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Paul_
Valued member
Hello everyone, I hope this post will help some of you that are going through the same stress and discomfort as I suffered this year. Detailed description below + photos (before repair, right after 1st repair surgery, and now after 2 weeks). I will update this thread after my 2nd intervention in March ‘24
Background:
Hairline and donor shown, before repair, right after repair, and now 2 weeks after repair
I hope this will help some of you here. It’s a terrible feeling to go through a botched HT, but thanks to amazing people like Dr Edward Ball, David Andersen, and the entire technician team, such abuse can be mended. I am grateful to them, and hope they will be able to help more people in the future. I would not let anyone else touch a single hair on my head now
Finally, I’d like to give a shout out to @Bigmac, Pierre, @Davy and @AJT , who have gone through several repairs themselves and helped / pointed me in the right direction. I owe you gents, you have my sincere thanks. I hope with this post I am paying it forward at least
All the best,
Paul
Background:
- I am a NW 3/4, with a very obvious bald crown and an odd receding hairline “gulf” right in the middle of the hairline
- After several years of using topical minoxidil, which helped somewhat, I took an emotional decision to get a hair transplant, after having done relatively little research. I had it done in Malaga, Spain, in a “good value for money” clinic, in Feb’23
- They did an awful bit of work on me, including not listening to what I asked of them – I ended up with about 900+ grafts hairline “reinforcement” they strongly recommended, which did NOT cover my balding areas in front fully, plus I had nasty multi grafts in front, pitting and ridging. And the crown with thinner coverage, 1800+ grafts added. The worst part is that I was overharvested on one side, as one of the techs was inexperienced. I always kept my hair short on the sides and at the back, and having to hide it under a messy, no-shape hairstyle now was killing me
- All the research I did not do before my surgery, I did afterward – to my relief I discovered that hairlines can be removed and donor areas repaired, by very experienced FUE surgeons
- I discarded SMP on donor as that is not the best long term option, for me at least
- I checked with the most renowned clinics in Europe about removing the implanted hairline grafts and restoring my donor with them, and got all kinds of answers
- From the positive answers, after much due diligence and a detailed talk with David Andersen (senior advisor at TMC, who helped me out a lot, guided me and put up with my silly, nervous questions) and Dr Maitland Ball himself, I went ahead with The Maitland Clinic, and that is the best decision I could have ever made
- 9 months after my first botched transplant, I flew to the UK and met with Dr Ball the night before surgery for my final check-up
- He was amazingly kind and empathetic (same as the first time we talked), answered all of my questions about the surgery, we discussed risks, technique, equipment, steps, team. He is extremely knowledgeable and it shows. We agreed on a 2 step surgery to remove the implanted hairline and reuse the grafts to fix my donor
- Why 2 steps? The first step removes most of the grafts, as long as the extraction punches do not overlap (if they do, they can cause bigger, more visible scars) and fixes the left side of my donor (most damaged, overharvested). A few months after, when the skin has healed, the 2nd step removes the remaining grafts from the hairline and fixes the right side of my donor with them. This approach allowed me to sleep on one side without damaging the grafts as well
- The surgery itself involved Dr Ball assisted by 6 (yes, 6!) Technicians (most clinics use 2, cutting cost and taking shortcuts at your expense). They are amazing ladies that had clearly been trained by Dr Ball (and had more experience than the surgeon who did my first transplant)
- Dr Ball did the extractions himself, with the most senior technician assisting him, and the grafts were carefully placed in a protective solution, with the rest of the techs carefully cleaning and dissecting them accordingly (e.g. a 4-hair graft was split in 2 x 2-hair grafts, so we could use them better for restoring the donor)
- The extraction was not simple, the grafts were badly angled and placed. I even had “piggybacked” grafts, which were placed one on top of the other. Dr Ball effectively did complex mini-surgery on me, opening up the skin over the grafts, removing the one on top and the one growing under the skin, one hair/root at a time. I would have developed cysts and infections and would have needed such surgery later on, had it not been for Dr Ball’s keen eye
- Once that was done, the next step was creating the sites where to place the grafts in my donor area where I had bald extraction spots, which Dr Ball did with a blade. This is delicate manual work and requires concentration to restore the right density in the donor area as a whole. I had bald patches from multi-extractions one next to the other, it looked patchy and moth-eaten
- The last step was done by the techs under Dr Ball’s guidance, where they used all the different types of grafts by hair count (1’s, 2’s and 3’s, “strong” and “fine” types) to best fill the holes in my donor area. The level of coordination and focus among them was outstanding
- The whole surgery took 8h and 759 grafts (~75% of the implanted grafts) were removed from my hairline and carefully placed back into my damaged donor
- As you can see below from the photos, I am healing quite nicely along the hairline, and my donor looks almost like new. This is a testament to Dr Ball & team’s technique. I followed the post-op instructions fully, and am using a silicone based anti scar cream now as well
- There are a few patches of hair where clumped grafts remain, the ones that were too close to each other to remove fully in one sitting (again, the aim is to not have several extraction punches merge and form one big scar). These will be removed in the 2nd surgery
- While I still look a bit awkward, I can tell you the relief I am feeling is tremendous. My skin feels normal again, without ridging and hairs "pulling" at it. I have a clear way forward and an amazing doctor and his team to follow through this with me
- In the future, I may use some more of the implanted crown hair to further fix my donor, if I see that my balding pattern advances. In don’t want to be left with an “island of hair” in my crown, and balding all around it
Hairline and donor shown, before repair, right after repair, and now 2 weeks after repair
I hope this will help some of you here. It’s a terrible feeling to go through a botched HT, but thanks to amazing people like Dr Edward Ball, David Andersen, and the entire technician team, such abuse can be mended. I am grateful to them, and hope they will be able to help more people in the future. I would not let anyone else touch a single hair on my head now
Finally, I’d like to give a shout out to @Bigmac, Pierre, @Davy and @AJT , who have gone through several repairs themselves and helped / pointed me in the right direction. I owe you gents, you have my sincere thanks. I hope with this post I am paying it forward at least
All the best,
Paul
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