Category: Hair Transplantation

Here’s a question I’m sure many prospective patients have asked before: How does a patient verify that he’s getting exactly the amount of grafts he’s paying for and that they aren’t being divided to artificially bump up the count and thus increase the cost of the procedure? Are we just going on blind trust or what?

Most important to ask, “Does the count of grafts correspond to what you are buying?”

1. There should be an accounting system in place at the doctor’s office and you should have the opportunity to ask to see it. Any honest doctor will be proud to show their graft accounting system working in your situation. I just had a patient the other day who had surgery and wanted to know just what you asked. He came in to the surgery of another patient (with permission of course) and was shown how the accounting system worked to guarantee that what he was quoted was actually given. I also showed him his count sheets. Although he was shy to ask, he clearly felt better after seeing it.
2. Is the number of grafts artificially inflated to make money for the doctor? Some doctors divide their grafts into sub-follicular units. For example, a 4-hair graft could be divided into two 2-hair grafts, and a 3-hair graft or a 2-hair graft could be divided into 1-hair grafts. In this situation the graft count would climb while the hair count would be the same. This is a problem in my industry, unfortunately. I have been quite outspoken about this problem in the past.

It all boils down to trust. If the doctor is open to questions posed by his/her patients, then this builds a trusting relationship. To be as completely blunt as possible, if you don’t think you can trust your doctor to not ‘screw you over‘ with the amount you’re paying for, you probably shouldn’t trust that doctor on almost all counts, let alone to give you the results you’re looking for. This is just another reason why doing research is very important in making your doctor selection. Also, see The Truth About Cheap Hair Transplants for more.

My younger brother (32 years old) is undergoing a sex change operation. He’s on the hormones and going to the doctors, and i’m not really sure what is involved but the family supports him. My question is relating to the genetic hair loss that runs deep in our family in almost all of the males (our dad, my cousin, me, my brother). He started to lose his hairline before he began his transition and i think it is quite rare for a woman to lose the hairline, right? Right now he wears a wig, and he’s going to have enough challenges with closed minded people that i don’t want him to have to deal with something like hair that he can probably take care of with a hair transplant. What do you recomend? Thank you for your time.

When men become women, they bring with them whatever male patterned hair loss they had. As such, looking like a female is not possible without either a wig or a transplant. The reverse is also the case if a woman becomes a man. Exposure to high doses of testosterone will precipitate a male pattened loss if the person has the genetics for genetic balding. In this situation, their balding genetics were protected when they did not have testosterone and were a woman, but that protection is lost when the sex is switched. Transgender patients may be candidates for hair transplants if their balding can be diagnosed as genetic hair loss.

I’m a 48 year old man with a very fuzzy belly and sparse chest hair. I’d like to make the set a bit more balanced, especially between my pecs. Will minoxidil make the hair on my chest denser?

You can try minoxidil, but be careful not to overdose yourself, as it is a hypotensive agent and it will get absorbed into the body through the skin. Hair transplants work well for transplanting hair from the head to the chest — and it is medication free. With hair transplants on the chest, the hair should last your lifetime.

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Couldn’t electrolysis be used to make transplanted hairs finer? I have mostly folicular transplants however I noticed that they are still courser and darker than my native hairs. Couldn’t electrolysis be use to make them lighter in texture and finer in contrast? Thanks for your response.

In theory, if the electrolysis damages but does not kill the hair, it would become finer. I would think that this would be a difficult or near impossible thing to achieve.