https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1004217/report-exposes-chinas-unlicensed-hair-transplant-industry
This is similar to many clinics in Turkey where almost 500 clinics have FUE surgery performed by minimally trained personal. I believe that these people can learn how to do it as they practice more and more on patients, but the problem is what happens when there is a side effect from anesthesia, or a cardiac arrhythmia? Then the patient has a risk of death, something that has been reported in countries from around the world. These ‘on-the-job’ trained people certainly can’t respond properly to any emergency. In the 16,000 surgeries we have done in our practice, we have seen such events almost every year, but we NEVER had a problem addressing the problem when it appeared because we are skilled in Emergency treatments and we are physicians who know this as a result of years of speciality training.
Undercover reporter took a 3 day course with 3 other trainee (a breast specialty doctor from Xinjiang, a salon owner, and a freelancer) trained by a non-physician instructor and practiced hands-on on a live patient. It is easy to find 3 day training course online: one center charges around US$1,000 and will not provide a certificate, but said such certificate can be easily purchased for about US$10 online. Another center charges around US$1,200 and will provide a hair transplant professional certificate, which is the course the undercover reporter attended. The 3 day training course only took two days to complete.
Hair transplant price in China depends on the client, the instructor recommended charging between US$0.75 to $6 per hair based on the client’s income. $6 per hair for rich client, $1.5 to $1.8 per hair for middle class client. The instructor, who originally studied psychology, never worked in a hospital, learned hair transplant from others, claimed she had trained more than 100 students and told them they can tell their clients that the saline used as graft holding solution is a special culturing fluid and charge an extra US$300-450. The undercover reporter later went through training to “work” as an online sales consultant for a hair loss center that was a Chinese Medicine Hospital several years ago. Her commission based job was to lure clients in by first earning their trust with knowledge in treatment protocols and impressive results from the treatments, then giving the clients a preliminary diagnosis but acting as if she is not very certain so that she can refer them to the hair loss center.
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