Hair Transplant Decision

Hair Transplant is the most time consuming decision I have ever taken in my life. It took me 1 and half years to decide to go for Hair Transplant and 1 year to decide on the clinic to undergo the surgery.

I am from Pune, India. Finally I had my HT done in Mumbai (India) on 28th August, 2015. With this blog, I would like to share my experience and results with you which might help you to decide if you are also confused like me as to do it or not do it.    

To Do or Not To Do it

This is the confusing part. Since its a cosmetic procedure and not a life saving surgery, no HT doctor would say not to go for it. Also, the hair loss affects appearance and so it can be linked to emotional issue and so hair loss patients are ready to spend huge sums of money even though its a cosmetic procedure and not a life saving surgery. So price of this surgery is high and so the competition is also high.

I would recommend below points before you decide about your D day:

• Think for a hair loss treatment. First of all, the available hairs should be retained. Then you should think about the lost hairs. Its not possible to get the lost hairs back. But available hairs may be retained with proper Diet Plan, Yoga and Medicines i.e. following a healthy lifestyle.

• The surgery is usually performed considering current situation of hairs and so they will not consider the future hair loss. So if you try the above point, you will at least have idea about how the situation is going to be in future and decide accordingly.
• There is no harm if you delay the decision for some time as its better to judge future situation rather than having second hair transplant i.e. you do HT for frontal part and then loose hairs on top, so you have to go for second HT.

In a nutshell, first of all, correct the lifestyle which according to me is the most common reason for hair loss these days and then go for the transplant. Even after HT, you need to follow a healthy lifestyle otherwise hair loss will continue. So better to start it in advance.

Type of Procedures

As on date, FUT (Strip Technique) and FUE ( one by one extraction) are the available techniques for HT surgery.

FUT:- This is strip technique and oldest of all. A strip is harvested from back side of the head and hair follicles are separated by cutting. Then they are implanted on the bald area where punches are made already. Single Strands are implanted in front, followed double strands followed by triple strands.   

FUE:- Hairs are extracted one by one from back side and implanted with different types of implants. There are many variations of extractors and implanters in market. Sometimes they are used as marketing gimmicks attracting customers. But over all, they are the same.

Thumb Rule for Procedure to be chosen ( as per my experience):

When a large number hairs are to be extracted to cover larger bald area go for FUT method i.e. 3500 and more hairs requirement. But when smaller area is to be covered with less number of hairs, go for FUE method.  

After all, your doctor will guide you on the right procedure. But in most cases, they leave it up to the patient to decide on the procedure they prefer. I have checked many cases from internet research and found that larger bald areas are covered with FUT properly. However for smaller areas, FUE is better.

Selecting a Doctor

This is again a confusing part. I did a lot of internet research and got confused every time about doctor. I would not recommend any specific doctor not even my doctor who performed HT on me as I need to wait till my results. 

Usually the HT clinics market themselves on the name of the Star Doctor they have. But it is never performed by the doctor himself completely. Usually the Star doctor works on the important sections of the surgery only like making hair line, stitching the strip in case of FUT etc 

So my recommendation here would be to choose a clinic with experience of large number of surgeries since their staff will have very good experience of performing the surgery. Please beware that the staff is not necessarily all doctors. They may be Paramedics or nurses also will actually be involved in implantation. To be in safer hands, try to get the information when you visit for consultation and insist on doctors performing surgery instead of nurses.

Another important point is to select a clinic where the main doctor is available. Many clinics work on Franchise basis and a case worker is assigned to you when you contact the clinic. He/she tries to convince like a banker trying to find an investor. If you are convinced and undergo the surgery, case workers responsibility ends. 

When you pay huge amount, it is expected that the clinic voluntarily updates you on precautions and is concerned about your status post surgery. So prefer to go to main clinic so that you can be touch with the main doctor.  

I hope the above information will help you to take decision. I will keep on sharing my updates to help you further.