Category: Hair Transplantation

Doc, I appreciate this site so very much and all you’ve done to help us guys going bald.

Even though my results from a hair transplant 2 years ago look fine to me, I’m still suspicious that I got all 2300 grafts so I can totally understand why people are skeptical about their doctors. I wish I found out about you before I had my surgery.

Anyways I just wanted to drop you a line to say thanks

Thank you for your encouraging words. I also wish you had found out about us first. The purpose of this site isn’t to direct people to NHI for surgery (though if that happens, I won’t complain), but rather, to inform and assist the millions of people out there that are losing hair.

Some of the more common complaints I’ve received via email lately from folks regarding their surgery have been:

1. The doctor did not do the surgery and only came into the room for 10 minutes or so
2. I believe that he did not give me the number of grafts I paid for
3. The hair never grew out and it is now almost a year after the surgery

I get comments from people questioning their doctors and looking to me for help, but I wasn’t in the room when your surgery took place and there’s only so much I can do via email without seeing you. Remember, don’t be afraid to question your doctor if you have any concerns. Some of these patients ultimately come in to see me, but they somehow never got our message on how to choose a good doctor. I realize any surgery can be a nerve-wracking experience, particularly an elective cosmetic procedure, but you should always do plenty of research and meet with the doctor before the surgery to feel some level of comfort and establish trust.

So for those of you thinking about hair transplantation, please check out this featured 3-part article about selecting a hair transplant doctor. It includes a checklist of sorts, along with a bunch of links for further reading. We’ve written nearly 9000 posts at this point, and that article is one of my favorites.

Hello doctor. I wanted to know if you have to lose all your hair first in a certain area before u can get a transplant or can you transplant hairs in an area that has vellus or thin hairs still there, but wouldn’t there be shock loss?

Take care

There could be shock loss if you’re not taking finasteride first, but that is the risk one takes when having a hair transplant in a thinning area. Transplanting in a completely bald area obviously won’t have the same risk factors, because there’s no existing hair to succumb to shock loss.

i had a hair transplant done just a short while ago. I traveled a long way to have this doctor do it due to his high reputation as one of the best. My initial consultation with him was not even 3 minutes & he did no use any device that shows hair density. i had already been committed due to his requirement of a non refundable deposit in advance.

On the day of surgery he spent not even 15 minutes to do incision of 2400 FU Grafts. The only other time he came back was late in the afternoon to give me another 400 FU grafts incision. what really concerns me is that how he could not even once come back to check what is being done or how things are going the entire day. In the initial consultation he also told that i have extremely thin hair but i ended up getting more than 2800 FU Grafts, a lot more than what i was supposed to get. Is there anything to be concerned about here other than obviously so little caring or is this typical for any doctor to only do incisions & let his assistants do all the rest w/o any checking at all?

i wish i would have known about you before choosing this doctor & all i would have traveled would have been less than a very short distance. i was also told that i can do another 2000 grafts next year but i doubt if i will go back to someone who ended up spending not even a total of 25 minutes altogether for everything from consultation & doing a total of 2800 grafts.

Another concern even though i want to believe that i really got the number of grafts that i was told, but is there any way to determine or guess by an expert like you having trained eyes that i really got the number of FU or anything close to that? It will be just for my own curiosity & not anything else.

Thanks in advance for your reply.

I feel bad for your experience. I try to advocate for the readers and patients, but ultimately the burden is upon you to choose the doctor you feel comfortable with. It might be a little late, but read this post on Selecting a Hair Transplant Doctor.

During the procedure technicians place the grafts, but the doctor should have been in the operating room to make the recipient sites and remove the strip from the donor area (if that is the technique used). If he did not do this, then he broke the law. There are some doctors who routinely break the law with regard to allowing a non-physician to create recipient sites, but it sounds like he was at least there for creating the sites.

At this point, all you can hope for is good results. It is very unfortunate that you don’t trust your doctor enough to believe you got the number of grafts you paid for, but we have offered and performed many second opinions for patients that need counts done. What I mean is, I have consulted with patients such as yourself and attempted to count every single graft placed, but that would likely be too drastic at this point.

At the least, you can start out by asking the clinic for your complete operation sheet, which should have all the hair and graft counts written down. Be aware that not all doctors or medical groups may have this or provide it for you, but also know it is also your right to obtain your medical records (by law). Good luck.