Hair transplant: Are cheap clinics a good idea

August 27, 2018 | By Dr. Sangay Bhutia (Hair Transplant Specialist in Delhi)

Type ‘hair transplant clinics’ on Google search, and you will see hundreds and thousands of them offering all kinds of procedures pop up. Needless to say, hair transplant procedures are easily available, and many people are benefitting from these everyday.

However, the demand has also made it a lucrative business, and given rise to thousands of clinics and surgeons, dotted over cities around the world.

In fact you will find that there are online forums full of horror stories of botched procedures and bad looking hair transplants. The one thing that is common with most cases of bad transplants is an inexperienced doctor or a shady clinic.

Here we talk about why you should not skimp on your hair transplant surgery and choose a cheap clinic.

Firstly, hair transplant surgeries are affordable but they are not necessarily cheap. If you want good results don’t rush into the first cheap procedure you spot in an advertisement. But that does not imply that you get the most expensive surgery in the market; that cannot ensure stellar results either. The point being: it is not the cost that matters; it is the experience of the surgeon. Cheap clinics are cheap because they either have surgeons who are inexperienced, or it is a cosmetic surgeon trying his hand at a hair transplant. But you cannot let a novice handle your transplant; they may not have the necessary skills required for a sophisticated procedure.

Having an inexperienced surgeon also means that they might not be experts in handling grafts, and placing them properly. A hair transplant is not an easy procedure to perform; it needs the skill of a surgeon but the eye of an artist. While placing the grafts, the surgeons have to place it in the direction of hair growth and design the hairline in a way that suits the patient’s face, and complements their age. Secondly cheap clinics might not have good teams to assist the surgeon either.

Now, the team that the surgeon works with is important as well. They are the ones that handle the grafts while the surgeon is extracting and placing them. The team has to be skilled in handling the grafts properly and not waste them by letting them dry out. Grafts are very delicate, and exposure of more than a few seconds to air can cause desiccation or extreme drying, which means that they won’t grow as implants. The team has to be experienced to work in tune with a good surgeon.

A clinic can also be cheap if they don’t have a good location, or it is in an area that is not safe or clean. They may not be careful about maintaining a certain level of conditions inside the clinic in terms of sanitation, hygiene, cleanliness, and other amenities. None of those things can be compromised on.

It is also important to remember that by choosing a cheap clinic you are actually putting yourself at the risk of a possible corrective procedure, which means you might actually end up spending a lot more than you anticipated. If the cheap clinic botches up the surgery, you will have to find a better clinic that will fix it, which means going through the whole process again, and spending more.

Do not fall for flashy advertising, instead do your research, both online and offline, talk to clinics for testimonials of past patients, and have an extensive conversation with the surgeon before you decide whether you should pick them.