FUE hair transplant with Dr Mark Tam on 12th Dec 2020 (~1800 grafts)

[BadHairDay]

Hi all, just writing up my hair transplant experience for the benefit of anyone still doing their research and to help give a bit more exposure to Mark, who I would highly recommend to anyone looking to improve their hairline.

I had contacted a few clinics initially but only managed to speak to admin staff and was awaiting actual responses. Mark himself replied very quickly with instructions to do the complimentary pre-assessment by email, so by the end of the next day I already had an estimate for cost and an idea of what was achievable. I found Mark's online content especially helpful, his photos/videos on YouTube/Instagram make him very personable and showed a lot of transparency to the whole process.

The actual consultation was not rushed at all and there was no pressure to make any decision. Mark took the time to go through my long list of questions and set realistic expectations on short-term and long-term prospects of the surgery. I never dealt with any admin staff throughout the process, and Mark was always very responsive to my emails.

The day of surgery was not rushed at all either, it's mostly a day of relaxing and staring at the floor or watching TV depending on the stage of the procedure. Mark does the most critical stages of the procedure himself - the extraction and recipient site creation, his team of technicians do the placement of the hair follicles, then Mark does a final check under his microscope. He is very proud of using the finest tools available to minimise the amount of damage and this was evident with my recovery.

My result after the surgery was much better than I had seen and heard from other people online, with no pain or scarring afterwards. There wasn't even any scabbing around the transplanted hairs which was surprising. It took longer than expected for the transplanted hairs to shed (about 3 weeks), but it did happen eventually and now I'm eagerly waiting for the new hair to grow back.

Mark was at the top end of the price range from my research and I would say it was absolutely worthwhile to get the best result. The actual surgery itself is probably similar wherever you go, but what you are paying for here is the personal level of service from Mark, the calm and unrushed approach, the incredible attention to detail, and the best pre/post-surgery care.

Hope this is helpful and good luck to all!

 

[Bigmac]

Hi Badhairday.
Welcome to the forum and thanks for sharing your story.
Everything sounds like the whole experience and aftercare has been great. Dr Tam does like to keep in touch with his patients after their surgery.
The placement looks good, very clean and refined. I think you will end up with a great new hairline once it's fully grown.
How is your donor area looking?
I'm looking forward to following your progress.
All the best.
Bm.

 

[BadHairDay]

Thanks, glad you agree with the quality of the result. Mark showed me on the microscope at the post-surgery check-up how the follicles were placed, with single follicles at the front of the hairline and multiple ones further back to give a more natural looking result. Also how the direction of the implanted hairs match the direction of the natural hairs. I think these are all the finer details I had not considered or was even aware of before.

I didn't take any photos of the donor area unfortunately but the recovery seemed fairly standard, I had a small amount of bleeding that stopped after one day, then after that I was just washing it as usual. A couple of spots were painful to put pressure on so Mark gave me another bottle of anti-septic lotion to wash my hair with and it went away after a few days. One other detail that Mark showed me on the microscope was how he had left individual follicles behind when extracting from a group of multiple, to minimise the number of areas with no hair. My friends saw it around 12 days after the surgery and they could not tell that anything had been done.

 

[Bigmac]

Dr Tam is very knowledgeable. It’s good that he goes into the finer details and shows you what he is doing. You’ve come away knowing some of the finer points of surgery.
Nice that your friends weren’t able to tell anything had been done to your donor. Once it’s grown out you’ll probably look like you’ve never had any hair loss issues.

 

[BadHairDay]

Just wanted to add a follow up now that it has been around 6 months.

My hair was completely back to normal by around 4 months and that's when I went for my first proper post-lockdown haircut. A few of the transplanted hairs are still a little more curly than the natural ones but hopefully they'll straighten out after more time to settle in. When I told the hairdresser that I had a transplant done, he said he would not have been able to tell, overall couldn't be any happier with the outcome!