The Medical Advisor, The Griffin Center of Hair Restoration and Research

From “The Medical Advisor” June 17, 1997

A Syndicate Column Seen In Over 100 Newspapers Across The Country, published June 17, 1997, Chattanooga Free Press, Lifestyle Section

Question:

"Since you wrote about hair transplants, I followed up on your research and decided that microtransplantation has the best chance of giving me a new hairline and a natural look.

But when I tried to get local surgeons to give me a list of their patients that I could contact, as you advised, I couldn't seem to get more than one name from each, and after meeting those few people, I'm not convinced that they actually had transplants at all. Can you give me the names of experts in microtransplantation?" - W.K. Los Gatos, Calif.

Answers:

Edmond I. Griffin, M.D., Dermatology Associates of Atlanta, 5555 Peachtree-Dunwoody Rd., Suite 169, Atlanta, GA 30342; (404) 256-4457

B.L. Limmer, M.D., Professor, Division of Dermatology, University of Texas Health Science Center, 14615 San Pedro Ave., Suite 210, San Antonio, TX 78232; (210) 496-9929

David J. Seager, M.D., Centenary Health Centre, The Court 401, 2863 Ellesmere Rd., Scarborough, Ontario, Canada; (416) 287-3733, (800) 668-6662

Dowling B. Stough IV, M.D., Professor, Dept. of Dermatology, University of Arkansas Medical Science Campus, 1 Mercy Ln., 304, Hot Springs, AR 71913; (501) 623-6100

Many operations have measurable outcomes - complications, infections, more surgeries, or death - and potential patients can ask surgeons about their outcome records. But those objective measures usually aren't used in low-risk cosmetic surgeries, such as facelifts and hair transplants. The determination of a good or bad result is often just a matter of opinion. And, as you've discovered, some cosmetic surgeons have well-orchestrated marketing campaigns that can make it difficult to identify results that you feel are good. We identified only four microtransplantation experts by checking the medical literature and asking the surgeons themselves for referrals.

There are three main surgical treatments that place hair into bald areas: grafts, flaps, and the less frequently used scalp reduction. In many cases, a combination of techniques is used.

Grafts are the most common form of treatment. Over time, grafts have changed from transplants of a few hundred 4 millimeter-wide plugs of hair to micrografts and minigrafts of 1,000 to 2,500 hair sections in 9- to 12-hour operations.

In hair grafting, surgical complications and infections rarely occur. There are two measures of success.

1. Did The Transplants Survive?

Hair follicles must be handled carefully; grafts that fail are double losses since no new hair grows in the desired site, and hair does not re-grow at the site where the graft was taken.

2. How Does The New Hair Look?

Many doctors take up hair restoration because it is a low- risk, high-cost procedure - $3,000 to $12,000, often paid in cash, since it's not covered by insurance.

There are virtually no professional standards. Any physician can claim and advertise that he or she is an expert in hair restoration. The training of many such "experts" is a three-day seminar. There is no way to compare surgeon success rates.

Anyone considering hiring a hair transplant surgeon should ask for a list of patients who have had the same surgery, then select a handful to see. Any surgeon who can't provide such a list should be dropped from your consideration. The four surgeons we list all said that they provide patient lists.

To give you the names of acknowledged experts, we compiled a list of fifteen authorities by searching medical literature, via the database Medline, for surgeons conducting transplant research and reporting their results. (Members of the public can access Medline through many online services.)

Then we asked those researchers, "To whom would you send your brother for micrograft hair transplant surgery based only on surgical skill and aesthetic results?” The feedback from that question gave us about twenty more names of doctors who hadn't recently published, but were reliable practicing physicians.

Finally, we had all thirty-five physicians review the list and strike those that they would not recommend. In the end, only four physicians were recommended by everyone we asked, and those physicians are listed here.