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Hair Replacement Surgery
Most people don't realise there are very few hair transplant surgeons
in the UK. There are two reasons for this - one is training and the
other is simple economics.
Let's deal with the money issue first. For a young surgeon considering
whether to specialise in cosmetic surgery or hair replacement surgery
the choice is simple. The cost of a hair transplant is around an
average of at least five thousand pounds and the cost of a cosmetic
surgery procedure (such as breast enlargement) is similar. However
while a breast enlargement may take as little as thirty minutes, hair
replacement surgery may take up to fifteen hours. So while a cosmetic
surgeon might be able to perform up to ten breast enlargement
surgeries a day (at an average cost around L5.000 each), a hair
transplant surgeon will be able to do a maximum of two procedures (two
smaller cases) or one large case. An additional expense of hair
transplant surgery is the team of technicians is needed to quickly and
skilfully dissect strips of hair removed from the donor area. This
must be performed as quickly as possible to stop the removed hair from
dying, so the more technicians employed the better.
The demand for cosmetic surgeons in the UK is exploding, with the
United Kingdom the second biggest market for cosmetic surgery in the
world after the United States. If the average cost of a hair
transplant was L20,000 and the demand for breast enlargement wasn't so
high, then there might be more than a handful of hair transplant
surgeons operating in the UK!!
The second issue is training. There are hundreds of cosmetic surgeons
in the UK. It is a specialism which is required by the NHS as people
who have been in car crashes, suffered burns and other accidents are
often entitled to plastic surgery on the NHS. This means that there is
a large pool of talent here in the UK who can train each new
generation of cosmetic surgeons in both the public and private sector.
The situation is very different when it comes to hair replacement
surgery for which there are no NHS specialists. While the Royal
College of Surgeons maintains a specialist register of plastic
surgeons, known as FRCS(Plast), there is no similar register of hair
transplant surgeons. For a hair replacement surgeon to be trained in
the latest techniques (such as FUE) they should be trained by one of
the top surgeons from the U.S.
This briefly explains why both presently and for the foreseeable
future there are so few hair transplant surgeons in the UK and why it
may be necessary to travel abroad and be prepared to spend in excess
of L5,000 to have hair surgery performed by someone trained in the
latest techniques such as follicular unit extraction (FUE).
At HDC we offer a FREE in-depth consultation discussing both the
advantages and disadvantages of hair transplant surgery and unlike
other hair transplant consultants we refuse to accept any commissions
for those patients we refer where surgery is appropriate.
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©2007 HAIR REPLACEMENT CLINIC |
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