Transplant Failure To Grow

I had a hair transplant in November of 2004. The doctor was a member of IAHRS and had many good patient photos, and the procedure seemed to go very well from my standpoint. But I still have seen no significant results. I was a Norwood 3 with thinning in the frontal forelock. Now, my hair is significantly thinner on the sides, and while about 20 hairs grew in very quickly (about 2 months after the procedure they began to grow) no other hairs have grown in and my front is thinner than it was at the time of the procedure. I was wondering at what point can i be sure that no new hairs will grow in, and that the procedure did not work? Soon I will be 7 months post-op, and I still have no significant growth of the 1700 grafts I had.

Thanks for your time.

Generally I tell patients that by 8 months, fully 80+ % of the grafts should have reached styling length. That means that the growth should be well underway by now. On rare occasions, I see delayed growth, but that is not common. IF the procedure failed, speak with your doctor directly and ask him why he thinks this is happening. If he is a good person, then I would expect honesty and some reflection on his experience with this type of problem. He should be forthright and direct with you.

As a side note, many times when a patient tells me something is wrong, I make a point to focus on what the patient is saying, adding my observations to the mix. That is why a good doctor/patient relationship is important. Things can go wrong at the time of surgery that could cause this, but more often it is things that are not evident that need to be addressed. For a complete failure to occur, something bad happened at the time of surgery. But alas, doctors are not always in 100% of control of all variables. Pass me your doctor’s feedback and let me know.