Trust Your Hair To The Specialist
Image House Inc. Corrective Hair Loss Specialists are exclusively dedicated to the treatment of hair loss, offering the latest in medical hair transplant in Cincinnati and hair restoration procedures for both men and women.
We realize that every hair transplant candidate has unique needs and desires. Therefore, each individual hair restoration patient’s treatment plan is customized to their specific situation, including age, hair type, and general health, degree of hair loss, lifestyle, and overall expectations.
HAIR TRASPLANT SURGERY, LIKE ALL OTHER FORMS OF COSMETIC SURGERY, IS AN ART.
It requires expert surgeons with decades of experience and a trained hand to create the most natural appearing results that are undetectable to even the keenest eye.
SURGERY INFORMATION:
Hair replacement surgery was born in the 1950s with hair transplantation, using large round grafts or “plugs”. But no matter how they were done, they were much to “pluggy” or clumpy looking. Transplant procedures were more painful at that time than contemporary procedures because the donor areas were not sutured closed. Things have changed dramatically.
THE PROCEDURE
Outpatient procedure is performed under local anesthetic and oral sedation.
The Clinic is an AAAHC Surgical Center. (AAAHC, Stands for: Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care Very few Doctors have this type of accredited facility to perform a hair transplant surgical procedure.) This Accreditation is achieved only after meeting the most stringent of regulations to become an Ambulatory Health Care Center.
A thin strip of hair is surgically removed from the back of the head by a doctor, where thinning does not occur. A team of highly skilled and well-trained technicians use binocular dissection to divide the hair follicles, and then they transplant thousands of individual hairs onto needed areas of the scalp. During the transplant you can relax, talk and even watch TV!
THE RECOVERY
Pain is minimal, and easily controlled with medication.
When sleeping or resting it is recommended to do so with your head elevated above your heart for the first week after your procedure.
Staples are removed ten days after your procedure.
THE RESULT
You will begin to see hair regrowth three to six months after your procedure.
RESULTS ARE PERMANENT!
The field of hair replacement surgery with its state-of-the-art techniques is exploding with interest both from a doctor as well as a patient point of view. Unfortunately, as with anything new and exciting, many of these doctors entering the field are not credentialed, well trained, skilled in the various techniques, or artistic. Anyone from family doctors to psychiatrists is legally allowed to perform these procedures, and sometimes do set themselves up as the local “experts”. So, unfortunately, there is still the risk of falling into the wrong hands. Accordingly, due diligence in checking out the doctors’ true credentials, results, and experience is still essential in the decision on whether or not to do hair-restoration surgery for yourself.
Once you have made the decision on a surgical solution to your hair loss problem, understandably your most critical next step is to decide whom to trust with the task. Here are some helpful, common sense considerations:
1. Go with an experienced surgeon, preferably a board-certified surgeon, who does hundreds of hair-replacement surgeries per year. Not all doctors are surgeons, and not all board- certified doctors are board-certified in surgery. A real surgeon will have surgical privileges at a local hospital, and if you should have a problem or any complications, you would want your doctor to be able to access a hospital operating room with its facilities and assistants. Most hair restoration doctors are not trained surgeons. Know the difference and ask what other surgeries the doctor performs, and if he or she has surgical privileges to do the procedure at a local hospital.
2. Ask for a list of credentials and curriculum vitae. Look for membership in the American College of Surgeons and a full fellowship in the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery, the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons (AAFPRS) or the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons (ASPRS).
3. Don’t be fooled by false advertising, false promises and gimmicks such as: The angles of the before photos are different from the angles of the after photos. Truly honest comparisons demand exactly the same photographic angles and distances. If you are shown only the front, ask to see the top and crown regions as well.
4. You may be quoted gross underestimates of what it will take to achieve a completely finished result. All too often patients are deceived into thinking that it will require significantly fewer procedures or fewer grafts than is actually the case. Get it in writing so there is no question about what was “promised” at a later time.
5. Look for someone with an artistic touch and an aesthetic sense, and one who can demonstrate these abilities to you. There is nothing as unsightly as a poorly designed hairline or unfinished-looking hair transplantation.
6. Look for leadership in the Field- a doctor who is well published or is asked to speak at all the meetings of the prestigious Cosmetic Surgery and Hair Restoration Surgery Societies is more likely to be at the forefront of advances and state-of-the-art technology in his field. These “credentials” should be itemized in your surgeon’s curriculum vitae.
7. If you have a fairly extensive balding pattern, beware of any recommendation to do the entire area with transplants; it is very unlikely there will be enough donor grafts to “finish” the job, and the cost could be exorbitant. Sometimes leaving the crown untouched and “natural” is more cost effective and a preferred compromise if the donor area is limited.
8. Make sure you are given enough information to make you knowledgeable. Recognize that the quality and professionalism of such information is a direct reflection of what that Doctor and his or her Staff considers quality in whatever else they do, including the Surgery itself.
9. If you have seen some people with conspicuous-looking or even ugly hair transplants, do not be intimidated. Those were the ones that were done poorly or incompletely. The good ones are those you cannot see. There are a good number of surgeons routinely producing excellent results. Just be careful that you do not fall into the wrong hands. Be sure to reread this page and the curriculum vitae before you go for another opinion.
