The most important factor in hair transplant surgery

Choosing a Doctor

The most important factor in hair transplant surgery is choosing the right surgeon. You can have a wonderful plan for surgery, a great medical facility, and marvelous nurses, but if the surgeon doesn’t plan your reconstruction properly and then do a good job, the whole thing is for naught. Good planning in how the hair is to be transplanted is as important as doing the technical components correctly.

Basically, what you’re looking for is a well-credentialed, caring, competent, artistic (cosmetic surgery is about 50 percent art) doctor whom you like and feel comfortable with. This section guides you through the task of finding a hair transplant surgeon who’s right for you and helps you prepare yourself for your office visits to make sure that you get all the information you need to make an informed selection.

Finding a doctor

The best place to start your search for a hair transplant doctor is with friends who have had transplants. Talk with them and look at the quality of their work.

If you don’t have a personal connection to someone who has had a transplant, start your search on the Internet. The International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery (www.ishrs.org) lists hundreds of doctors worldwide who work in the field. You also may want to enter “hair transplantation” along with your city and state in your favorite search engine, and explore the results.

Meeting for the first consultation

Going in for a surgical consultation is both exciting and a bit scary don’t lose your head, though, in your excitement about regaining your hair.

Always meet with more than one doctor before making a decision. We also strongly suggest that you look at the Web sites of various doctors, both in and out of your area. The comprehensive nature of these sites will give you a feeling of just how good the doctor is at educating you and sharing his experience and his patient population with you.

This section walks you through what to expect at your first meeting, starting with these first steps:

1. The initial interviewer, who may or may not be the doctor, should provide you with basic information about the hair transplant procedure.

2. You’ll fill out a basic medical history form to determine your candidacy for having a surgical procedure.

3. Some assessment of your hair loss may be done, but only a physician or a specially qualified nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant may legally perform a physical examination and render an opinion.

4. A more knowledgeable interviewer may try to determine whether your expectations are realistic.

In some hair restoration practices, salespeople work at remote offices without a doctor present. These salespeople function independently in many ways and may even wear white coats, implying some medical expertise. If you visit a remote office staffed with salespeople, follow these suggestions:

Ask whether the person you’re meeting with is a salesperson or doctor. Only a doctor can give you a diagnosis and assessment. A salesperson may be able to educate you on the process of hair restoration surgery and that can be very useful but he or she shouldn’t give a medical opinion.
Make certain that salespeople don’t recommend any medical or surgical treatment. This includes the type of surgical procedures that would be used in your situation, the number of procedures, or the approximate cost of your restoration. Don’t accept recommendations without input from a qualified doctor.
Don’t discuss your financial status with a salesperson. When a physician is available in the office, the patient educator or salesperson should call the doctor in to examine your hair and scalp, quantify the amount of donor hair you have, address your worst-case balding pattern, and then discuss your surgical options. When the doctor reviews costs with you, your cost shouldn’t depend upon what you can afford.
The doctor should outline a master plan specifically for you that addresses future hair loss. If you can’t afford what you need to achieve your goals, ask the doctor whether modifying your goals is reasonable, and make sure you understand the implications of modifying your goals.

It’s always best to have the doctor do the entire consultation. During the consultation, a doctor should

Educate you in the procedure.
Take a history.
Do the physical examination.
Discuss your options.
Estimate the number of surgeries it will take to achieve the desired result.
Review all the costs involved.

Busier practices may offload some of these tasks to nurses or clerical people, which may be okay because some of these people will have more time to spend with you answering your questions than a doctor would, but nothing can replace the doctor’s advice. One well-known clinic takes the view that the doctor “just screws up the sale” and that it’s best to minimize patient-doctor contact. This view is clearly opposite to our thinking.

A good doctor needs to have a strong team behind him. You should expect physician extenders to be educated as nurses or certified physician assistants. Doing refined follicular unit transplantation, which is today’s standard of care, takes a team of 3 to 6 people working together for hours. So, the doctor’s team is almost as important as the doctor is. As the old cliché says, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

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The most important factor in hair transplant surgery

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