Joe, I have responded to a couple of the doctors regarding being a member of this forum in the hope that they will perform the procedure themselves. What is your take on have the crown performed on now with the frontal region a couple of years later?

I think any hair transplant surgery is a risk so if you decide that you have to have a surgery then try to get a session that will use enough grafts to make you happy but not so many grafts that take 50% of your donor hair for one procedure. The crown is notoriously difficult to gain strong coverage because of the nature of how whorl patterns must be reconstructed. There are some clinics that will treat the crown like the top of the scalp and instead of recreating a whorl pattern they will simply make a slight curve in the distribution without making a true whorl. This allows for less grafts to get strong coverage but you are sacrificing complete naturalness to do this. Regardless, to do the crown first and the front later is fine if you don't use too many in the crown the first round. I've seen many patients with your pattern of loss and it is quite possible that the front will never go but move forward expecting it to.

[mic28]

Joe, thanks again for your time. I suppose I won't know the true extent of my donor area until I see a specialist. But as you say, I don't want to waste my donor all on the crown. Despite the pictures, I am getting quite diffuse on the rest of the scalp, therefore I want to be conservative.
From your experience, what sort of graft number would you recommend? If currently had quotes for 800-1500, 1000 and 2000.

Does anyone have any experience with Dr Ozgur in Turkey?

Thanks

[JoeTillman]

The problem is that you have dark hair and pale skin so coverage can be risky due to the contrast. Regardless, I think that maybe 1500 grafts would be safe estimate with the true threshold of acceptability for you being plus/minus a few hundred grafts.

Have you considered shaving your head instead? Going the other direction may give you some relief and you might actually like the look.

[mic28]

When you say shave do you mean to a grade 1, 2 or even shorter. The problem is with being this pale I believe it could make me look ill lol. However, you have now started me thinking about it.

I have now got quite a few responses from doctors:

Dr. Maral - Turkey
800-1500 grafts

Dr. Doganay - Turkey
2000 grafts

Dr Oktan - Turkey
1000 grafts

Dr. Karadeniz - Turkey
Waiting for a response on number of grafts however received a rough price

Dr. Bisanga - Belgium
1500-1800 grafts
Wants to view the donor area first to determine grafts available

Dr. Feriduni - Belgium
Told me to wait as afraid of wasting too many grafts in crown, however mentioned that he thought I had good donor

Dr

[JoeTillman]

When you say shave do you mean to a grade 1, 2 or even shorter. The problem is with being this pale I believe it could make me look ill lol. However, you have now started me thinking about it.

I have now got quite a few responses from doctors:

Dr. Maral - Turkey
800-1500 grafts

Dr. Doganay - Turkey
2000 grafts

Dr Oktan - Turkey
1000 grafts

Dr. Karadeniz - Turkey
Waiting for a response on number of grafts however received a rough price

Dr. Bisanga - Belgium
1500-1800 grafts
Wants to view the donor area first to determine grafts available

Dr. Feriduni - Belgium
Told me to wait as afraid of wasting too many grafts in crown, however mentioned that he thought I had good donor

Dr

If you're thinking about it then do yourself a favor and keep thinking about it. I mean shorter than a 1 guard because you want to minimize the contrast between areas that have hair and those areas that don't (the crown). The lower the contrast the less likely the crown will stand out. You may be pale now, and your scalp will be more pale than the rest of your body at first, but after you try shaving it then it will get some color to it and it just might look great.

Try to imagine having one thing to take care of each day, keeping your hair shaved. That's it. The anxiety about people seeing the bald spot on an otherwise healthy looking head of hair may just fade to a bad memory and no longer be a weight of burden. It could be an entirely liberating experience as it has been for others that have decided to eliminate the problem in this manner. There is no risk AT ALL in shaving your head. None. You'll be saving thousands of dollars and you won't potentially have a life long regret to live with. Worst case scenario? You don't like it and you grow your hair back in a few months. At the very least it will be one thing to mark off of your list as possible methods to deal with your issue and then you can move on to find something else that may work for you without having to wonder "what if I had just tried shaving my head to begin with?".

[Cheke1979]

hi mic28 no I did not have a hair transplant with Koray Erdogan and to be honest have never had a hair transplant done on me I'm 37 and will one day I live in texas so ive never even gone to turkey but I follow these threads and posts a lot and I also look at the weekly shows from joe and spencer very good info by the way but joe did some type undercover thing in turkey and it opened my eyes of whats happening over there and I'm sure in other places also including here in the usa so be careful!!now the reason i mentioned Koray Erdogan was because of how much experience he has with fue and he is recommended by the American hairloss association and he is in turkey wich is where you want to go also in my opinion very affordable compared to usa and Canada now the reason is affordable is because how much people earn outhere wich is like 400 dollars a month so if its 2.50 a graft in turkey that's like top of the line doctor you have to be real careful and research a lot of i myself have done a lot of it i live in texas and very soon i will visit arocha in Austin,also great info joe you keep doing that man because people need to know whats going on with all this doctors wich by the way theres THOUSANDS OF THEM!!! yea very scary stuff that needs to be exposed!