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I’ve known Dr. Sharon Keene for over ten years and first saw her perform hair transplant surgery when she was working with Dr. Ron Shapiro in his clinic in Minnesota several years ago.  She has always impressed me as being very meticulous, dedicated and caring.

She has been recommended on the Hair Transplant Network for over ten years and is a member of the Coalition of Independent Hair Restoration Physicians. She has consistently garnered rave reviews from her patients, who often comment on our dedication and caring nature.

To view her recommendation and patient photos, view her physician profile.

Just recently I had the pleasure of watching Dr. Keene and her staff perform an ultra refined hair transplantation at her full time office in Tucson, Arizona. It was obvious that she’s only gotten better with time. She continues to be very hands on and places many of the grafts herself. She is a stickler for quality control and feels she can monitor the process from A to Z best by working along side her medical technicians during the entire process.

Though she once did all pure follicular units, she now likes to use a limited amount of double follicular units (two follicular units that are very close together) when appropriate. She believes that this gives the patient the best illusion of density, while still maintaining complete naturalness, even under close inspection. She also feels that the careful use of some multi follicular unit grafts in the midscalp region also gives her patients the best financial value. I tend to agree that it is best not to be bound by pure follicular unit dogma.

Physician members of the Coalition of Independent Hair Restoration Physicians must meet and maintain the demanding standards set by this community and consistently produce excellent natural looking hair transplant results.  

Recently, we sought the input and opinions of our hair loss forum community about potentially inviting Dr. Timothy Carman to join the ranks of the elite Coalition.  View their input by visiting the Potential Coalition Membership for Dr. Timothy Carman.

Based on all the evidence we collected privately and publicly including patient member feedback and input from leading hair restoration physicians, we believe Dr. Carman has earned his rightful place in the highly esteemed Coalition of Independent Hair Restoration Physicians.

Feel free to congratulate him by clicking on his featured potential coalition membership thread above.

To see our criteria for Coalition membership, click here.  To see an exclusive list of all the physicians we recommend worldwide, click here.

View the official Press Release.

Bill - aka Falceros
Associate Publisher/Editor

Technorati Tags: hair transplant, hair loss

At the Hair Transplant Network, patients have the final say on which hair transplant physicians are recommended by our community. Thus, we would appreciate your input in considering one of our recommended surgeons for Coalition membership.

Dr. Carman has impressed our patient community with his dedication to providing ultra refined follicular unit hair transplantation and devotion to patient education since he was approved for recommendation on the Hair Transplant Network in August of 2008 (click here to view his recommendation). Thus, given his proven track record of producing excellent results, he is being considered for membership in the Coalition of Independent Hair Restoration Physicians.

In addition to gathering actual patient experiences, we often visit the clinics to meet patients in person and observe the surgical techniques (see the photos and highlights from dozens of visits). In June of 2008, Pat Hennessey visited Dr. Carman’s clinic in La Jolla and observed his ultra refined technique. To see highlights from Pat’s visit, view “Visit to Dr. Carman’s Clinic in La Jolla, CA”

We invite you to view his work and credentials and give your input regarding Dr. Carman’s potential Coalition membership. To view this topic, visit “Potential Coalition Membership for Dr. Timothy Carman”.

To see our criteria for recommendation and for Coalition membership, click here. To see the list of all current physicians recommended worldwide, click here

Bill Seemiller - aka Falceros
Associate Publisher/Editor

Technorati Tags: hair transplant, Coalition, Dr. Carman, hair transplantation, Hair Transplant Network

Only those hair restoration physicians who have a proven track record of performing state of the art hair transplantation are recommended on the Hair Transplant Network. An elite group of surgeons who regularly perform larger densely packed sessions of ultra refined follicular unit hair transplantation when appropriate for the patient qualify for the Coalition of Independent Hair Restoration Physicians. View our Coalition membership standards here.

Recently, we sought the advice and opinions of our online hair loss patient community about potentially inviting Dr. Bernard Arocha to join the ranks of the Coalition. View the Potential Coalition Membership for Dr. Bernardino Arocha on our discussion forum.

After visiting and observing Dr. Arocha perform live surgery (view highlights) and considering your input, we are pleased to announce and welcome Dr. Arocha into the Coalition of Independent Hair Restoration Physicians. Feel free to congratulate him by clicking on his featured potential coalition membership thread above.

To see our criteria for recommendation and for Coalition membership, click here. To see an exclusive list of all the physicians we recommend worldwide, click here.

View the official Press Release.

Bill - aka Falceros
Associate Publisher of the Hair Transplant Network and the Hair Loss Learning Center
View my Hair Loss Weblog

Technorati Tags: hair restoration, hair transplantation, hair loss, Coalition of Independent Hair Restoration Physicians

Our community was created by and for hair loss patients to share experiences, evaluate hair restoration physicians, and offer input on hair loss treatments that really work. For over 10 years, our discussion forum has enabled balding men and women to share the good, the bad and the ugly.

Today, over 350 patients have authored weblogs to share their hair restoration experiences and hair transplant photos with you. Below we introduce you to just a few of the patients whose hair restoration dreams became reality and the doctors who made it happen.

Join the ranks of these hair restoration super stars and create your own free hair loss weblog to share your experience and photos.

• Blogger “Wantego” came to us with a receding hairline looking for real ways to restore his hair. His research on our discussion forum led him to surgical hair restoration with Coalition member Dr. Rahal. Receiving 4374 follicular unit grafts, he’s been able to restore his “true” hair density and no longer shows any signs of balding. View his blog for a detailed account of his experience with photos.

• After receiving two previous hair transplants, “Phoneguy” found Coalition member Dr. Cooley by researching our community. Bothered by hair loss in the frontal half of his scalp, Dr. Cooley placed 1947 follicular unit grafts into the areas of thinning hair, eliminating signs of baldness. “Phoneguy” has quickly learned why other Dr. Cooley patients refer to themselves as “Cooleyfied”. You can read his experience and view his photos on his blog.

Our patient driven hair loss community contains thousands of real hair restoration success stories and before and after hair transplant photos.

Recently, discussion  forum member and journalist Brian Beacom shared his hair transplant experience with our community. He is so pleased with his results that he used his journalist skills to athor a book titled “Diary of a Hair Transplant - A Journalist’s Search For David Cassidy Hair“.

In this enjoyable and personal testimony, Brian details not only his hair transplant experience, but how hair loss affected him and his great longing to restore his youthful appearance and acquire hair like the Partridge Family’s David Cassidy. His desire for the lustrous locks of a rock star captured his mind to borderline obsession until he found world renowned Coalition Physician Dr. Farjo that helped turn his hair restoration dreams into reality.

The book features his futile attempts at hair regrowth using a multitude of various alleged hair loss solutions and an attempt at understanding how those with hair love to mock those with male pattern baldness. Inevitably, Brian shares his reaction and research that led him to restore his hair through surgical hair restoration and how the Hair Transplant Network patient driven community helped educate and nurture him through the process.

For those of you struggling with losing your hair and interested in reading a personal and thorough account of one man’s hair restoration journey with photos, you may want to pick up a copy of “Diary of a Hair Transplant - A Journalist’s Search for David Cassidy Hair“.

At last year’s Annual 2008 ISHRS (International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery) scientific meeting, Pat Hennessey, publisher of the Hair Transplant Network video interviewed almost 20 leading hair restoration physicians recommended by our community to help our members and visitors learn more about our doctors.  During the last several months, we edited these interviews and redesigned the video section of our website.

We encourage you to view these hair transplant physician expert video interviews to learn more about each doctor’s philosophy, technique, and hair restoration experience.

Many of our recommended physicians have already been video interviewed and can be found on their recommendation profiles. The new videos have been added to the Hair Transplant Network doctor profiles however, physician member profiles of the Coalition of Independent Hair Restoration Physicians are still in the process of being updated.

You are encouraged to view these existing and new interviews. View the Physician Hair Transplant Interviews.

To see an exclusive list of the doctors we recommend and their profiles, click here.  To see our recommendation criteria, click here.

Bill - aka Falceros
Associate Publisher/Editor

Technorati Tags: ISHRS, International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery, hair restoration

During 2008, despite three lawsuits attempting to suppress free speech on our hair loss forum, we prevailed and our members continue to share their honest opinions and experiences. The “free speech” we enjoy on our forum is far from free. Our legal costs for 2008 were over $100,000.

As much as we dislike paying attorneys, we’d rather pay them than give into legal intimidation and delete true but unfavorable posts or allow hair restoration physicians with poor results to be presented on our community.

While other forums have caved into such legal intimidation (click here for details), we think the integrity of our community is worth paying a high price to maintain.  The other two lawsuits have been dismissed and are thus no longer pending. We will also continue to protect our forum community from covert marketing (see “Free Hair Transplants for Posting”).

On a lighter note, we celebrated the ten year anniversary of the Hair Transplant Network this past September during the annual ISHRS physicians meeting held in Montreal. Leading physicians and patients attended our ten year anniversary party. For highlights and photos from the party, view the “Ten Year Anniversary of the Hair Transplant Network”. To view highlights from the annual ISHRS scientific meeting, click here.

This past year we carefully reviewed and added seven physicians to our recommended list, while removing five physicians who we believe no longer met our high standards for recommendation. To learn more about how physicians are selected, visit How we recommend Hair Transplant Physicians.

Only physicians who meet our high standards and continue to produce excellent results are recommended on the Hair Transplant Network. There are times however, that surgeons must be suspended in order to keep our standards high and maintain the credibility of our recommendations.

After the publisher of the Hair Transplant Network Patrick visited with and observed Dr. Paul Straub’s surgical procedure at his clinic in Los Angeles, the Straub Medical Group, he had serious concerns about the safety of his surgical hair restoration procedure and ethics. As a result, Pat decided to suspend his recommendation.

To learn more about Dr. Straub’s suspension and discuss this controversy, visit our forum topic Lawsuit Against the Hair Transplant Network by Dr. Paul Straub.

Before deciding to remove Dr. Straub, Patrick consulted with several well respected hair transplant surgeons to garner their input about what he witnessed. Every physician agreed that Pat’s concerns were merited and justified. Some of these physicians also shared that they too had observed the same insufficiencies when observing Dr. Straub harvesting a donor strip during a medical conference.

Members of our hair loss discussion forum also had concerns about the mixed results reported by Dr. Straub’s patients.

Given what we learned about Dr. Paul Straub and his practice, we could no longer recommend Dr. Paul Straub in good conscious. As of the summer of 2007, his recommendation and that of the Straub Medical Group was suspended.

Have you ever wondered why so many actors have a full head of hair? Though it may appear that Hollywood is immune to male pattern baldness, many may have restored their hair with today’s revolutionary hair transplant procedures.

Thanks to the online collaboration between educated patients and quality physicians, today’s surgical hair restoration procedures can produce results so natural that even your hair stylist can’t detect them.

Ultra refined follicular unit grafting has raised the bar for physicians and their staff. Today, clinics dedicated to this revolutionary procedure can perform larger densely packed sessions when appropriate for the patient. A hair transplant surgeon must have a large and experienced enough staff to carefully trim all follicular units under microscopes and pack them closely together into tiny incisions carefully and timely. Only experienced and delicate hands can properly place grafts into small and densely packed incisions without damaging the grafts.

Thankfully, a handful of surgeons, such as members of the Coalition of Independent Hair Restoration Physicians have mastered this technique and regularly perform it with excellent results. Below we’ve provided a few recent examples provided by real patients sharing their stories and hair transplant photos with us. You are encouraged to offer your input on their hair loss blogs.