Hello everybody, I am new to this forum. It's nice to have such a forum, where others understand what I have gone through.

I have a very pluggy transplant result, which I have been trying to improve since starting in the late 80's. I will never have the great result some of you have attained, but I would settle for thin, normal looking hair. I am considering thinning about 80 or so nasty plugs via FUE, but I am concerned about losing the relocated hair. Those plugs are nasty, but they contain good hair, and I don't have any donor hair to waste.

I have seen widely varying estimates of the survival rate of FUEs from plugs. Please anyone who has thinned plugs via FUE, can you comment on your results? How many grafts survived? Is it better to totally excise the plug, if one is looking to preserve the grafts therein?

What is a % range of FUEs that survive? 25%? 50?
What doctor is the best at saving plug hair?

I am a Norwood 6, and have had about 7 surgeries. The initial 2 were the plugs, about 125 or so of them, done using the wonderful open donor technique. This was Dr. Weidig in the D.C. area, a guy who I would never recommend to anybody. After that, I had a few sessions with Dr. Dorang in Dallas,who did his best to camoflauge the plugs, then 3 small sessions with Dr. Limmer in San Antonio, the best doctor I have had. All these sessions after the plugs were strip grafts. I have a little donor hair left in the back (200 FUs max?), and a moderate amount of body hair. This is why I am so concerned about FU survivability from plugs: there is good hair in there, and I need it to live, or I suspect I won't have enough. I have plugs all over my crown; this was probably considered a "good" job back when plugs were the standard. If you recall "warren2", the Dr. Woods patient, I have a similar situation to him, but with a better hairline (than the "before" state), and possibly 20 more large grafts. I attach a few images.

I have received internet consultations from both Dr. Cole and Dr. Woods. Dr. Cole's people tell me to expect 60-90% survival rate, but claim they have no hard data to prove that, while Dr. Woods is more pessimistic, making survival sound like the exception, rather than the norm. Could it be that Dr. Cole does a better job at salvaging these grafts, or is their estimate just over-optimistic? Since Woods has been doing this longer than anybody else, I am hesitant to doubt his prognosis on this.

BTW, where do your survivability estimates come from? I think I have seen you on the posts as having undergone repair yourself? With which doctor? Are your estimates from personal experience?

I think I prefer the option of removing the plugs, suturing them, then redistributing them, instead of pulling FUs from them. This might explain the difference in quoted survival rate between Woods and Cole: excising an entire plug would seem to allow one to extract the follicles easier, wouldn't it? Especially if scar tissue is preventing easy FU extraction from the plugs. This is a very important issue, i.e. saving that plug hair.

Cole might be the best for my situation, but I don't understand how people can say that he is cheaper than Woods? They quoted me $12k for a full day of plug repair. Woods would do them all for $6k US, but he did say that it might take 2 sessions ($12k). To me, at best, Cole is the same price.

Detailed forum discussion for these pics can be found at:

http://www.hairsite4.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=12&topic_id=47416&mode=full