Choosing a Hair Transplant Surgeon

THE DOCTOR MAKES THE DIFFERENCE

Ensuring the hair transplant you pay for looks completely natural largely depends on the physician you choose.

Your choice of physician can make the difference for the survival and healthy growth of the donor grafts, the appearance of the transplanted hair when it comes through and your pre, during and post operative experience.

Along with conducting research into your choice of clinic, examining before and after images of patients, the surgical procedure and cost of it, be sure to find out as much as possible about the physician who will be treating you.

Please read on about the sorts of questions you should be asking the physician to ensure he or she is committed to providing you with the best possible hair transplant.

THE COST AND THE QUALITY

Investigate the cost of surgery, but be wary of offers of extreme discounting.

If you are being offered a heavily discounted procedure, seek reassurance about how the clinic can maintain quality when offering such a discounted price.

Generally, quality driven physicians employing highly trained surgical support teams do not consistently offer heavily discounted procedures.

Be aware that the appearance of your transplanted hair will be foremost on your mind long after any discount gained at the outset.

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE

Obtaining the best that modern hair transplantation has to offer depends on the physician’s qualifications, experience and the commitment shown to achieving the highest possible standards in their field.

This commitment can be signalled through the doctor’s contribution to research and development, ongoing professional development and patient education and awareness.

PROVEN RESULTS, PATIENT CARE AND PROCEDURES

Along with visiting a physician’s website ask to speak to some of the doctor’s patients to learn about their results as well as their pre, during and post operative experience.

Ask these patients if their chosen physician was actively involved in the whole procedure.

The surgeon should be present and be involved in not just taking the donor strip – as happens in many clinics – but also in quality control of handling the donor grafts and carefully implanting each follicle.

The patient’s donor grafts should be well looked after and put into the recipient section of their head as fast as possible to ensure they receive adequate nutrition and oxygen.

Ask about the quality of the doctor’s surgical support staff.

Some clinics use robots, so find out if this is a practice at your chosen clinic.

When researching the price of a transplant make sure you find out if/what cost cutting measures are taken by the proposed clinic.

Find out if the hair transplant surgeon uses liposomal ATP in surgery.

ATP, which can be packaged into a liposomal medium, costs around $4,000 a litre and can be added to grafts during a hair transplant procedure to boost the health of the donor grafts.

At Martinick Hair Restoration clinics ATP is used during surgery and patients are also given it in spray bottle to apply to the scalp to facilitate hair growth in the days following surgery.

Never feel embarrassed about asking lots of questions and make sure you are satisfied with the answers provided.

ACHIEVING THE NATURAL LOOK

Do not commit to a procedure until the physician has clearly explained how they achieve a natural looking healthy hair transplant.

When reviewing a clinic’s before and after photos pay attention to the way the patients are wearing their hair.

Hair that is transplanted in the right manner will fall and flow just as your own hair does and can be worn short.

Hair that grows straight up in the air is a tell tale sign that the donor follicles have not been implanted as the same angle and orientation as your own hair.

When transplanted hair doesn’t fall naturally, patients will often conceal it by combing their hair backwards.

THE SURGICAL TECHNIQUE

Ask yourself if the clinic seems to be selling one particular surgical technique over another?

Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) and Follicular Unit Transplantation (FUT) represent different methods of harvesting the donor follicles for transplant and the results achieved are dependent on the skill of the doctor as well as the individual’s scalp type.

The surgical technique employed should be right for you and not right for the clinic.

It is often claimed that FUE results in better growth, a faster recovery phase and is less invasive.

Although the FUE procedure results in no sutures and does have limited merits in certain circumstances, there is no scientific evidence to support these other claims.

FUE, which surgeons often perform with just one or two assistants, involves extracting follicles, one at a time, using a small punch.

A difficulty with FUE is the use of the small punch prevents the surgeon from seeing through the skin and this is often referred to as ‘blind harvesting’ of follicles.

A consequence is limited quality control and a significantly reduced survival rate of the transplanted follicles.

At this point in time, FUE harvesting does not produce the same results as microscopic harvesting and replanting of individual follicles that occurs under the more established FUT.

FUT involves removing a strip of permanent occipital hairs that are microscopically dissected by a team of up to eight or ten technicians.
The patient benefits through a significantly higher survival rate of the transplanted follicles and healthier hair growth.

The challenge for hair restoration physicians using FUT is that a major investment of time and money is required to train the large team of supporting technicians needed to conduct the procedure.

The physician also needs a large bank of procedures to retain their supporting technicians on a full time basis.

But these challenges must be secondary to ensuring the patient receives the most appropriate surgical procedure for them.

THE FUTURE OF YOUR HAIR

In keeping with Martinick Hair Restoration’s commitment to ensuring the best possible outcome for each patient, all treatment plans account for the progressive aspect of a patient’s hair loss.

We do not compromise on quality or take short cuts, so please don’t ask us to.