7350 grafts (850 body hair) with Dr Villnow and Dr De Reys

I got back to London from the operation with Dr Villnow a few days ago and I am very happy with the result.

The surgeon was amazing and the staff were super professional. It was also a really plush and comfortable place to stay and…the price was great!! :slight_smile:

This was a big operation for me because it was the first time I’d got body hair grafts.

I started this whole journey as a Norwood 5 going on Norwood 6.

Dr De Reys in Belgium did some great FUE-only work for me, putting in 5000 grafts over two operations.

His work was great and here are some photos from that operation:

Now you can see that it’s already been a huge transformation from near-complete baldy to pretty good head of hair although you can

also see on those third and fourth pictures how thin it is at the back and along the sides of my head.

On the fourth picture you can definitely see the lack of density at the back.

I’d let the hair grow extra, extra long before I took those pictures so although the overall result was great and looks pretty fine after a hairdresser has worked with it, when it’s grown out you can see there were still some gaps along the back of the head and

the sides that could be seen.

Now I was Norwood 5/6 so respect to Dr De Reys but it was always going to be tough to fill up such a massive space. 5000 grafts is not enough and it looks to me like over 95% did grow through as well.

Now I knew I wanted a lower hairline. Up to now I kind of let it grow and combed my hair forward to cover the high temples, not ideal but a massive improvement on doing a combover at the back of my head like Mr Magoo!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I went back to Dr De Reys and asked him if he could do anything else for me.

He said I had some grafts left but I’d have to choose between boosting the back of the head or doing the temples - I didn’t have enough grafts left to do both.

Now, I’d heard about body hair grafts from reading up on the forums and so that was my next question - could I double up (or more!) by taking some of the hairs from my chest or my chin?

Unfortunately, Dr De Reys said he didn’t do body hair grafts at all because the operation was much harder and took much longer.

He said it would take him more than a day to get 500 body hair grafts because they’re much harder to extract - and also loads of body hair grafts end up being unusable so you get far fewer grafts in the end.

Also his operation setup, with his wife, the nurse meant it was just too much work for them to do.

Bummer!

So I’d more or less lost hope when Nick, Dr De Rey’s rep piped up and reckoned he knew a very experienced surgeon who could do FUE and body hair -at a good price.

The guy’s name is Dr Villnow and his clinic is alos in Belgium and he’s got one in Germany too.

Now I know nick gave me some great advice in the past so I decided to get a consult and see this guy.

Turns out, Villnow is some kind of celebrity doctor in Germany who’s famous for treating footballers and he’s always on tv or in the paper there. I thought he might be really expensive but Nick says he’ll charge the same price as Dr De Reys charges. For 1500 grafts it’s around 4000 euros which is still really, really good value - amazing price for a top European surgeon. For 3000 grafts

it goes down to 7000 euros but i know I haven’t got 3000 grafts left :frowning:

So I asked Nick why the guy doesn’t charge more and Nick says he’s got two clinics, one in Belgium and one in Germany and he does two operations every day so his prices are lower.

That was a shock at first. I knew how long it took for Dr De Reys to do an op - it took like till 9 in the evening one day so I ask him, how can he do 2 operations a day, doesn’t he get exhausted?

nick says the guy works with a team so he doesn’t get exhausted. I suppose that’s kind of standard now although I liked the fact that De Reys worked on his own. I like the thought of the surgeon doing all the work. Nick says sure, but that way, it takes a lot longer. The surgeon gets knackered and can get less done in a day. Body hair is out.

Anyway, you get the picture, Nick is pretty persuasive so I set up the consult through him. I speak to Dr Villnow’s rep whose name is Etienne and in a few weeks, I’m flying over to the clinic in germany. It’s in Dusseldorf. Right in the centre. Nice little city with a stream or a canal that goes through the middle.

There’s a hotel there next to the little river called the Breidenbacker Hoff and that’s where Dr Villnow has his clinic, on the side of the building where the hotel is in.

I found out later that the hotel and the doc have some arrangement so patients can stay there - in fact the clinic opens right into the hotel with its own door!

Dr Villnow is a very, very nice guy in person and very professional and very experienced. Turns out he’s been doing hair transplants for more than twice as long as Dr De Reys and he set up his clinic in the early 90s. Reckoned he was one of the first hair transplant doctors in Euroep.

I ask why he’s not more well-known and he says most of his business comes from Germany, Russia and Saudi Arabia although he has a lot of celebrity customers from the States too.

he checks my hair and says I’ve got about 1500 grafts left in my donor area which he could use to fill out my temples and also fill in the two lines along the top of the head where the density is not so great.

He checks my chest and says I’ve got plenty of grafts there. He says he could take 1000 from my chest and fill out the crown to maximise the density.

Now I’ve emailed a few other surgeons who do body hair and they all had monster waiting lists and I know I don’t want to wait till next year or whenever so my last question is, when can we do it. He says, in two weeks!!!

He says he had a cancellation although his pro-style operation (he calls himself the hair transplant pro - cos of all the footballers! :slight_smile: ) can handle a lot more patients than Dr De Reys so he could have fit me in a month and half later if normal.

Great news for me. Good price, done soon, not next year and a top surgeon. I checked his clinic out as well and it is really first class (I got some pics of that later on)

It’s on!

OK, so that’s the background, now the bit that counts - the photos! First, when I arrive, I’m staying in the clinic’s own in-patient

overnight rooms. They are seriously plush! Here’s some photos I took:

This is the door to the bedroom.

This is the couch and bed - you can see it’s pretty nice indeedy!

This is another photo of the bedroom - that MAc book doesn’t come with the room, it’s mine!

The bathroom was a real highlight

Here’s another bathroom photo

So overall, nice digs, on a level with a posh hotel. And, with a 24 hour nurse on call, pretty safe. The main bonus (for me) was that it’s all included in the price - no need to book a hotel anywhere (although I guess if you go with your family you could stay at the main hotel but it looked really proper 5 star to me).

I stay there on the first night before the operation and I’m up bright and early the next day. It starts at 8am!

Right, so before the operation begins, I hand my camera over to the doctor. His team come in, two ladies and they start to shave my

head and then they took some photos. Now this is the first time I’d seen my head shaved since the last operation. Now you can really see the hairline that Dr De Reys constructed. here are the photos:

You can see on the last two photos how the hairline is pretty high. Now don’t get me wrong, this is a million times better than where it used to be - at the back of my head! So Dr De Reys did fantastic work although he was kind of limited by the number of grafts I had. Still you can see the evidence here. This is quality work from the Belgian bruiser! So what do the smart German scientists have planned?

First off Dr Villnow (who is a truly lovely guy, always smiling and joking and also very reassuring) and I discussed the plan. He said there were 1500 grafts left in my head and he would lower the temples and fill in the areas along the side where the density was low. He said on the next day, the body hair grafts would go in.

Next he asked if I wanted something to help me sleep. Now I made a bit of an error of judgement here. I remembered that the operation with Dr De Reys was painful in places so I immediately jumped at the chance to have something to make me sleep. The nurses hooked me up to a drip and I got something that pretty much knocked me out straight away.

What I didn’t realise was that each patient was only allowed to have a certain amount of this stuff and I shoulda kept it in reserve for later in the operation because it was a real ace in the hand. It knocked me out straight away and I slept through the extraction and the part where the doctor makes slits in your head to put the grafts in - I slept through like two thirds of the operation.

The first day sailed by but thinking back, I think oughta have saved the drip for the second day - the body hair part. More on that later.

Anyway whilst I was floating around the city happily in my little dream world, the doc took the camera and did the extractions. I was well away within 5 minutes so I remember none of this. Nor do I remember him making the incisions. Luckily they took photos and

here they are:

OK, that’s a bit gruesome but remember - I didn’t take theses photos! :slight_smile:

In this part he took out the 1500 scalp hair grafts - and I didn’t notice a thing!

Now the next set of photos are really interesting. It’s where the doc marked out the areas where the grafts (including the plan for the body hairs) are going to go in. His job now was to cut the incisions in the head.

Here’s the photos:

So you can see the doc’s plan. Pretty comprehensive way to sort out the low density spots. I reckon the second and third photos

there are best. You can really see his plan for how the new temples will turn out. Much more natural than the far back ones I had.

Now here’s a photo from after the incisions were done:

NOw it’s probably not a surprise to you that I didn’t take this photo either so the thing is, I can’t tell if there grafts are in there already or not. Or if this is just a photo after the incisions were made. You guys see it?

Either way, you can really see where the grafts went in on the next set of photos which were from day 2 - body hair day!

But before we go on, I just want to say what time we finished the day - 3pm! It was all done, extraction, incision and implants

within 7 hours. This was a shock because I’d had 10, 11 hour days with Dr De Reys. The main thing was the team working in twos were

able to do twice the work in the same time. At the end, I was buzzing - it was so smooth and so fast. I hardly noticed a thing. If I’d been having just FUE scalp then this would have been a total breeze, like no pain at all (ok I think you know where I’m going

with this story… :wink: )

So here’s the photos from the next day early in the morning - we started at 8 again.

Bit bloody cos the scabs have started to form although on that last photo you can see where the body hair grafts are gonna go.

Now back to my error of judgement. Thinking I was smart, I ask for the drip again and I got it again. But because the doc needs to make sure you’re not going to walk away an addict or something, the amount he can give you over the whole two days is limited. So if I’da held off on the first day (and just relied on the local anaesthetic only that you get anyway which is injected into your head), I coulda got more on the second and it turned out - I’d need it!

Body hair extraction is a completely different number to scalp hair.

First off, you need a ton more anaesthetic because if you think about it, the chest is much, much bigger than the back of your head - right? Secondly it turns out that not all chest hairs can be used. My hairs go curly under the skin so not all the grafts are usable. More have to be extracted than can be used in the end so this makes the extraction into a monster marathon compared to normal scalp FUE.

Even with two technicians doing the extraction (both of them were clearly very, very experienced at doing it - like they’d done it thousands of times - they just went right at it).

Even with two it took till 1.30 pm and we’d got 850 grafts. Now I’m a tough guy, I can handle pain but at that point, I was done. I wish I coulda slept through it like I had on day 1 but even though the plan was to take out 1000 body hair grafts (which the doc said I definitely had in me), I stopped it at 850. It wasn’t cos the extraction was too painful (although it’s definitely not pleasant) but I just couldn’t lie there any longer (had troubles with my back in the past and it couldn’t go on).

The technicians said they couldn’t keep the grafts stored in the plasma blood solution for much longer and they needed to be put in.

So I made a decision just to stop right there. The doc was disappointed and I’m hoping I’m not going to regret it but 850 is all we got - still a mighty feat.

So, my tip to you guys who go for body hair - this is not a picnic. This is a long and tough op. Don’t do what I did and use up all your magic sleeping medicine on the first day. If I’d slept through it, I think I woulda been fine and got the whole 1000 but it didn’t happen. My bad.

Anyway, it turns out 850 is still a ton of grafts so here’s the next bunch of photos of my chest before the op!

And after the op:

Wooo! what a day. Glad when it was done! SCalp hair - piece of cake. Body hair - hard! Next step - get my hair washed. Here you can see the final results for the first time:

So you can see the 850 grafts are in, the 1500 are in. Still pretty bloody and my head is swollen from the saline in the drip. This doesn’t happen to everyone and it goes away in a few days. Still I look a bit like the elephant man and so a bit of time off is called for when I get back.

Right so, op done. i fly back to London the next day. I stay in the inpatient room for three nights. I order food to be delivered every night which is also included in the price (so I pig out a bit on burgers and pizza :wink: I figure I’m losing blood, right? :smiley: ).

The doctor’s staff are some of the friendliest people I’ve met. The place is as clean as a whistle and the result is looking perfect. Final verdict - this is a top doctor.

Right so yesterday I took the day 3 photos and these are going to be the first in a long line that I keep adding to. You can see the swelling is going down and now you can see the result properly.

This looks GREAT!!! I’m really excited!!! :smiley:

Now I know these grafts are gonna fall out soon and come back again in a few months but I am very, very happy with this. I know from Dr De Reys that when the hair came back, it was amazing. This time, it’s going to be perfect.

7350 grafts, 6500 scalp and 850 body hair = awesome!!

Going from NW5/NW6 to NW0/1.

All body hair and FUE, no scar - done.

I’ll be adding more photos soon (regularly!!) so watch this space. I usually don’t check my PMs so just post away below this thread and I’ll answer any questions you got.

Thanks again to everyone on this forum for their encouragement, especially Matt1978 for your cool, calm advice.

Take care guys and watch this space !! :smiley:

5 DAY UPDATES!

Now this is a real look into the future! My head is nearly normal (though still a bit swollen) again and the scabs aren’t really visible anymore and…the grafts are all still there! The rest of my hair has grown back to about the same length as the grafts so this is it! It’s the perfect moment after a hair transplant wehn you get to see what the final result will look like - before the grafts start to shed!

First though, here’s a photo of my chest.

Still a few holes but healing real fast, you can see there are scabs mainly on one side and the points on the other side are closing up. Didn’t really need to do much with this. Had some Vaseline on it for the first couple of days but didn’t do anything after that.

Not taking any kind of medication, painkillers or such - nothing. No trouble sleeping. It’s a bit sore but nothing major. Funny thing is the scabs are just about visible if all you’re wearing is a white tshirt. They look like little bumps.

OK, so now here’s some photos of my head, you can get a clear view of the way the temple hairline has been moved down here. It’s kind of been connected across if you know what I mean? My head is still pretty swollen!

Now you can see the hairline from the front. This is an immense improvement!!

OK, this is an awesome, awsome result! Just to get it into perspective, here’s three pics together. The one on the left is before the first operation, the one in the middle is after Dr De Reys put 5000 grafts in (it’s the same picture as the one after I had my head shaved earlir in the journal) and the one on the right is Dr Villnow’s new hairline with the temples down. Check it out!!

OK, this is a nice photo from the left. Doesn’t look so swollen on this side.

From the back

From the top

NOw these two photos are my favourite, just kind of close in so you can really see that hairline. I love the way it’s looking now and I can’t wait for it to grow through. This is the future for me!

So that’s it for now!


Day 7 Updates!!

Right so here we go with the next bunch of photos. This is pretty close to the last lot although now you can really see that my head swelling has gone and…the grafts have started to shed a little! Boo hooo!

Here we go:

You can see what I mean about the swelling going down really well on this next photo from the side…

So now these are the two where you can see the shedding. Can you see it on the top front there?

And on this one too, the new grafts are now just starting to fall.

Day 10 Updates!

Now at Day 10, I was expecting the transplanted hairs to be shedding and that’s definitely happening. The swelling is completely gone and the new grafts are falling out.

Here’s the first bunch of photos

This is where you can start to see the new grafts shedding properly…

It’s pretty easy to see on these two photos although I reckon the fact that the rest of the hair is getting longer makes it easier to spot.

So just to show how the grafts I’ve really started to shed, here’ a photo of Day 10 vs Day 5. I think you can see it right?


Two week updates!

OK, the two week mark is here. Got some chest photos for you this time but first the head. All the swelling is now most definitely history although the shedding has defo set in now too. As you can see, there’s no shock loss going on! Here’s the first set of photos:

And here’s the big one! The chest! 2 weeks after the OP, the soreness is gone and it’s all healing up nicely :))


Three month photos preview! And the rest of the one month photos tooo :wink:

OK, I’m going to jump the order a little and drop a couple of photos I took today. This is at three months after the op:

Here’s the first photo:

Guess what? It’s all growing already!!

On that second photo you can see that the transplanted hair is already starting to grow. Thats the new hairline that Dr Villnow put in.

And here’s a sneak peak at that body hair on the crown…

GROWTH IS AWESOME! And it’s only three months. Nothing grew till five months in the last two ops so this is looking great already!! Can’t wait till the full twelve rolls by :)))))

OK! That’s all you’re gonna get :slight_smile:

Here’s the full set of one month photos :smiley:

OK, here’s a taste of that afro style!!!

It is rocking most definitely now! All this big stuff at the front is mostly Dr De Reys work but those temples are also pretty nice thanks to Dr Villnow who added in the finishing touches. Still you can now really start to see how the growth has been awesome. The hairs are now mega-big and I’m starting to have fun with that! :slight_smile:

Now, that photo is from the twelve month mark after the last op with Dr Villnow (and like a year and a half or something since the last op with Dr De Reys). Reckon it shows that you just got to be a bit patient with growth. Doesn’t always happen in twelve. But if you wait, boy, is it goooooood!!!

Now that’s not to say that the growth at 6 months was bad, no sir. Check out these photos below from 6 months after the op with Dr Villnow.

Hi William,

Appreciate all time and effort you made in putting this report together - very interseting.

Looks like you got a great result at a very reasonable cost - I’m really pleased for you :ok: