“Disappointed in the Bosley and MHR Results - Atlanta, GA”

Dr. Alan Bauman I respect you as a doctor but to say the vast majority of patients can achieve a full looking head of hair is not being so honest. You have a vested interest in convincing people of this because you are, surprisingly, a hair transplant doctor. The only people you will ever see advocating hair transplant surgeries are the doctors performing them or the patients/associations representing them. This surgery will scar every patient for life from where the grafts are harvested and leave red bumps and scars on top of your head where the grafts were placed. Once you have this procedure done you can NEVER undo the damage it has caused. It has scared, and for all intents and purposes, ruined thousands of peoples lives. Being naturally bald is a walk in the park compared to having an unnatural hair transplant. Think I’m exaggerating just do a Google search under "hair transplant repair" in quotation marks and 10,600 results will come up. There are many doctors who's major source of business is hair transplant repair patients. Don't be the next naive victim like I was and I had Follicular Unit Micrografting from one of the top doctors in the country. The truth has to be told about this industry this has caused enough suffering in peoples lives from doctors more interested in money than patients well being.

Dr. Alan I'm myself a surgeon, neurosurgeon to be exact so I am very much acquainted with the procedure. I myself had a hair transplant done but at Nuhart and Im extremely disappointed with the results as well. I already have very dense hair and my problem was thinning hair line and some baldness at the vertex. so I got 2000 grafts which should be more than adequate for my type of baldness. But I'm still sitting with the exact same pattern of baldness with same amount of hair with actually plugging visible in my extreme left of the hairline. The reasons for failure of process is as follows in my humble opinion 1. It is NOT the number of grafts which dictate the thickness but the NUMBER of hair transplanted. In the hairline they are transplanted with only one hair per folic while at the vertex 4 hair per graft. So average for whole head is 3 hair per graft. It is the technician who is making the grafts (with microscope) can make 2000 grafts with 6000 hair or 2000 grafts with 2000 hair. So you cannot make them a liar because they can defend themselves by saying and proving the number of grafts. I think I didn't get anymore than 2000 hair. 2. The technicians (surgical PA's) they are not well trained enough at places and they are not correctly placing it and many grafts come out with the blood drop or simply when they keep applying the cloth on your head. 3. The most important reason for failure of transplant (besides infection, inflammation, shock loss etc.) the technicians NOT preparing the hair graft properly and cutting the root out. If the folic doesn't have the root attached with it in whole IT WILL NOT GROW. PERIOD. Hopefully my comments will soothe some of the people who are financially and emotionally hurt by the process such as myself. Please consider these facts next time anyone thinks of a procedure. Its like a box of chocolate you don't know what you are gonna end up with!

This was the most imformative comments i have read in my due dilligence process. thank you.

My question to you is this, since you seem to identify several areas which can cause a failed process and result, if all of your talking points were optimized as you specify, would you predict a positive outcome?

It seems much blame falls on the "technicians" poor performance. Since this is the Bosley model, it seems the surgeon may be handicapped and not as critical as one would think. maybe i should seek a surgeon who specializes in this proceedure who can both pluck and plug.

other than word of mouth, how do we find the best hair transplant surgeons ?

With a box of Chocolate one will ALWAYS know what one ends up with: AN EMPTY BOX!

Another example, please.

I don't know if there are any surgeons who both "pluck and plug." I do know I would never go back to Bosley.
I recently had transplant at Sword Medical in Torrence, California. My experience there was very good. It has only been 2 1/2 months, so I can't report on the results yet.

This doctor's comments are truthful and completely accurate. The vast majority of patients CAN achieve good results, provided they can afford one of the nation's best FUE surgeons. Unfortunately the vast majority of patients will NOT achieve good results because they will opt to go with cheaper STRIP procedures with less skilled, less competent surgeons.

I agree with you that this industry is filled with frauds and scam artists who disfigure people and make TONS of money off of them in the process. And I'm extremely sorry to hear that happened to you. However I am one of the success stories and I am 100% happy with my results...so I know for a fact that quality surgeons and quality work do exist in this industry.

As someone who has now done 2 procedures with one of the nation's top hair surgeons, I can give you a little insight here. It is absolutely true that the technicians' performance and skill level is EXTREMELY important. It is also true that often the technicians will be working on you longer than the actual surgeon (although your surgeon should be supervising ALL of their work). As for your question about finding a doctor that "plucks and plugs" himself, an FUE procedure is simply too much work for a doctor to do on his own. It literally requires 4-6 people to do it well. That said, the doctor should be performing the most skillful aspects of the procedure himself: 1) selecting and preparing the donor follicle groups to be removed, and 2) making the recipient sites/incisions. The technicians will then "pluck" the donor follicle groups, process them into individual/smaller follicular groups under the microscope, and "plug" them into the sites the dr. has prepared. While the doctor's work represents the true "artistry" of the process (making him the "architect" of the project), the technicians' skill level is incredibly important as they are doing most of the mechanics of the transplanting. Their stamina is also very important. These procedures can last up to 8-9 hours. And the technicians have to be doing very precise, very detailed work the entire time. The LAST thing you want is some newbies in the room that get sloppy after the first 4 hours. I can imagine this happens quite often at the corporate "chop shop" clinics.

All of this being said, this is why Dr. Bauman's comments above about how to choose a clinic are extremely important. A smaller clinic with a constant caseload of FUE transplant procedures is more likely to have dedicated, full-time, highly skilled technicians working there. In my case for example, my surgeon is an independent practitioner who runs his own clinic. They only do FUE, and they do 2-3 per day. I had one procedure done there in 2009, and a second one done just yesterday. The four technicians on his team who worked on me all day yesterday are THE VERY SAME 4 ladies that worked on me 2 years ago. They all work 5 days/week, and they perform 2-3 procedures every day. They are a rock solid team of professionals, and they do AMAZING work (and they do it with a smile). This is NOT something you're EVER going to find at a national "chain" clinic like Bosley or NuHart. These places are constantly losing their most skilled technicians and rotating in new untrained technicians, and guess how the newbies learn...by working on patients like you. No thanks.

;-)

One other comment: You can also pay a huge amount at a big well-known company (Bosley) and have terrible results. That's what I did on my first procedure. Therefore I was very selective this time!

Well i just did mine recently in Irvine, Ca. it costed me 3900 dollars, for 1735 grafts. Well you go through a little irritation but not any serious pain. I just have to wait and see now the results. Well shop around and always bargain for the price, trust i brought lot of doctors from 12000 to 5000, i meant bosely, they are a hoax and BS, dont go there....i mean this is lot of money, the hair transplant is now an easy safe procedure, and it should be very affordable, where I mean anywhere from 2500 dollars to 10000 max, but not over that... good luck and go do it...

I had a very positive experience with Sword Clinc in Torrence, California. It too soon to report on the results but will report back in January.

Cleveland is where I had my initial procedure then I went to Dr. John P. Cole for the follow up procedures. He is one of the top surgeons in the county. Trust me these procedures have ruined so many peoples lives. Just do a simple search on the internet under "hair transplant repair" and you will see what im talking about. Honest to God if I had a million dollars to undo the damage done to me I would give it in a heartbeat. These scars are here for life and I don't want anyone else to suffer like countless thousands have already. Please don't be nieve and have this procedure because once the damage is done it can't be undone, it is with you for life. When you get married you can get divorced but once you have a hair transplant there is no going back, your locked in for life.

Ive known about mhr since i was 17 now im 24. At first i contact em to get a prescription for propecia. But now I want a hair transplant i have spent hours on the internet reserching but its hard to know if the good and bad reviews were posted by people who work there or not. Thats why i asked to meet someone who lives where i live at who has had the procedure, still havent met the guy but im waiting for my mom to come from Mexico cause I want her to go with me and meet him and see what she thinks.

Dude don't get a hair transplant, you sound young and impressionable like me and many others that had their procedures in their early 20's. Do a yahoo search under "hair transplant repair" and you will find tones of pictures of people who have had their lives ruined by these procedures. See the pictures of artificial looking hair, donor scarring, bumps/redness/ridging where the hair is transplanted, you will be shocked. This is a dream that will quickly become a self inflicted nightmare. Trust me you are getting what most of us countless victims never got.....a warning.

Don't do it. I use 1mg Finasteride a day. You can get over the counter in Mexico. Cheaper even is the 5mg Finasteride. Buy a pill cutter and make 4 out of them. It'll cost you next to nothing. It will most likely stop the shedding, and help you keep what you have. I also use some homeopathic stuff, which seems to activate the blood supply to my head. I am the ONLY male in the family who has kept his hair. P.S. Maybe my standing on my head for a few minutes twice a day since the age of 7 may have helped here ;-)

Drugs can keep you from losing any additional hair, but they are never going to regrow any substantial amount of hair. Nor are they ever going to restore a youthful hairline. Not to mention they have very noticeable side effects for many people, like weakened sex drives (I will never touch Propecia again, that's for damn sure). And what about the side effects we don't even know about yet? Drugs like this have simply not been on the market long enough for me to trust that they are not doing long term damage to the liver or other parts of the body.

I DO have a 'youthfull hairline'.
And yes, it does have side effects - but NOT using it has considerably more side effects.
At my age, 60+, I definitely prefer to have a full head of hair and less sex.

My point was that it's not going to RESTORE a youthful hairline if you've already lost it. If you still have a youthful hairline, congrats...but for those who have already lost theirs, no drug in existence is going to bring it back. Surgery is the only answer for that.

At age 34, I'm not willing to choose one or the other. I wanted more hair AND more sex. Which is why I got off the drugs, and got a hair transplant. ;-)

When it is a transplant that looks OK and NATURAL, and you already have the 'MORE SEX' partner, fine.
But most of the transplants I have seen look absolutely terrible. Rather a LESS than MORE SEX.