Doctor - based clinic on the outside = technician - based clinic on the inside
You visit a website of a hair transplant clinic in Turkey. It seems to be trusted because there is a photo of a doctor portrayed on its homepage. The doctor himself may be even ISHRS member or ABHRS member with 1000´s of hair transplant surgeries “under his belt”.
However after contacting the clinic you´ll realize that this doctor doesn´t usually participate in the hair transplant at all. He isn´t going to do the graft extraction by the FUE, neither he´s going to do the implantation – maybe the incisions (slit-making) in the best case.
Does this doctor´s experience and qualifications even matter, if he´s not going to contribute to your hair transplant directly? Who will perform the vast majority of your hair transplant then? His technicians…
How many of them does he have in his team? Does he work with 1 or 2 teams which have been working for/with him for 5-10 years and longer or does he have 10+ different technician teams employed in his clinic which make the clinic 95% technician – based on the inside while making an impression of a purely doctor – based clinic on the outside?
Get used to asking questions!
By avoiding the unpleasant surprise, it´s always good to ask the following questions. “Who will do the graft extraction, graft implantation and incisions (slit making) during my procedure? Doctor or technicians?
The higher the involvement of the hair transplant surgeon in the hair transplant procedure, the more likely patients get a good result.
Having your hair transplant done by a hair transplant surgeon means: paying more attention to subtle details like placing the single grafts in the frontal hairline, designing natural transitions on temporal points and hairline, creating slits in appropriate angles to make sure that the implanted hair grows and blends naturally with the native hair etc.
Are all technicians bad?
Of course not. But are all technicians going to be euqally skilled if you´re emloying 50+ of them in your clinic? Probably not…
Here is the issue. If you go to a hair transplant clinic which employs 50 or more technicians while performing 10 or 20+ procedures per day. These poor people are just working fast to get paid at the end of the day.
Of course not. But are all technicians going to be euqally skilled if you´re emloying 50+ of them in your clinic? Probably not…
Here is the issue. If you go to a hair transplant clinic which employs 50 or more technicians while performing 10 or 20+ procedures per day.
These poor people are just working fast to get paid at the end of the day.
Some of technicians may be even paid by the number of grafts they implant per day so they do it fast.
Manual extraction is almost unknown to these clinics, because it´s impossible to extract hair grafts fast enough with the manual punch.
For this reason, most of the technicians in large clinics use micromotor (motorized handheld device).
It´s also one of the reasons, why micromotor might have gotten a bad name over the years because of unskilled technicians using it to extract large numbers of grafts as fast as possible (all in one day) just to get the work done and get paid.
How can you spot experienced technicians?
The best technicians are the ones who have been working together with one particular doctor for many years.
By “good” clinics the main surgeon clearly loves his job, he loves paying attention to details and approaches each hair transplant case individually.
Technicians focusing on quantity over quality tend to approach hair transplant procedures like on a production band.
Experienced technicians have been usually working together with the hair transplant surgeon for a very long time.
They have been taught how to properly extract and implant the grafts to minimize the transection rate while causing the least possible trauma to the donor area. Incision phase (slit-making) phase and proper donor area management plan should be always performed by the hair transplant doctor himself.
Dishonesty about the number of grafts extracted and implanted?
In our society we have been conditioned not to question the authorities (politicians, doctors, policemen), because they want only the best for us and working hard to deliver on their promises. Doctors are just another type of authority – which we were conditioned to obey.
Doctors sometimes like to use the positive trust people have in them in order to benefit themselves. Let me give you an example.
Graft Splitting
Benefit of hair follicle splitting (graft splitting) and how it can be misused by some hair transplant clinics in order to artificially increase the graft numbers.
The intention of graft splitting should be only to achieve a more natural graft distribution on the implanted area e.g temporal points and hairline.
Splitting a double or triple graft in two or three single grafts can be a good idea if doctors need more fine hair units.
Graft splitting should be only used for refining of the larger hair units if necessary.
Unfortunately it can be also misused to artificially inflate the overall number of grafts implanted.
Example of Graft Splitting
For example: The doctor extracts a double grafts and splits it in 2 single grafts. He should count it as one extracted graft, not as 2 grafts – just because he split the double graft afterwards.
If graft splitting is being done routinely on 100´s or 1000´s of extracted grafts. Splitting may decrease survival rate of the grafts, if doctors split the graft already while it´s still located in the donor area.
By splitting too many of the double and triple grafts in single grafts, patients will end up with high amount of grafts implanted on one hand, but simultaneously being left with a worse overall hair density.
Splitting grafts excessively in single grafts causes a decreased hair per graft average ratio.
High hair per graft ration means, that on average each of the implanted grafts will produce about 2-3 hairs. Low hair per graft average means that it will only be 1-2 hairs.
Fake Online Reviews from Hair Transplant Clinics in Turkey
Many of these 5 star reviews on hair transplant clinics were not written as a result of great hair transplant result after 12 months.
Most of them only describe the overall hair transplant experience. It can include things like comfortable stay in Turkey, helpful and engaging staff (translators, drivers, nurses).
If you are interested in finding out whether a hair transplant clinic is capable of delivering naturally and dense looking results for their clients, visit forums instead.
Reviews are often not relevant, because they are not describing the overall hair transplant result after 12 months in a detailed way.
Who can submit a review?
Anybody can leave a review on most of these review websites – regardless of whether this person went to the particular hair transplant clinic or not.
Independent review – generating websites like proven expert, trust pilot, whatclinic or google itself are becoming more and more popular among hair transplant clinics/agencies in Turkey.
These review websites help them create trust among potential clients fairly easy.
Creating artificial social proof with different testimonial-building websites only attracts potential clients who buy a hair transplant as if they would be buying a TV.
Hair transplant clinic with most of the 5-star reviews wins…