Planning FFS with Facial Team, get hair transplants with them or another group?

[Anna Banana]

I'm planning to get FFS with Facial Team.  It looks like it'll end up being 3 phases:

Phase 1: FFS with Facial Team (forehead surgery, rhinoplasty, chin augmentation)
Phase 2 and 3: Lower face and neck lift (not with Facial Team, they don't do face lifts), and hair transplants (undecided with who)

What I've read so far is that it might be better to get hair transplants with another group, because FT's immediate hair transplant option takes the hair from the scalp (which might not be the best place to get donor hair), and because FT's technique is quite expensive (7,000 Euros, i.e. ~$8,300, for an unknown amount of hair follicles).

Is this true? Would I be better off getting hair transplants with a different group, rather than purchasing the immediate hair transplant option during FFS with Facial Team? If so, who should I be researching for hair transplants?

[AnonyMs]

I believe the advantage of facial Team is that the hairs they use would otherwise be wasted.

[Anna Banana]

I believe the advantage of facial Team is that the hairs they use would otherwise be wasted.

I asked Facial Team about their simultaneous hair transplant option.  If you don't opt to get the hair transplants, they don't remove a strip of skin from your scalp, they only make an incision.  If you do hair transplants with them, they remove a strip of skin and harvest hairs from it for transplant.

[anjaq]

Oh thats new information for me - I think I was told they have to remove a strip because they need to remove some skin so the skin in the face is not sagging because of the bones they removed. This is basically why I would opt for the hair transplant, because I would not want to waste hairs.

Another good reason though is that it will leave a scar only once. if another strip has to be taken out for transplants, it will cause another scar, unless they use the same incision, again cutting the nerves in that area.

What I did not understand now is why taking follicles from the scalp would not be a good option? Where else would the doctors take the hair from? Why would it be a bad idea to use the scalp hair?

[Anna Banana]

Oh thats new information for me - I think I was told they have to remove a strip because they need to remove some skin so the skin in the face is not sagging because of the bones they removed. This is basically why I would opt for the hair transplant, because I would not want to waste hairs.

Another good reason though is that it will leave a scar only once. if another strip has to be taken out for transplants, it will cause another scar, unless they use the same incision, again cutting the nerves in that area.

What I did not understand now is why taking follicles from the scalp would not be a good option? Where else would the doctors take the hair from? Why would it be a bad idea to use the scalp hair?

What I read was that scalp hair is more sensitive to hormonal changes, so less reliable, and that hair from the back of the head would be better.

Another thing that gives me pause is, what is the net effect of immediate hair transplants with FT? If they're doing forehead reconstruction with immediate hair transplants, then they have to raise the hair line so that they can harvest the strip, yes? If they then transplant it lower on your forehead, then it seems to my imagination like they're raised your hair line and then lowered it again with transplants.  Please correct me if I'm mistaken.

Then there's the question of how many units they're transplanting for 7,000 euros.  I'm not sure of the answer to that.

[anjaq]

I would not worry much about hormonal changes on hair - with proper HRT, the hair should not fall out!

Besides - AFAIK, the method of FT harvests the hair much further back than other surgeons, the disadvantage of this is that the eyebrows cannot be raised as much, though. They do have two ways to harvest the hair though - coronal or further back. There is an article describing this.

I think the part about compensating hairline raise with transplants is partially correct. With a coronal incision and forehead work, you usually have to take out a strip of skin to tighten the skin of the forehead and raise the eyebrows a bit. So with a coronal incision, you always will raise the hairline a bit, unline when using the hairline incision, whichlowers the hairline. However, this effect mainly happens at the center of the hairline. Lowering the hairline in that area would actually make it more M shaped, raising the hairline in the middle makes it more O shaped. Acoording to the hairline shape theory, the shape of the hairline is a stronger gender marker than actual height of the hairline. The transplants in the case of FT are then used to further round the hairline and also to compensate a bit for the raise of the hairline overall.

The price is clearly higher than with other transplant doctors. I am not sure why - my thought is a) they can charge more for it as patients will often want to have it in one go and not another surgery - also they do not want to waste the hair on the strip that is taken out. b) they have to work faster on the follicles as basically the strip is taken out during surgery and transplants are done right after surgery, so the timeframe is short and the planning has to be tight. Also the whole procedure is long - if you get a full FFS  and start surgery at 9 in the morning, the surgery will be over in the late afternoon, afterwards the transplants start. This can probably take until 9 in the evening, so the people working on the hair have to be paid overtime.

The price itself is higher, but the benefit is that there are no additional costs. If you do it separately, the only way you really save money would be to find a local surgeon who does it and who charges less money including anaesthesia. If you have to travel for getting those additional transplants, flight and hotel costs will drive the price up as well.

[anjaq]

additional Info from the FT quote I have gotten:
"(there is an average of 2,000 follicular units per strip, depending on size of donor strip)"

[Anna Banana]

the method of FT harvests the hair much further back than other surgeons, the disadvantage of this is that the eyebrows cannot be raised as much, though.

How problematic is this? I have really deep-set eyes and strong brow bones.  Eyeshadow basically doesn't work on me at all due to this (even with the tutorials for eye makeup for people with deep set eyes), and it's one reason I want to have FFS, so that I can wear eye makeup if I want to.

I have a minor bald area on the crown of my head right now, I hope that they wouldn't be taking the hair for transplant from that general area.  Actually I was hoping that hair would be transplanted to there, because I don't want to be a woman with a bald spot.

[anjaq]

Well - if you have a bald spot that does not go away with HRT and want to get rid of that, it may actually not be a bad idea to use that area to take the strip, because it would basically remove part f the bald spot, even if that means less or no hair can be harvested for transplants at that time - the improvement would then rather be in that area and not in the hairline. Of corse if you lack a lot of hair - bald spot at the back and hair loss at the front, a single transplant session like the one FT offers will probably not be enough - in that case it would make sense to get additional transplants. FT has I believe 3 or 4 different approaches to the scalp hair - depending on the situation you have now, they do coronal or hairline incision with transplants and with later transplants. They published an article on it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28234823