My today discovery

Stem cell; cell based hair therapy
1

As you might know by now, I got my 1st HST last summer.
you can find some of my posting and enthusiastic reactions and answers.

I am a Gho team because no matter what have been said already, I really do believe that they are proposing the best solution for now.

BUT, as some of you, I used to think and to trust the term “unlimited donor” and to believe that I could go far more dense with a Gho adventure then with any other HT Maestro.

Today, I had a correspondance in french as it is my mother language with HASCI and I have to say that what was brought to my knowledge is kind of disappointing.

I’ve asked the very straight question of the real limitation of HST? if it can be considerd as an “almost unlimited donor”?and what I can hope to achieve? I’ve asked about this 13.000 grafts patient mentioned by Gho himself in his interview with Spencer and all in all I was told a different story than what I always imagined.

First of all the 13.000 grafts patient is not 13.000 but a 11.540 grafts patient in 9 sessions.
Second information I got was that they could reach that amount because the patient has a very high density (above the average) and good donor zone.

And the conclusion was that HST can reach 10.000 grafts in 5 treatments, leaving no scars, which is good, instead of 10.000 grafts with a faster FUE but with scars and depleted donor.

I still reckon that the “no scars” argument is worth, but from what I also understood, they can hardly go higher than 10.000 grafts, unless you have very high density (the record being 11.540 with an exceptionnal patient).

Which make the “unlimited donor” dream not so true.

I still need a confirmation and wait for an answer, I admitted to them that altough they are cutting edge, what I understood from their site was far more optimistic.

What if it is really more likely to be a “one shot hair doubling”? meaning that you can move a maximum 10.000 grafts on top of your head and the 8.500 grafts that will regenerate behind are not so useful anymore.

I’ve explained them that in my mind, regeneration of hair meant that for example : if someone average available donor is 8000, and they can leave 85% untouched, they should be able to move these 8000 grafts two or three times and reach a 24.000 grafts.
Otherwise, the regeneration is just a “one-shot” to avoid a depleted donor which is already advantageous, but then, it should be described this way and not leave an open door for higher hopes.

I thought that in 2013, money was the only limit, I thought that HST was a very costy but unlimited donor solution.

But if their record is 11.540 with a high potential donor and FUE Dr Lorenzo managed 11.000 with a NW6, what is the benefits? apart from the scars free donor?

I hope I am wrong, it can be that they are just experiencing their limits and can not be affirmative about it because it might be to soon…
But really from what I got as an answer, written black on white, I have the impression that the advantage that was pointed, mentioned and sold, was more the “scars free” then the possibility of reaching Everest in terms of density for the recipient.

I really hope it’s not the case, I find them very professionnal, there is no pain, no discomfort in the treatment, everything is as smooth as described in their site, I just wish I had known or understood a bit better that they might have their limits.

It made me reconsider my strategy for dealing with my Hair Loss and HST, as I said, it is still the best for now.

2

You are being logical. If Dr. Gho can multiply hairs by using a part of the graft, and/or by using stem cells, he should be able to move thousands of grafts beyond what the average transplant doctor can currently do. He ought to be able to restore a Norwood 7, by moving grafts from the same donor multiple times because it has regenerated new grafts. Sadly, in my opinion, Dr. Gho is just performing basic FUE surgery. The comments his staff made to you show that he has not developed a breakthrough. Oh well.

3

Yes, it is exaclty that!
Any logical individual will translate “regeneration” as a possibility to repeat the process, and if they have that giant leap in advance on other HT surgeons, they should be able to bring you to unvisited lands, like 20.000, 25.000 grafts in recipient.

Because of this conversation with staff, I don’t know what would be my next move…
Either go on with them and wait for real Holy Grail to come up?

Or keep my money, enjoy my 1800 grafts for as long as they will bring me a satisfying appearance and then temporise and wait for real unlimited and guaranteed endless donor…

4

Caddarik79

You should post your story on tbt forum,thats the place where HST is discussed extensivley
Takes about a week after registration to be able to post.
After registration you get read only access for couple of days to make sure you are real man not a spammer

5

Well, in Gho’s defense, he’s on record talking about this very issue. In one of the Spencer kobren interviews he explicity said that it’s not unlimited. You can’t keep harvesting the same donor graft over and over. Something happends to the follicle when it’s bisected repeatedly that makes the hair start growing awkwardly. I can’t recall exactly, but he may have said you can hit the same follicle 3-4x and then you run into trouble.

6

yes but still with 3 times, the average available donor of a person is 40% of his horse shoe.
A full dense horse shoe is about 16.000 grafts, 40% is 7000 grafts.

if you can harvest this 7000 grafts, 3 times, you can have 21.000 and then you stop.

That’s why before knowing all this I was calling Gho the 75% Holy Grail…

So I don’t know why the limit would be around 8.000 to 10.000 and 12.000 is for very high density people.

When he answered Spencer and talked about this so called 13.000 grafts patient, he did not mention the very high density character of the patient, he just said, “for the moment we have a patient with 13.000 grafts and a very slightly depleted donor”.

The reality seems to be, we have a 11.540 grafts from an exceptionnal patient with very high density who doesn’t wish to share pitcures.

That’s not the same thing, I case that’s why the term “hair doubling” is used sometimes… he will duplicate your donor, means 8.000 in recipient, 8.000 regenerating in the back, but don’t ask him to go further, it’s risky if you don’t have very high density.

Well, OK, then, it’s not rocket science either to realise that this is a quiet limited technique for who wish to reach a high density and restore is NW scale…

7

that’s why I think they choose carefully some expressions like “from one hair you can make two hairs, from two you can have four” etc etc…

Because actually, it might just be it.
You can duplicate your donor and implant it in your recipient with a very conservative approcah (why no NW1 or NW0 hairline? just beacause they know at some point, they will be limited with their “unlimited donor zone”)

It makes sense, and suddenly I understand why the grumpy’s here call it “golden FUE”.

And if you are lucky and you have a 100 uf/cm2, your horse shoe is 25.000 instead of the average 16.000 and you can push to 11.540 harvested…

8

Same with the 2520 grafts sessions, exclusively for big head people with a very good donor and high density, but this, you will learn it when you visit them, not on the site.

So they are not really lying but they are not giving all the elements, we call it “omission” in french.

The lucky people will have between 1800 and 2000 in one session.
The very lucky have big heads and high density and good donor, they will reach the 2500 with no problem but they are not the majority, far from it.

The rest is around 1400 and 1600 I would say.

It’s really a slow coming conclusion, but from all the answers I have received from them, this is HST in its reality… at the moment.

I wish I was totally wrong, but from what they gave me, i’m not.

9

According to Dr A theres between 2500-10000 grafts avaialable in donor area, both extremes are rare,most patients are somewhere in beetween.

with multiplication 11500 isnt impressive, Ive seen some docs achieve that with fue/fut

lets say you have very bad donor of 2500 graft available with FUE, with has it should expand to 12 500, to actually lose 2500(20%) in your donor you need to harvest 12 500 grafts…

after analizing GCs recipients area and i found that ther is 1.35 hairs per graft on average, way bellow advertised 2.5 as they claim on website,

Normaly FUE/FUT gives you 2.2/2.3 hair per graft, HST gives you whopping 40% less than fue/fut…that patient with 11500 grafts has the same ‘hair count’ as somebody who had 7-7500 FUE/FUT

it explains why many people report thin looking results, even Spencer said so

10

I beleive they made it very clear. I remember asking them similar questions to yours and my understanding is that:
In each op the regeneration rate is minimum 80% so there is a chance of up to 20% lost grafts in each op.
The donor area is very thick so those lost grafts won’t be noticible at all and won’t leave big gaps or scars, but as you go for more HSTs the lost graft percentage will increase. So my understanding is that they can get to 10,000 or 5 procedures without any thinning or scars in the donor area. After that they still can extract more and more but thinning/gaps/scars might be noticible.
So if you don’t care about donor thinning or scars you can still proceed, so instead of having regular 10,000 FUE grafts with lots of scars, you might be able to get 20,000 grafts HST with the same level of scars/thinning or maybe less.

11

10 000?20 000 grafts?..

send hasci email and ask them if thats possible, im curious what they gonna say on that,

average donor area will get depleted after 10 000 grafts, only exceptional cases with big heads+great density are able to get that amount…then again big head needs lot more grafts in recipient too,

why you think Gho is so conservative when he can get 10 000 -20 000 grafts?

12

All what the two of you say seems absolutely correct.
I had the same thoughts, I was even wondering if the best would not be to reach 10.000 with regeneration with Gho and then, ask a FUE Master to re-use 5 to 10.000 with FUE method to extract full hairs and have a great recipient.

Anyway, the goal of people going for HT is not to shave their head since baldness is their nightmare.
If you have 20.000 grafts up and 10.000 FUE loss in donor, you don’t really care since at that level you can grow the top and donor to 2, 3, 5 cm and enjoy a normal haircut!!!

This is all theoritical, I think I will be less enthusiastic about going for a sceond HST to quick, I might decide to enjoy my 18000 grafts for the longest time and pray every day that another lab brings the CURE, and share it or spread it.

Finally Dr Nigam was not so wrong when saying that Gho multiplication was not what we were hoping, it looks like hair doubling…

13

11.770 grafts from Lorenzo.

In three sessions.

14

What I think is that we are the Gerard Jolings 2.0

What I mean is that we have to be realistic, with all these arguments, we just demonstrated that Gho is not the CURE, it’s a golden FUE.

But Gerard Joling was not even there when he started to fight his hair loss in the 90’s.

So, Gerard Joling is 52 years old and he enjoyed the rubbish transplants of the 90’s and then jumpred on the wave of HST, I think he made the only and right decision.

For us being 20 or 25 years younger than him, it could be that for the moment, we can use HST as he used 90’s treatment, to not be bald to fast… and then in the meantime, something much better will come and we will jump on that.

When you see his result, if you go to his FB page, the guy looks OK for a 52 years old bald programmed guy!!!

Means that for us, it can only be better, or at least the same.

The only huge point is money… will you give 5* 10.000K for a golden FUE and 10.000 grafts?

Or will you rather wait and cope with your baldness to preserve the most virgin donor possible for real multiplication treatment.

Last thing that I thought was, only people with really easy money can decide not to care for the non availability of multiplication right now, because, they can from now achieve let say 5 sessions, keep their hairs, deplete a minimum their donor and as soon as something like real multiplication or cloning come, it will be 5 to ten years from now, they will be able to multiply hairs to fill in what needs to be filled in the recipient for density and even be able to restore their silghtly depleted donor as much as today people filling their FUT scars.

Do you see my point?

15

… but then, if the real multiplication is only to come on 5 to 10 years, why wouldn’t people choose for FUE in three sessions to reach 10.000 grafts faster, and then use the 3.0 technology of tomorrow to restore donor and densify recipient?

16

in theory Gho could get from Dr Lorenzos patient 50 000 grafts,

in reality he would get about the same or a few 1000s more, but when you take into account that hst have less hairs per grafts in recipient+cost

also the fact that Gho doenst want to share his technique with experienced surgeons such as Dr Cole it kinda makes it look like he is hiding something.

Dr Cole is straight to the point , no bs type of guy…he would get to the bottom of it in no time

17

Yes, I imagine that’s why he is very cautious in interview, not sharing anything with other surgeons even for 50.000 K

I guess they protected themselves with this very cautious communication.

They should just admit that in terms of recipient results, they are not such a big deal compared to other FUE big guyz!!!
They might only be interesting for your donor aspect…which is disappointing as I really thought one could reach 30.000 to 40.000 grafts and I’m telling you, I was ready to do it slowly but surely with an annual rythm…

I am Norwood 3, and reached NW2 with my 1800, my plan was to densify here and there and anticipate hair loss, I was excited by injections and 70 grafts density, but if they can not beat Lorenzo in the total amount of grafts on recipient, I don’t see the point of waiting 5 long years to reach a not so dense NW3 or 2 with the pressure of your hair loss never ending…

I’m not even talking about NW 7 with thinning donor who are totaly out of hopes for the moment.

Because, even the very succesful Wassup from Dr Cole is not 40, it means that what he has achieved is cool, but he will probably re-enter this annoying process of losing density etc…

10.000 grafts is cool for a 45, 50 years old NW5 with a good donor, then he can really rejuvinate his appearance.

For 30 years old NW 3 or 4, it is another story.

For 28 years NW7, there is only very low expectations to have.

We definitely need a real hair multiplication, a real donor multiplied by 3 or 4 with only a final 15% depleting.

2013 is not so fancy, we have scars free FUE, this is where we seem to be for the moment.

I hope I will receive new answers that might contradict what we just have developped, I’ve always been a Gho enthusiastic, to the point that I underwent a procedure (and yes, no pain, no dicsonfort, regrow, professional staff)… but I was wishful thinking while I pretended we had 75% the cure.

18

If Dr. Gho could double the amount of donor hair that could be used, because he takes it and then it grows back, that would be a massive break-through. Unfortuntely, in my opinion, he is doing basic FUE and there are no new grafts that are grown. If you do one large FUE surgery on someone with average to good donor density, it would be difficult to tell that grafts have been removed. It’s when you hit the same area with a second or third pass, that the thinning becomes evident.

19

I think here you are wrong, I think they have a 85% regrowth in the donor.
The point is that with the limitations they seem to have, it looks like they cannot really re-use it!!!

If they could not reach what they claim in regeneration, they would have been attacked already, it’s easy for any patient to go and see another doctor and ask him about the donor zone situation.
With their technology and micro/macro-glasses, they can tell you if there is only extractions and no regrowth!

What makes no sense, is the very conservative and limited amount of grafts you can reach with a so called multiplication.
It’s mathematics, if they can regrow and reharvest the grafts more than once or twice, they should be able to provide 2 or 3 times what another FUE surgeon can provide.

So why not? Why do they stop people from having unrealistic expectations while 20.000 or 25.000 grafts would allow everything in terms of results…

And here is the problem.

So, in the end, they might have just been cautious enough to be protected, saying that from one hair you got two hairs (they don’t lie here).
But that’s it, you will transfer the same amount of hair as a normal FUE in your recipient, the only difference is that your donor will have 85% of its grafts, revived… but it won’t go further, for I don’t know what reason yet.

It’s really a big big question, because, in my case, even if money is not the problem, i’m still not a millionaire who will give 10.000 K each year for 5 or 6 years to reach what a good FUE doctor might bring in 2 or three years.

I was OK to give the money for something that could really bring a safe dense NW1 for the rest of my life, even if some recall visits would have been needed.

I really wonder if I should go for HST and its slow process or be more patient and wait what Aderans or Replicel will bring in two or three years.
Because even depleted donor patients will have options to restore their donor if something really multiplying was ever happening in the future, and these people will be the winners because less money thrown away.

I don’t want to deny the quality of their job, and still I’m six months post op, it should be even better in three.
But the cure as we see it, is not there yet… so, I really hope it will not take another decade for labs to bring it… it’s such a diamond business, the lab that finds the cure will be soooo rich, I don’t understand how come it’s not there yet.

20

I hope you go to that other doctor in Belgium, let him look at your donor and obtain his opinion. I’d like to hear what he thinks.