I write against hair transplants for 22 year old men. I think long-term on everyone and no matter what you may look like at 22, your hair loss WILL get worse in the next few years because genetic hair loss in 22 year old men is progressive and often aggressively so. You had 2800 grafts, that is possibly 35-40% of your total donor supply (depends on donor density) so what you have left in the donor area is ALL you have left to follow further balding as this WILL happen in the next few years. I wait until my patients are at least 25-26 before offering a hair transplant and I speak about this philosophy at medical meetings and I can tell you my views are not in the minority. It may be important for the readers to know that I make my living doing surgery so when I turn down a 22 year old, I do it for a reason and it is not for my financial benefit, but rather for the benefit of the patient. I have seen too many young men get surgery too young, and almost 100% of them regret the decision years later. The surgery commits them to years of more surgeries and possibly never looking normal if they run out of donor hair before their balding stops. I am very big on a Master Plan for all men I transplant which takes into account the progressive process of genetic hair loss that is close to 100%. I hope I am wrong on this one young man!
This man (in the following post), had he been transplanted with 2800 grafts at 22, would maybe not look normal at 35 and for the older man in these photos, he certainly would have a problem with all of his donor area used up in his 20s. https://baldingblog.com/need-master-plan-think-hair-transplants-photos/. In my many years in practice, I push for being conservative and not pushing surgeries until the patient is old enough and has a Master Plan worked out with me.
(Comment: For some reason, the person who posted this thread on Reddit took it down. Essentially he discussed his experience with deciding on (1) getting a hair transplant, (2) the surgery and (3) the immediate post-operative recovery. The entire post was a short term: https://www.reddit.com/r/tressless/comments/auux3x/received_a_hair_transplant_today_at_22_years_old/ narrative and that was my problem with it as you can see in the link I posted which shows what happens to many young men as they get older and if they rush into a hair transplant surgery, they may have regrets if and when the balding accelerates. Yesterday, I took care of a patient who had hair transplants in the 1980s when he was also very young, and I have been trying to make him normal ever since I first met him in 1995 when he came to see me looking like a mess, heavily scarred and deformed by the poor quality of the 1980’s work he had done and the progressive nature of his balding which left him with very little hair to work with.)
