NW2 ... candidate for an ethical Doctor?

[hans]

Hello everybody, I have a question about what constitutes a hair transplant candidate. Granted, everyone has variant degrees of hairloss and it can't be 100% predictable. This would probably be the deciding factor for ethical hair transplant surgeons to deny a mid 20's patient with NW2 (slight hairline, temple recession). However, if a patient can prove to their hair transplant Doctor that they can stop or minimize their hairloss by taking propecia, would an ethical doctor still deny the procedure? Or let's say as a patient you have enough donor hair to cover a good handful of future hair transplant procedures, and you also had the willingness and monetary means to do so, would the ethical hair transplant Doctor still deny you?

 

[Guest]

I dont know if there is anything as an Ethical Hairtransplant Surgeon.. but most "normal" ones will tell you to get on to propecia for about a year to see if you get results..
My 2 cents !

 

[Guest]

Hans i was 22 when i started losing my hair.I was told by my surgeon that i was to young for a hair transplant.I then proceeded to take Proscar for the next 4 years which kept alot of it at bay.I think if a surgeon tells someone your age that they need a hair transplant is not the right surgeon to be taking advice from.Most ethical surgeons will adivse drugs first.


Damo

 

[Dpunkz]

i'm in the same exact situation you are in, i have been on all these drugs and treatments for a while...its going to be about a year and 1/3 wen i go in to the consaltent or w/e....i'm going to get a frikin hair transplant..its my only hope! idc how many surgerys i will need down the road...all i need is maybe 4-5 years or w/e tell HM is out, and that is easily doable considering finasteride has stopped my hair loss

 

[Guest]

Wow, some excellent questions guys. Please allow me to assue you that there are indeed some ethical and talented hair transplant doctors albeit they are far and few between. But it is each patient's duty to themselves to research "and" verify the information they are obtaining and receiving.

Please allow me to respectfully inform the community that there is no medicinal product of any kind that will "stop" our genetic hairloss. male pattern baldness is progressive in its nature and is a genetic "predisposition" with implications from both the maternal and paternal sides. In addition none of the medicinal hairloss products have been around long enough to evaluate if we can build a resistance to the meds over the long term. In other words, will efficacy fade with time? None of us know for sure but that is also why in part that the clinical trials of Propecia continue year after year. At best some of the hairloss meds like Propecia (finasteride) can greatly retard or slow down our male pattern baldness. Hopefully great strides will be made in HM, cloning, in the near future. But please do not bet the family farm on it.

Some great advice was given by the other guys in this thread to initially give the meds adequate time periods before EVER sustaining a hair transplant. And I believe any ethical hair transplant surgeons will want to first see how their patients respond to the meds. That's why they want the younger patient to wait it out for awhile. If a patient did not respond favorable to the meds and yet continued to sustain hairloss, might that change the equation over one's lifetime? So ethical hair transplant surgeons are thinking of your condition well into the future, not just what you might want done today. Something to think about. And I believe it is also why most reputable hair transplant docs will want their younger patients to wait until their mid-twenties; to see where their genetic hairloss is headed.

Any patient with family history of advanced classes of genetic hairloss need to know there will NEVER and I mean never be enough donor to cover that much hairloss. Something has to give. The good docs know this and don't want to see their patients fall into that trap of believing something to the contrary. REMEMBER, there are plenty of crooked ones that will tell you anything they think you may want to hear and they will gladly take advantage of you! :shock:

IMO patients with less potential of advanced classes of male pattern baldness, and respond favorable to hairloss meds could certainly consider surgical hair restoration in their mid-twenties. The demand/supply ratio is more equitable for those situations. I get asked all of the time, "Gill, am I too young for a hair transplant?" In addition to the meds it all depends on each patient's siutation, their hairloss potential, their donor density and supply, and their hair characteristics. What's the missing piece to the puzzle? Each patient's individual goals over a lifetime. If a patient then after fair consideration of all of the facts realizes there is not enough natural donor to meet their goals, they either have to adjust their lifetime goals or NEVER START SURGERY TO BEGIN WITH. I hope this has been helpful or at least makes some sense. :wink:

 

[Guest]

Gill i couldnt agree more.People must first try drugs in my opinion before they even consider having a hair transplant.Once a hair transplant is done its a major life long on going procedure to maintian.Most people will need 2 0r maybe 3 procedures to get really good coverage.Guys just do your research first before jumping into anytthing thats all im saying.

Damo

 

[Guest]

It certainly can make a big difference Damo! :wink:

 

[Guest]

As you have seen with my pics Gill i wouldnt take my hair transplant back for the world.But i did so years of research before jumping into it.
Damo

 

[Guest]

I remember it all well, here and other forums. You really have and continue to be an inspiration to me and the rest of us Damo!

 

[Mahair]

Only Quacks operate on N/w 2,s. P.S. Damo is not an inspiration. Although he looks okay.

 

[Guest]

Now why would you say that Damo is not a good inspiration? He has and continues to help other hairloss sufferers on this site and others. I have learned some things from him as well. He does not blindly allow himself to establish his opinions. If you really know his history, he is a patient who really did his homework and did not rush into anything. He encourages younger guys to look into the meds and not just rush into a hair transplant. He chose a talented reputable surgeon for himself and realized some great results! :hairy:

Keep up the good work Damo! :wink:

 

[Guest]

Gill thanks for the kind comments.I cant beleive people like Mahair have such a negative attitude towards sufferes in this forum.You are not setting a good example Mahair as there are alot of people who have had great success with having a hair transplant.I suggest if you dont have nice things to say then dont say them please.Keep them to yourself.

Damo

 

[Mahair]

Okay then we will only say nice things about hair transplants and forget the hundreds of thousands of guys wearing hats because of it. Your results are not typical damo. Typiically its one step forward two steps back or worse. I am also surprised by Gils comments to me. If it didn't happen I wouldn't post it. Will you be available to councel people who go forward and get messed up based on the go for it laser comb over the moon B.S. . Will you? I get e-mails all the time from messed up displaced persons all the time. You don't. I will counter any surgeon consultant or otherwise on issues of density, naturalness, future hairloss, shockloss, scaring, etc. Know anybody thats had 7 surgeries and still looks bad? I do.

 

[Gorpy]

Personally I like to hear Mahair's honest opinion. These forums can be very informative, however human nature dictates that we try to be encouraging and sometimes overly nice. People considering a procedure deserve to hear both sides. Give me the GOOD, the BAD, and the UGLY.

 

[Guest]

Mahair i understand where your coming from but i could give you hundreds of people that have had very sucessful hair transplant's. I always tell people to go Meds first before jumping into a hair transplant as there can be dangers involved in having a hair transplant.Unfortuntely there are alot of non ethical doctors out there just willing to operate on your head and not care about if theres going to be results or not.I try and let people know that you must do your HOMEWORK before rushing into a deceison like this.Simple things like meeting past patients and speaking to them is the first step.I totally agree that there has been alot of cases where hair transplant's have gone horribly wrong and people are ruined for a lifetime but theres alot of the other extreme too.Like anything in life you do your research before jumping into anything head first.Im also curious why you said that my results arnt typical?

Damo

 

[Guest]

Well it's nice to be back from a week of holiday vacation and had some real nice times with friends and family. I hope you all had a nice time as well and Happy New Year to all!

Damo, you're very welcome and I know we both had very positive experiences and results with our multiple hair transplant procedures. And you are correct in that many, many patients have and continue to achieve very nice results with surgical hair restoration. But as we both know, not everyone does. Some patients just do not make good candidates or are not candidates at all. And those individuals need to be advised of just that.

There are a host of reasons why one would not make a good candidate including other diseases and conditions affecting the patient. Generally speaking, those who have family histories of advanced classes of hairloss will not have the donor supply to provide enough coverage throughout the scalp. Something has to give. It also depends on each individual's goals. Some guys are fine with adding some hair to the front and mid-scalp and do not care about the crown loss. They just don't want to appear "bald" and want a nice frame to their face. They elect to go with higher hairlines recognizing the lack of supply. BUT THEY DON'T GO INTO hair transplants BLINDLY. They do their research, establish "realistic" goals and understand that one does not need to achieve massive density to "look restored".

The point is that EVERY patient needs to do their homework! Everyone needs to understand the benefits of surgical hair restoration AND the risks. Even after extensive research there are risks that cannot be pre-determined such as extensive shockloss, scarring, etc. Each individual patient heals differently from each other. I have personally met with over 10,000 and probably closer to 12,000 individuals now since following the industry. It is a very diverse mix of patients who never had any procedures to patients who had prior hair transplants both good and bad. Some of those prior hair transplant patients had great results, some had horrific results, and even the marginal ones. From just about every national origin, race, sex, and age. For anyone to insist that hair transplants are doom and gloom for everyone is abolutely absurd.

The advent of FUT technology came into existence in the early 90's partly pioneered by Dr. William Rassman. A number of reputable hair transplant surgeons helped to refine this technique over the years to where present day, very natural aesthetic results can be achieved. And of course we now have FUE methods available as well. I have physically seen alot of very nice work! But the happy patients get on with their lives and do recognize that more work will undoubtedly be needed in the future.

So the informed patient with realistic goals who also took the time to research a reputable talented hair transplant surgeon can expect a nice result. Oh sure there are exceptions as I pointed out earlier but they are in fact the exception and not the rule.

One of the critical issues in hair restoration that is rarely discussed or recognized is the "psychological impact" of hair transplants good or bad.

 

[Mahair]

Well put. In other words you cannot trust any doctor in this field.Just for giggles I did do some research microscopes etc. Did'nt mean a thing. I was disfigured anyway. I asked many questions. All were answered in H/T sales form. Nothing to worry about. Gil why are so many f,ing people living under hats? I guess they didn,t do thier research eh. I guess the only way to be safe is to stay away from this quack field huh.This so called field of medicine (puke) has caused way more harm than good.You know that better than anybody. Did Dr. Shapiro make me look less freaky? Sure. Am i suppose to be elated. Never. BTW I will be in for my third SURGERY in three years in a few months to touch up this mess. (former N/W 2 )Now on SSI due to nerve damage caused by it. (Thanks "Dr." Magdalin)Mr. No complications.

 

[Guest]

Mahair,

You may have done "some" research on the dynamics of surgical hair restoration but IMO not enough. With adequate research you no doubt would have concluded that you did not need any hair transplants. You have told me that yourself. You would have known that you were really a candidate for Propecia and not surgery but I think you responded to your hairloss very emotionally at that time. You wanted the quick fix. Any of of us can understand that. Even your own girlfriend at that time told you she did not think you needed get a hair transplant. You had a full head of hair, anyone could see that, yet you insisted that was what you needed. No one held a gun to your head. What gets me is that you were very suspicious of the answers you were given in MHR's consultation yet you proceeded to go ahead and did not even get a second opinion from anyone! You can really go just about anywhere in the hairloss community and find out horror stories about MHR, Bosley, and the rest of the hair mills. It's all public information and has been for years.

And then you approach Dr. Shapiro who in his graciousness and empathy took you under his wing, flew you "several times" to Minnesota from Boston round trip, paid for your hotel, etc at no cost to you whatsoever, AND YET HE WAS NOT EVEN THE DOCTOR WHO BUTCHERED YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE. And then you are going to blow him off like that?!? That's very indicative of your character and IMO just proves you are self-centered and angry. I don't believe you ever thanked him publicly, even once. If hair transplants are so bad "for everyone" then why did you aggressively pursue so many talented ethical hair transplant surgeons for more surgery after you were botched the first time? So it's okay for you to try and discourage everyone from hair transplants yet behind the scenes you are asking reputable talented surgeons to do free work on you? And who is paying for your next procedure? About the only thing you have accomplished is to continue to try and poison everyone else due to your own past misfortune. What you fail to understand is that those patients who "adequately" do their homework know what you are attempting to do in the hairloss community, expressing hostility.

You were banned from other forums for this same type of doom and gloom hype and you admitted that you were being an extremist radical and then no more Mahair. You go into hiding for awhile only to re-appear with even higher levels of hostility. Do yourself and the rest of us a favor and go back to your Psychiatrist. I am not trying to be offensive with you, it's just the facts Mahair. You have shared all of these facts on Spencer Kobran's radio show and on other forums so I'm simply sharing the information you have made public. But IMO you are in no condition to be offering "any" type of advice until you have gained some mental stability and are able to once again to behave responsibly. Best wishes to you in your recovery.

 

[Mahair]

I am and will allways be eternally grateful to Dr. Shapiro for what he has done for me. I am also surprised at the improvement he made given what he had to work with, I told you this. Why are you trying to twist what I said, as if I am blowing him off ? I never went around asking doctors to work on me for free either. Where did you get that? When Dr. Shapiro saw the extent of the damage he offered me his services. I never asked. He has been exteremely generous to me and he knows that I am very greatful to him. What would you have done if you went from a n/w 2 to looking patchy bald with mini-plugs on your head? You would want to look normal . What happened to me has been an asthetic nightmare .We will just forget about the nerve and vascular damage. I think you would be warning people too if the shoe was on the other foot. Sorry if I have offended anybody with my posts.

 

[Guest]

Mahair,

Just read your previous posts on this thread. Your words hardly contain any thankfulness or gratefulness and this is the first time you have mentioned any gratitude publicly.

But let's get this back on track and on the real issue Mahair. We all understand and recognize the fact that there are still unethical hair transplant doctors out there. And yes bad things can happen as a result. We do appreciate your and anyone's feedback on the deceptive practices of certain individual doctors and/or clinics.

You know first-hand that I have been there as a friend to support you through all of your post-op trauma. To refresh your memory, you first contacted me right after you had your consult with a FUE surgeon you met in NYC specializing in repair. You were the one who told me you also contacted a reputable hair transplant surgeon in Florida because you wanted my opinion of him. You also publicly mentioned that you lost everything from your business, your home, and your girlfriend. I listened to Spencer's radio program when you told your entire story so please don't try to imply I am making anything up. All of this are your own words Mahair.

Now that I have refreshed your memory, why don't you just tell the "full story", the fact that yes you had a terrible experience BUT that you also had some good corrective care at no charge. You have been the recipient of both a nightmare AND a blessing.

Don't just SLAM the entire industry expressing all of your anger on a self-served agenda because that's also deceptive and makes you no better than the ones who deceived you to begin with! Think about that for a minute. And why did you not respond to the fact that you have been banned from other forums in the past for this same type of demeaning behavior?

Look Mahair, you have been through ALOT but that does not mean the entire industry is crooked and that no one should ever get a hair transplant. Otherwise everything you are posting is quite hypocritical to your getting more procedures done now and in the future. In one breath you put down ALL hair transplant doctors and then you turn around and finally thank the one who helped you because you were called on the carpet? Which one is it? Possibly you just don't want to see anyone else have success!

As I said Mahair, you have been the recipient of both sides of the industry so please quit disrespecting the good hearted honest talented doctors and the rest of us in the hairloss community. Keep it real.