Hair Transplant Expectations — Hope vs Reality

Here’s a story about a patient that has had four total hair transplant procedures — procedure #1 and #2 in 1995-1996 with us totaling 3286 hair grafts, procedure #3 with another doctor a couple of years ago of 1000 grafts, and finally procedure #4 (to fix procedure #3). This gentleman continued to lose hair after his first two procedures in the mid-1990s, and although he did not like what was happening to him, he was reluctant to have another procedure.

That is, until he saw an advertisement for hair transplants at $2/graft. At that price, he decided that one more surgery would solve his problem. Unfortunately, this cheap procedure produced a harsh, detectably grafted hairline which made him never really satisfied with the final results. He came back to us to correct this harsh hairline to some degree about a year ago with one of our standard hairline repairs, but he still did not like his look and the larger grafts from procedure #3 still showed.

We are all torn between what we hope to achieve and what we really end up achieving, and progressive hair loss during the treatment phase does not help the problem. This particular patient had unrealistic expectations and that is why he went to another doctor who, based upon promises, sold him a procedure that just made him angry with himself for falling for a sales pitch. As planned, after the repair of the frontal hairline that we performed a year ago, he came in for Scalp MicroPigmentation (SMP) about a month ago and told me that he is now euphoric with the results (today was the last SMP procedure).

“Why didn’t you offer me this 15 years ago,” he asked. I told him that it was not available until three years ago. “Innovation moves at its own pace, driven by problems that need solutions,” I told him. This innovation took time and the right circumstances to find its place in our treatment regimen. He continued to discuss the personal toll that he experienced with his hair loss and his recent dependency on surgery to fix something that he did not like. “It was not pleasant, but now things are different,” he continued. And he can put the entire hair loss experience and the toll it took on his self confidence behind him. It was rewarding to hear this from him, so I decided to share it with our readers.

Many people can not achieve their goals of a perfect end look because they either:

1. don’t have enough hair to cover the balding area
2. their balding pattern is advanced and the supply/demand equation for hair does not math out, or
3. they continue to lose hair without a Master Plan that took into account the progressive nature of the hair loss.

Scalp MicroPigmentation bridges the gap for many people who fall into the above categories. Doctors want to believe that given enough money, every person that they treat can get a full head of hair; however, nothing can be further than the truth.

I continue to write this blog because it is an important part of our practice, educating patients and bringing them to understanding what is happening to them. At the last ISHRS physicians meeting, I was told many times that the doctors in this industry read my blog and that it has become a resource for them when dealing with their patients. That just adds to our (editors) satisfaction in knowing that this blog is a good community service.