Even More Hair Transplant Failures Keep Showing Up

Two more hair transplant failures showed up in our office last week from other doctors — one was an FUE technique and one was a strip harvest. I’ve written about the topic of surgical failures a few times already, and the last thing I want to do is scare people off the idea of having a hair transplant completely, but I want to keep our readers informed about what they must learn about the doctor or clinic that they’re considering for their hair transplant procedure.

When I talk about these failures, I mean that there is a large percentage of the transplanted grafts that didn’t grow. You have a finite amount of donor hair, so when there are grafts that are damaged or killed because of poor techniques in surgery, you’re losing your valuable donor hair (and you’re getting financially ripped off). So before you choose a doctor, try to research the doctor.

Does the doctor have a high failure rate? And how would you even go about finding out?

1. Go to the medical board of your state and look up the doctor. Complaints are filed and published by the medical boards.
2. Check out the Better Business Bureau, where people who are not satisfied with a service will voice their concerns.
3. Ask your doctor about their malpractice record. How many cases have they had in the past 10 years? You can verify their answers by looking them up in the courts of your area.

The patients who present with these failures usually did little comparative shopping or investigative work. They may have based their decision on the cheapest price they could find or just whoever is the closest practice in their area, but what surprises me the most is that many patients didn’t get more than one opinion before having surgery. It doesn’t hurt to get a second opinion, and it’s worth noting that the New Hair Institute does offer travel programs for those individual from out of the area. Half of our practice reflects people who fly in, so just getting surgery from the closest place to your home shouldn’t be an excuse.

When you shop, you can get the benefits of our long experience by reading our featured post — Selecting a Hair Transplant Doctor.