Information will always be filtered when money is involved or something is to be gained. The more ethical doctors will disclose more info but not all info. Best-case-scenarios will always be displayed, and poor results will always be down-played. Strip doctors will not show their not so aesthetically pleasing results and poorly healed strip scars. FUE doctors will, likewise,showcase the premier patient results and downplay potential scarring. Patients are not armed with all the information to make an informed decision in this serious, life-changing cosmetic procedure. That is the bottom line.

Landen,

Most of what you say is correct. This is why I posted this in the first place, so that viewers can start to understand what they are seeing. The absolute best documentation is shown by the patients because they are in a position to show all real world scenarios. I did this on my personal site by showing my hair straight out of bed, wet from the shower, in the sun, etc. Unfortuantely, the consistency factor is not very high with these photos so one needs to consider this as well. Overall, the number of photos shown by a patient can be used to give an overall impression of what you are looking at.

Clinics however aren't in a position to do this. What clinics can do is take some steps to show the results in a more realistic setting. Like I said, people don't walk around with flash bulbs going off around their work 24/7. Take our clinic for example. Overhead flourescent lighting like that found in any office environment. It's the worst indoor situation one can find themselves in when surrounded by peers. These pics should be taken as consistently as possible but no matter what one does the before/afters will never be perfectly matched. It is difficult to say the least.

What one needs to consider when looking at a clinic is the conistency with the work. If a clinic has a small number of patients that are willing to show their results on the clinic's gallery then you need to wonder what is going on. If they have quite a bit then you get a feel for the overall level of competence of the clinic. While the actual number of patients in any clinic's gallery is only a fraction of those that have walked through the doors it does help. Even though we have more results in our gallery than most it is not as many as we'd like. We've got some results that simply have us with our jaws on the ground but they patients aren't always excited about "outing" themselves online.

Fortunately this is compensated for by the roughly eighty some-odd patients or more that have documented online, either in personal blog style websites or in dedicated threads on the various forums. This is far more than any other clinic. It's hard to explain the exact reason why this is but whatever the reason we're very grateful for their willingness to share. We feel that this has helped to change the industry in even a small way. This behavior is something that is new to the industry as it has only become "common" to expect this from the better clinics in the past few years.

Above all in person inspection is the best but unfortunately this is not always possible. See patients if you can, always.

__________________
I am employed by Hasson & Wong as a patient educator. My opinions are my own and might not be that of Dr. Hasson & Dr. Wong.

Hasson & Wong-The More You Look The Better We Look.

Dr. Hasson and Dr. Wong are members of the Coalition of Independent Hair Restoration Physicians

Jotronic,

Nice reply. What you say makes a lot of sense.