I would like to share my Hair Transplant experience with Dr. Paul Shapiro at Shapiro Medical Group.
I am 62 years old and started to bald in my late 20’s. At 62 I still feel like I am in my 30’s (and act that way according to some of my friends). I have never been very interested in cosmetic surgery but wanted to look more the way I feel. In all honesty I was very nervous about doing any cosmetic procedure.
Everyone at SMG was great from the consult to the final procedure. Dr. Paul answered all my questions thoroughly, took a lot of time with me, and showed me lost of photos of other patients similar to me. He also gave me names of other SMG patients who I could speak with. I finally took the plunge and had surgery on 8/24/07.
I arrived at 7:30 and was done at 5:30. The staff was very professional, friendly, and personable. I slept most of the morning due to the valium. Then in the afternoon watched some movies and had conversations with the technicians. They are a great bunch with a good sense of humor and very caring. The day was much easier then I thought it would be. The only pain I experienced was when they were injecting the anesthesia and that was not too bad.
Dr. Paul took out a strip that was 25 cm long and 1.4 cm wide. Because I had good donor density (about 100 FU/sq cm) and fine hair he decided to use DFU’s (double follicular units). He felt this would give me a better illusion of density in the central region while still looking completely natural. He gave me a table of the hair counts showing the total number of grafts(FU’s and DFU’s), the total FU equivalent, and the total number of hairs.
He explained to me that since there are two FU’s in each DFU he multiplied the DFU x 2 to get the FU equivalent. He also used an average of 5 hairs/DFU to calculate the total number of hairs. Below the table of my hair counts:

GRAFTS AND HAIRS
Type # Grafts # Hairs
1 Hair Grafts 442 442
2 Hair Grafts 1180 2360
3 Hair Grafts 914 2742
4 Hair Grafts 376 1504
4-6 Hair DFU’s 403 2015
Total DFU's +
total Grafts 3315 9063
Total FU equiv 3718 9063

The healing process has been uneventful. I have enclosed some photos me prior to surgery, the day after surgery and 10 days out when I got my sutures removed.
I had no swelling and very little bleeding from the donor site. The scabbing cleared up within 7 days.
I know the hair will shed and I will have a few months to wait for the hair to start to grow in. I guess if I waited until 62 I can wait a few more months.
I will post a photo album with pre-op, 1 day and 10 days post op. I will add to the photo album as my hair starts to grow in.

The work looks very clean. In about 6 months youll be looking like a 30 year old . Stay out of the mirror at much as possible for the next 3 months.Trust me on this

Please Grow Please,

Guess I'm a little slow in knowing where to navigate on this site, but WHERE did you see Baxter's photos (I noticed you commented on them)

Thanks!

PGP,
Ignore that last post. I see his pictures on the next topic. Oh dopey me.

Looks very good Baxter. That's a heck of a lot of hair. You'll soon need to invest in more combs

Baxter,

Congratulations on your recent HT with Dr. Paul Shapiro. You and I actually have a very similar hair loss pattern.

It looks like you are slightly above the average in hairs per follicular unit graft too which will help add some density.

Just so you know, I moved your picture album to the photo section of our community and can be found here.

I hope you'll keep us posted on your progress. Heal well!

Falc

Falceros
Thanks for moving the photos to the album section. That is what I tried to do but somehow it ended up somewhere else.