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SMP?
Hope for doubleidemnity (and anyone for that matter) for a future transplant
- Thread starter whatintheworld
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SMP?
if the crown is bald, you dont have normal hair on top...
otherwise the crown wouldnt be bald
whatintheworld
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Yeah having a bad crown sucks, but having nothing in the front is much worse.
In extreme cases like this guy obviously you get the frame to your face at least. You can even put a partial hairpiece on in the back, or get another 1000-2000 grafts and concealer in the back can go a long way.
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Frame is key.
One thing that shows Couto and DeFreitas are right at the top of their game is the work they do for the temple peak area and just above it. Most people receding lose a bit of this, my peaks had stayed (weren't parallel Norwood 7 incoming sides) but right above it I had 1 cm loss I think. They brought it back to it's original place and the angles are going back, it blends in very very well, no one can pick it up and many surgeons struggle with this area or just ignore it totally and have the hairline simply going across - which never looks as natural.
For reference I mean the drawn line going down towards the peak. Dr Feller did the one in the image below and he's pretty good too, again it's that 1 cm match up but it's very crucial.
doubleindemnity
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These are incredible doctors and results but I think that they're not relevant to the discussion. These doctors won't take a full NW7 with weak donor. Do you have an example of a person with a hair transplant with a full NW7 or NW6 horseshoe left in the back? I've seen old guys with it and it doesn't look quite right to me. To me, the hair loss in the back is somehow out of proportion with the healthy hair in the front. A thinning crown would be ok but a full on horseshoe going to the back of the guy's head along with a nice hairline and frontal third... I'm not sure if it's necessarily a good look for an under 40 guy. That's one of the reasons that I was hesitating about my hair transplant and decided not to go.
Also I don't think that 'many surgeons struggle with this area or just ignore it totally and have the hairline simply going across' is necessarily true. It's just that many surgeons put the hairline a little higher/more conservatively than these and do not need to rebuild the temple area. There are many many incredible hair transplant surgeons out there, I believe. You just have to provide the donor.
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I wasn't actually taking part in that discussion, that was clear but unsurprisingly you missed that matey. I agree with @whatintheworld , get as many opinions as you can but sometimes some people are just not suitable candidates. What's worse than a bald head? A head of hair which doesn't look natural like what you described, no one notices/cares for someone's hair loss pattern, however a surgical bad result draws attention. Comments like "something was done, doesn't look normal and so on." So yes it is all about donor and final pattern. Ideally in a NW7 you want to build front to back and blend in the horseshoe outline or it looks off, density will be barely passable but that is expected unless one has thick hair.
Oh if you go on the transplant forum many drs don't get the angles right for the area of the hairline i talked about, the implanted hairs grow outwards or upwards, it's very hard to do it perfectly. Most transplant surgeons don't necessarily build a conservative hairline as usually it's NW3s going in so they end with a genuine mature to flat hairline - whatever they prefer or is natural for them with the Drs input.
Dr Baubac himself has had a frontal restoration and you can see it's mature, sometimes he gives his patients this type as it's a timeless fullhead natural look, other times he'll opt for a slightly straighter line.
i still say everything is better than those generic dudes... feels like they dont want hair, they just want everybodies favourite haircut...
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Yeah all type of hair loss sucks and I would prefer a system to a permanent bald crown and midscalp. That said most people can maintain that area with treatment very well if they start early and a few thousand grafts can supplement this region well. It's the front that is hypersensitive to DHT and doesn't always respond well to treatment, worth fixing the front as the result is permanent and it's the frame to the face and hairstyles.
Hell worse comes worse, Dr Zarev is creating an almost normal head of hair (front to back in all light, wet conditions) with 10k grafts for those with good hair calibre, well worth it.
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Like @Wolf Pack said checkout Zarev for his work on NW6's & NW7's
Some pics in this thread here.
https://www.hairlosstalk.com/intera...rio-i-made-up-seven-words.136132/post-2050075
But yer, obviously you will still need a healthy donor.
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He truly is incredible and revolutionary when it comes to giga sessions, no one has done it like him before and many surgeons have admitted as much. Sure we can all look at results by other surgeons on thick NW3s, but I don't think anyone matches Zarev's donor numbers and how he keeps the donor relatively clean too all things considered. He is definitely the go to man for Norwood 6-7s, in their boat I wouldn't consider anyone else, especially those with thick hair like Bulgarian's as that's his speciality.
I understand doubleidemnity is wearing a wig right now which is fine if he is happy and it's working, but if he wants to go down the transplant route he should do it and move on while he's still relatively young to reap rewards. With his donor I do think 4-5k grafts may be possible and thick black hair may give him some illusion. Don't let indecision or hair loss rule your life, jumping from one thing to another which may not give results but also set you back mentally. I'm glad I did what I did, all my concerns disappeared after my transplant and staying on a easy to consume pill.
doubleindemnity
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Dr Zarev really is in a league of his own but that's 10k grafts. He gets a 10/10 result with 10k grafts but most good surgeons could get a 8/10 result, which is for all intents and purposes almost as good. Donor is everything. There are so many great surgeons that you can choose from if you have the donor. Just go for a good surgeon rather than a good price (even though many good surgeons have competitive prices). Also, Dr Zarev is not even taking applications for an online consultation the last time I checked.
Every surgeon has said 2.5k-3k grafts are possible to be harvested from my scalp and that around 9k are needed. What I have been suggested is to cover the front 2/3 of the head with 50% scalp grafts and 50% beard and body hair, and leave the crown bald. That would be around 6k grafts. This seems like a worse situation than wearing the system. Also, it's not a wig. It's a hair system. I keep telling myself that this is a very advanced version of a wig and a very modern version of a toupee. So it deserves to have the distinct name of "hair system". For me, it seems hard to go to a hair transplant after this. A hair transplant is like 10x the price, has some uncertainty (because I can't move the hairline around or change my mind about it), leaves the crown bald and gives me less hair. I don't see the benefit now of going for a hair transplant now that I have the system. People talk about the maintenance of a system really tough but it's just 1-2 hours per week at most. 1-2 hours per week and you have hair... it's a no brainer. For me, the system was originally supposed to be a trial to see if I'd want to have hair and go for a hair transplant. But hair transplant doesn't seem worth it in comparison to a system now.
i got the exact opposite... crown is not getting better, sometimes i think it is getting worse, front got a bit better and maintains...
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Id take a bald crown over my destroyed diffused NW6 hairline any time of the day.
I had a work colleague at my last job exactly like this: normal hair at front, balding crown at the back. Dude looked good.
There's nothing worse than diffused recedeed destroyed hairline.
Well, there are things worse than that, but they're all tragedies.
to each their own... i think it both sucks...
balding crown also has the pedo look and what i find even worse: from the front you look okay and then when you see it from the back you think “oh no”, at lwast that is what i am thinking”...
well might mix myself some topical finasteride in addition...
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You haven't looked into Dr Zarev clearly. Some of the patients he worked on, for whatever reason would only get half the grafts being extracted with other surgeons, so the result wouldn't be as good for Norwood 6-7. Other drs themselves said they wouldn't have done what he did - i mean they said it themselves lol. He's a machine and does the whole transplant pretty much himself and aesthetic placement. Like I said, as a Norwood 6-7 I wouldn't look elsewhere as in some cases people end up losing worse than before with pube like hair.
Why are you getting caught up in wig or system? It's just a name and again it indicates you're on the spectrum which you once mentioned, too many signs. If someone calls my transplant, plugs, well yeah it is, just a modern version, concentrate on results. Use your "system" in your situation as I feel once people get used to that density, it's hard to look back and a transplant won't give it in your situation. The picture you put up once with the system, I actually have that density and more especially if I style it like that. Financially I would assume transplants are cheaper long run for most people, NW3s pay 2k in Turkey but again Norwood 6-7 and elite doctors, the cost could be approaching 50k euros, 4 euros per graft and 10k grafts, factor in hotels and travel fares with each visit etc.
Did you start losing hair in the crown before the hairline? You might be one of the guys that loses it more back to front and in diffuse manner, good news is treatment can sometimes give a full recovery, bad news is that these guys usually have a more aggressive pattern which is difficult to control long term on conventional treatments at least.
doubleindemnity
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Wigs and toupees are different. So it's correct to say that a hair system is a toupee but not a wig. But I insist on using the term system because when I go out and talk to people about it, I want to be sure to avoid the word wig or toupee due to negative connotations. I refer to it as a modern hair unit or something like that.
Do you have examples where it is stated that Dr Zarev got double the grafts of another surgeon? Looks like I haven't researched him properly.
The density that I had was way high and I actually got it reduced at the salon! You must have been very lucky regarding your hair. Regarding price, 9k grafts at 3 euros per graft plus taxes is already a huge amount of money. If you assume that a hair transplant lasts 10 years, then 10 years of systems would easily be cheaper. For somebody who just needs 2k grafts plus meds it's much closer. So you see it's hard for me to make the case for a hair transplant instead of a system for me.
the opposite... i lost the hairline way before i lost the crown...
4 years of medication now and i dont think its going to help much...
whatintheworld
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Ultimately if the system works for you, then that's great. It is always good that more options exist and that a person can find something they are happy with.
This thread was just created to show that if you weren't happy with it, perhaps there were some other options you could explore.
Also, when taking pictures of your donor, they can vary drastically based on lighting, hair length, and camera used. You want 4k resolution photos with your donor grown out at least 6-8 weeks, out in the sunlight or a well lit place.
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Transplants are mostly permanent not 10 years, only in certain unfortunate circumstances ( DUPA or harvesting outside the safe zone) will they start to disappear. Yeah for me it was a no brainer since frontal corner restoration is easy and cheap (2-3k euros max and possible discounts) and my medication works out to £2 per month max. I am around your age and yes, apart from losing my hairline I haven't lost anything else, who knows without medication maybe I would have. I don't understand why you got your density reduced? It wasn't that ridiculous or age inappropriate, like I said I have even better density, black hair and similar age and it looks just fine. Maybe you found it shocking as you went from no hair to that but time will help you adapt to it. I do refuse to let my hair grow very long or down though, because then it looks like a bit of a toupee, something like this 100% even my girl and mates laugh. Btw this is an actual toupee apparently lol.
So maybe your style was off, do you have to comb it down with a system? Slick it up and keep it medium length and fade the sides, I do that and it looks very natural with a slightly lighter hairline and no weird styles/hiding. You'll be unhappy with a transplant as even in the best case scenario the only ever dense pack the frontal 1/3 - that almost looks like native hair in people with good hair calibre but the rest will always have less grafts due to the donor limitations. In your case you would have thin hair on top and would need a combover everywhere - system trumps it, if hair matters that much for you.
I don't know where I read/heard about Dr Zarev, but FUE pioneer Dr Rassman himself said that Zarev is doing something that wasn't done before. Dr Cole also said that, normally competitors never shower this much praise on someone so it really is note worthy.