Hair transplants is a touchy subject. Bloggs and web forums mostly write negative things about it. But there is still a big lack of knowledge about hair transplants in society, how they are performed and what it takes to achieve a successful result.
It is not always (in fact very rarely) about getting back the hair you had when you were young. You also have to think about how the hair will look together with your aging face in the future.
People should not be able to tell that you have had a hair transplant if it is successful. That is why usually only failed and badly done hair transplants receive attention. Not many people know someone who has had a hair transplant who can share their experiences. The skill of the doctor performing the treatment is hard for a client to assess. So how are you as a client supposed to be able to choose which doctor you should trust to perform you hair transplant? Every clinic will naturally say that they are the right clinic for you. It can be hard to visualize how a change in your hairline can change your appearance. The risk that the change will not be perceived as an improvement is therefore high. A treatment that has not been thoroughly thought through, where the only goal is to restore the hair to a state as it once was can have consequences later on in life if the hair loss continues and it is not possible to do another treatment to make the hair growth look natural.
Even in cases where the hair loss is not that severe, you should be careful with making big changes. A hair transplant should enhance a person’s looks, not change their appearance where it looks like the person has a completely new hairline. A treatment should give an air of better looks and a healthier lifestyle.
The majority of web sites and posts on forums claim that they know all about hair transplants. In most cases the discussions center around how many hair follicles, or grafts that the clinics can extract, and this is regarded as proof of quality when determining if a clinic has good or bad results. What is much less talked about is the result, the importance of choosing hair strands with the right thinness and quality for placement at the hairline, and that placing hair strands that are too thick at the hairline can be detrimental to the result. Surprisingly many posts in forums and blogs refer to websites that show after pictures where clients have achieved much more hair on the top of their head than before, and this is termed as a good result. In many cases the hairline has a jagged appearance. Even if the hairline looks irregular, having too thick hair strands here can make the hairline look unnatural. This can happen when the doctor does not choose the right type of hair strands to be placed at the hairline. The number of hair strands is important as well, but it is even more important that the result looks natural.
When you are choosing a clinic it is important that you feel that you can trust that the clinic will think about all these things. It is also important that you carefully evaluate the clinic’s recommendations for how the treatment should be performed. Maybe the clinic’s recommendation does not align with the design and result you would like. You should be cautious if a clinic will happily agree to anything you suggest without talking about the long-term aspects of the result and how the hairline should suit the proportions of your face and head. The first step to a successful hair transplant is a consultation. It should not be underestimated, and we do not recommend having a consultation via Skype or Facetime, or sending pictures via e-mail or consulting with a doctors who does not even have a license to practice medicine in Sweden.
