The Bald Truth recently featured a great perspective from an experienced surgical tech. The main theme? Skill, experience and a solid clinic matter most!
Hair transplant specialists and cosmetic surgeons often receive invitations from suppliers of expensive FUE hair transplant equipment, typically automatic or robotic. Such companies often advertise their instruments in customer publications and offer incentives to both surgeons and patients. This increases awareness of FUE but also perpetuates the idea of such equipment, as currently available, is patients’ and clinics’ best option. Like many hair transplant specialists, one surgical tech vehemently disagrees. Listen to the Facebook video or read the transcript below to find out why!
From the Bald Truth: I Have Seen Things I Can’t Unsee” – A Top Tech’s Perspective
“I have seen things that I can’t unsee. The last year, or so, I’ve started working more and more with doctors who have bought into this idea that we can buy this expensive piece of equipment and just run with it without, you know, taking time to learn anything or train their staff. I know what I’m about to say is kind of a very critical statement, but these physicians expressing interest in just buying an expensive piece of present-day equipment and jumping into hair transplant, what they’re being sold as a lie. It is a blatant lie and it may not be intentional on the part of everyone involved with these instruments. You can start with a tool that’s less expensive if you just find the right team to kind of support you and help you get going. Then you have money left for marketing. You have money for finding someone to do your consultations or help with your consultations.
Who knows what’s going on; these producers of advanced equipment are bent on sales rather than being just like, here’s some materials on what we offer and then offering surgeons a venue to conduct procedures. Like they can choose what they want to believe. In reality, though, as a physician, it’s your job to assess or to find people who can help you assess each patient and figure out the best course of treatment. We tell patients to do their research and I think when we’re in the medical community we need to do the same thing. Not that there’s anything wrong with big device companies or these expensive pieces of equipment, from what I know, but the bottom line is the people coming to talk to you about them are salespeople and they’re trying to sell you something. And as a physician, do you need to take a step back and look at your practice and evaluate your code of ethics and what you know, what you think is morally right, and figure out if that specific device and what it offers lines up with your experience. Doctors are buying into the idea that hair transplants are easy and they can do whatever they want however they want and it doesn’t affect the results. And the unfortunate part for patients is it takes a year to see for everything to heal, for grafts to be growing. So patients, our patients, have no idea if the procedure was adequate. They have no idea what’s happened to them until it’s too late.
