I requested a brochure from this guy
This was approx 2002, but the guys name escapes me at the time but he was a very respected HT surgeon, and Dateline NBC even used him as a consultant for their HT stories, very good work, very highly sought after at the time
His letter which was instead of a brochure I had requested basically was stating the reasons why he , as a surgeon, was completely disillusioned with his own profession. He said a few things that have stuck with me
As a surgeon seeing things from the other side , this guy I am sure was wealthy by that time since at the time HT was way less competitive than now and more expensive.
He , however was pretty much disgusted with the profession, even though he was widely viewed as a very competent, respected surgeon.
He stated a few reasons.
Basically he said that he had previously been judging his success on the before and after of his patients in a period of about a year after the transplant. ,
by that standard he felt successful.
But he had recently been seeing a lot of his previous patients who had gotten surgery 10 yrs or so ago, and he was completely dismayed. Most of them even though at the time or shortly after the surgery looked great and were happy, 10 yrs down the road looked horrible. The hair had continued to thin, and in many many of the cases the available donor hair to fix the newly bald areas was not sufficient. The crown area surgeries were left with a HALO effect with a hairy area in the middle and newly bald area surrounding it, which is completely bizarre. Frontal and top transplants were not much better.
This left him as a surgeon, in a dilemma . He admits he is not god and can only work with the available hair that this patient has. If a patient comes in nw7 With insufficient donor hair and unrealistic expectations it is easy to just send him on his way and say, sorry I cannot help you.
But these patients who already got the transplant left him as a surgeon, feeling helpless. His basic statement that he wanted every prospective patient to understand was in a nutshell the fallacy of hair transplants in general.
In short, the more hair you need, the larger your need for grafts, the FEWER grafts you have available. This is only common sense but many patients do not seem to grasp this.
Because of the situation many of his former patients found themselves in, which is basically they are Sh(*t out of luck, he felt like a failure as a surgeon, and he felt somewhat of a fr…aud also. He could not do much to help his patients look presentable ever again with their hair, and that left him feeling inadequate and pretty much like . what the heck am I doing here? Is this HT surgery idea just a fantasy. How many of the prominent docs on the board follow up patients 10 yrs later and report HOW THEIR HAIR looks now?
I think it was amazing that here I had one of the most successful (at the time) surgeons in his field, trashing his own profession. A real eye opener. Perhaps that Is why I am still very hesitant to get a transplant.