Keep your questions ready for interviewing the hair restoration surgeon

Hair restoration interview Preparing for an interview with a hair transplant surgeon

Preparing for an interview with a Hair Restoration Surgeon

The interview with your prospective hair transplant surgeon is a key step in obtaining a hair transplant. The interview will allow you to obtain information about hair transplantation in general, your hair transplant in particular, and about the transplant surgeon who will be conducting the procedure. This is your opportunity to obtain answers to all the questions you may have about your hair transplant. Your objective is to obtain as much information as possible to satisfy yourself that this surgeon and clinic can do the job well. After all, a hair transplant is an operation, something that involves personal risk, and quite a lot of money, for a result that will be very difficult to fix if a mistake is made. Don’t sign on the dotted line until you are absolutely sure that a hair transplant is right for you and that you feel you are in safe hands with the surgeon you are interviewing. Remember you are in control. You are doing as much interviewing as being interviewed. If you still have doubts at the end of the interview, or are feeling pressured to make a decision there and then – walk away. You can always contact the clinic later or find another clinic and surgeon that you feel more comfortable with.

Interviews can cause anxiety, but you need to be as relaxed as possible. The more relaxed you are the more likely you will be able to take in what the surgeon is saying, to understand the information, and to ask pertinent questions. If it helps, take a family member or friend with you. Most surgeons are quite happy for you to have a friend in the interview with you. They can give you moral support, they may feel less anxiety and be able to view the proceedings more objectively, and they may ask some questions that you won’t think of. An interview will take at least 30 minutes, often one hour, and for some, particularly if you need reassurance, it may take up to 2 hours. If the surgeon has other appointments then he/she may ask you to come back at a later time to complete the interview. Don’t take this personally or in a negative manner, the surgeon needs to spend as much time interviewing with other prospective hair transplantees as they do with you.

While the interview is for you to obtain lots of information and have your questions answered, the surgeon also has objectives in the interview with you. He/she needs to provide you with information about the different hair transplant procedures used in the clinic (there are many and most clinics use more than one depending on the particular nature of your hair loss) and to identify the particular procedure most appropriate for your hair loss pattern. More details of what to expect are given elsewhere in this section of the web site. You might be given this information verbally or it might be in the form of a printed booklet. Ideally you want both so that you can ask questions when the procedures are being described to you during the interview and you have a summary sheet to keep and read later – because you won’t remember everything that is said in the interview. Before the interview think about what questions you have for the surgeon. Write them down and take them with you to the interview.

The surgeon will probably outline a short term and a long term plan. Hair transplants are not a quick fix. It often takes a couple of years with multiple surgical procedures to get a good result. There will be multiple steps and a lot of planning to achieve the final result. The long term plan actually extends over your entire lifetime. Whatever hair transplant you get, you have to live with it for the rest of your life. A hair line that might look good in your 30s is not going to look right in your 70s. The plan to design your hair transplant hair line needs to take into account not only how it will look at your age now, but how it will look as you grow older. Usually there needs to be a compromise in what hair line you want in your 30s and the appropriate hair line when you are older. Be realistic in your expectations and remember the surgeon has a lot more experience with creating natural hair lines than you do. Similarly, the eventual end stage extent of your hair loss has to be taken into account when developing a long term plan for you. You only have so many hair follicles in the donor area at the back of the scalp so they need to be used judiciously. Predicting future hair loss is difficult, but it must be taken into account so that some hair follicles can be left in the donor area for use in the future. Before the interview take some time to think about what you want from the hair transplant, but remember that there are limits to what the surgeon can do. While you may have an indeal result in mind, be flexible and recognise your ideal hair transplant result may not be possible.