Educate Yourself to Avoid a Hair Transplant Doctor’s Scam

I met with a patient last week who had a spectacular head of hair. On examination of the scalp there was absolutely no miniaturization anywhere, indicating that he had no genetic balding.

He was an obsessive young man who wanted to be sure that he was not going to go bald, as some of his male family members had. Because he needed the advise of a doctor to determine if he was losing his hair and what his future might be, he went to a hair transplant surgeon who determined that he might go bald and needed to do something about it. The young patient showed some maturing of his hairline only in the corners and even that assessment (by me) may be overstated, but because of the power of the doctor’s magnetic personality, the young man was convinced that he needed a transplant and got 800 grafts into the corners of his frontal hairline. The transplant clearly did damage, so he lost hair around the transplant area and many of the grafts did not grow.

Too many young men are receiving hair transplants when they are not indicated, even showing no balding. I would suggest that everyone considering a hair transplant to map out their own hair for miniaturization and if there is none, you can then confidently say that you are not balding and not fall for traps like what this young man fell for. It is unfortunate that many people are preyed upon by surgeons looking to pad their wallets, but you need to be smart about what you’re getting yourself into. Educate yourself and use the tools available online to be able to better understand things. The patient story I described above ended up leaving this young man worse off than before he ever went to see that surgeon. This site is free for anyone to use and learn from, and I am an outspoken member of my community simply because I don’t like to see people taken advantage of. I routinely turn patients down for surgery if I can see they are not candidates or a simple daily pill could be the solution they are looking for.