Quality

Quality in hair transplantation is priceless and although we often tie quality, value, and price together; quality should never be compromised. Small, delicate grafts are critical to high quality results in hair transplantation. Value must be judged by evaluating both quality and cost. When comparing the cost of procedures offered by different medical groups, it must be an apples-to-apples comparison. Ask:

• How many grafts will I receive in each session? What
  is the size of the grafts and how many hairs will each
  graft contain? How many hairs will be moved in each
  session?
• Will I have sufficient donor hair after completion of
  this procedure for future hair restoration?
• How much will I pay for each graft in each session?
  How many sessions will I need? What can I expect to
  pay for the entire hair restoration process?

Your goal should be to achieve the best quality work with the highest number of hairs moved in the smallest, most practical graft size. One hair at a time may produce inadequate density. Naturally appearing follicular unit grafts of 1-4 hairs may make more sense. When hairs are clumped together in unnatural groupings, there may be a lower initial cost, but these hair transplants will be detectable to the naked eye (toothbrush look) and an unnecessarily rapid depletion of your remaining donor hair as more hair is moved in this way. It is critically important to recognize that compromise may be necessary, and each patient must be in a position to understand the benefits and liabilities of each element in the decision process when planning the size and distribution of the transplants.
The larger the size of your grafts, the more hairs will be in each graft and the more unnatural you will look as these larger grafts produce a greater contrast to the surrounding skin. Larger grafts also tend to be more wasteful and deplete the donor supply faster than smaller grafts. Smaller grafts appear more natural, but they may have a smaller impact on the balding area if they are not done in substantial quantities.

Negative Value
Having an unnatural appearance, spending money out of proportion to the benefits you receive, losing valuable time in living a normal life, and accelerating the hair loss process, are all signs of negative value. Deciding whether to have hair restoration and what type of hair restoration to have is difficult, and your time investment must be part of the formula and multiple small surgeries take a high toll on the patient in many ways.
The worst outcome possible occurs in the patient who receives poor quality work that cannot be fully corrected. The negative value is incalculable, as the patient may have to live with the consequences of this error for the rest of his or her life. For a person who undertook the hair restoration process to avoid a wig, wearing one to cover a bad job is a daily reminder of his or her mistake. A toothbrush appearance often takes more work and more money to fix than it took to create, if surgical corrections are possible at all. In these situations, the cost may sharply increase in trying to correct what cannot truly be repaired. Camouflage is the only answer and is always imperfect.

Value
How do you determine value of a purchase of this magnitude and of such a personal nature? This issue needs to be answered to the comfort of each individual patient before making the decision to have any hair restoration or transplant procedure. Value is determined by such factors as:

1. Your results will reflect the outcome after your work is
   complete and all of your transplanted hair has grown in.
   A true understanding of the value of your surgery cannot
   be assessed until after the work is complete. You should
   compare what was anticipated with what was achieved and the two should approximate each other. As having hair will give you a different perspective, it is important to make this comparison relative to your starting point, as your memory may fade and your mind may repress any connection with your old bald or thin look.
   
   
2. Inconvenience reflects the time you dedicated to the hair restoration process at the expense of work, the discomfort associated with each procedure, the social dislocations caused by each procedure, etc. If you feel that your hair restoration has been of value, that value will tend to mini- mize these inconveniences. To properly estimate the inconveniences involved in surgical hair restoration, you should personally interview some of your proposed doctor's patients. Their experiences will act as a reality check on what the doctor told you. This should be done before the surgical process is started.
   
   
3. Risk reflects all of the uncertainties (real or imagined)
   including medical complications of the procedures, psychological ramifications associated with the process, and social effects before, during, and after transplantation. Proper research and interviews with patients will address these issues in advance.
   
   
4. The total cost of the process in terms of lost time at work, opportunity costs, social costs, and total dollars spent must be related to the results you achieved. Such measurements as cost per session, cost per graft, cost per transferred hair follicle and the like, reflect value in measurable units. The ability of your surgeon to accurately estimate the cost of a restoration should be anticipated before a procedure is begun. Meet with patients who have had extensive reconstructions by the doctor you are going to choose. Lowballing is more common than anyone is willing to admit. Do not get suckered into a false sense of security without proper interviews with some of the docor's previous patients.
   
   
5. Commitment to completion means that the question that must be asked is: "must I complete the process once started?" Well-performed minigrafts or Follicular Unit Grafts, when done correctly in accordance to a customized Master Plan (depending upon hair character and color), will allow each session to stand independent of every other session, achieving in the worst case a thinner appearance than was originally planned. Ask the doctor if one procedure can stand on its own.
   
   
6. Time from start to end of procedures reflects not only the calendar months from the first to the last procedure, but also the number of surgeries required to reach the last procedure. Each surgery produces down time, social dislocations, possibly lost time at work, some level of physical discomfort and considerable anxiety. The time span for all this may be months or years in some Master Plans.

These six areas are critical in order to understand value. In the final measurement, only results count. A pluggy appearance will have a negative value for most people. A thin natural look may only have partial value if the patient was expecting a full head of hair. On the other hand, a thin look may be the only reasonable expectation for a person with advanced baldness, high contrast of skin to hair color, straight fine hair or a limited supply of hair. Evaluation of your results must relate your gains after surgery to the expectations established at the onset of the process.

Hair Loss Research Home  | Top of Page  | Expectations  | Contact Us