Black Market Clinics, Doctors, and Procedures

These are comments taken from a group of doctors who are concerned about patients who are sucked into ‘Black Market’ clinics or Black Market treatment.

“Black Market Hair Transplant” is companies making deceiving marketing such that the customer is offered a service/product that does not offer the benefits that are claimed.

Examples are: technicians doing surgery when it is marketed as the doctor doing it, artificial hair fibres that may have devastating complications which the patient is not made aware of, an FUE robot that claims to not have the disadvantage of human error while doing a much worse job than the average surgeon, LLT that claims to treat male pattern hair loss, PRP that claims to treat male pattern hair loss, PRP that claims to improve surgical results, the manual FUE punch marketed as less damaging to the tissue, FUE marketed as a scarless procedure, an FUE punch marketed as offering zero transections, an FUE machine marketed as the best option while the patient not being aware that the technicians are going to do the job etc.

Since regulations and even ethical standards vary significantly across the globe, it is okay to market anything that is legal within its region, provided that the customer knows what they are getting. If the patient knows for the price he is paying, he can only have technicians doing the surgery and this is what he wants then it is fine. On the other hand, if the patient is told the doctor will do the procedure and the patient is sedated during the surgery so he doesn’t see that the work is done by techs, then this is not okay.

If the patient is told that PRP is not an alternative to the traditional treatment of androgenic alopecia and that there may be some temporary benefits, then it is okay. However, if he is told that he doesn’t need to take medication and he can get his problem treated in a natural way, then this is not okay.

If the clinic says that the doctor prefers the manual punch then this is okay. On the contrary, if they tell the patient that they use a manual punch to prevent the damage that occurs with the micromotor, then this is not okay.