The cost of hair transplant in all the clinics is different which confuses the patient. In India, there are more than 500 clinics that claim to do the best hair transplant surgery. Not only the clinics, but there are thousands of doctors who claim to be the best hair transplant surgeon. So here arises the question of whether there are so many hair transplant clinics or hair transplants is and easy procedure.
There are very few genuine doctors available for hair transplant surgery. These doctors have 5-10 interns or assistants with them, after a certain period few of these interns or assistants are capable to assist the hair transplant doctor to certain steps. These assistants are then haired by hair transplant surgeons or companies all over India. The doctors then explain the surgical procedure to these technicians and they themselves roam in the operation theatre at regular intervals. These technicians are paid 10000 for each case and the rest of the amount is the profit made by the clinic. Because of this, the hair transplant surgery is performed at 30000 to 40000 in hundreds of clinics in India. There are only 10 – 20 hair transplant doctors who are expert but because of these technicians, people think that they have hundreds of other options that are cheap. And these hair transplant surgeries take only 8 to 10 hours and none of the doctors will cost you less than 30000 to 40000. In case they claim to perform the surgery at the cost less than this then you may be at the wrong place.
One should always remember that in case of dental problems one must consult a dentist and not a plastic surgeon. In order to shield themselves, there are companies that hire ayurvedic doctors, homeopathic doctors, dentists and MBBS doctors. A hair transplant doctor should hold the degree of M.Ch. in plastic surgery and if you have any doubt you can always file an RTI against the doctor to check for this educational background.
Fake Promises
a) Giving unlimited grafts offer without telling the number of grafts and area: Many companies manipulate the graft requirement to the patients in order to fit the hair transplant surgery in the budget.
For example, if the patient is having baldness of grade 6 and 5000 grafts are required and the cost of the graft is Rs 25. If the clinic identifies that your budget is only 50000, then for the graft they will charge you 2000 to 3000 to cover the complete bald area. So in this manner, they will inflate the quotation and provide fewer grafts. In cases if the quotations that are provided online change according to every patient then it is wrong.
b) Explaining the packages in terms of hair: There are very few hair transplant surgeons or clinics that charge you according to per hair instead of the number of grafts. During the time of consultation, they will explain that one graft has 2-4 hair and 2000 grafts will consist of 6000 hair. This calculation is completely wrong. 30% grafts have 3 hair, 40% grafts have 2 hair and 25 % have a single hair. Only in the case of 5% grafts, there is 4-5 hair. So accordingly, 2000 grafts have 4000 to 5000 hair.
Robotic Hair Transplant
ARTAS is the only robot that is available to perform hair transplants all over the world. In powered FUE treatment vacuum-assisted devices that are modifications of normal micrometre like SAFER (Neograft), FUETOR etc. are used. The cost of ARTAS is Rs 2 crore and none of the clinics in India has the robot. In cases where SAFER is used, the hair transplant surgery fails because SAFER is a vacuum-assisted device and it results in drying of the graft. As a marketing strategy, the centers call these machines as ROBOT and the hair transplant surgery as ROBOTIC HAIR TRANSPLANT.
Delivering a Lesser Number of Grafts
At a very cheaper cost, these clinics will promise to deliver a package of 3000 or more grafts but then only put 1000 – 1500 grafts. In order to prove themselves, they will then cover a larger area with a very small number of grafts.