Wanted to do a short post of a short research I did while looking for a doctor to do my FUE procedure.
I have been only considering FUE because I only need about 1,700 graph and I do not want the linear scar. For me price/location is not an issue. As all of you I just want the best.
Therefore I reached out to: H&W, Lupanzula, Konior, Bernstein, Lorenzo
All of them were very easy to communicate with, normally within 24 hours.
I understand technicians will be assisting doctors during the procedure, so I wanted to learn the actual involvement of the doctor vs. the technician. The price of some of these doctors is very high, so I wanted to understand if I am paying a premium for the doctors procedure how much time will the doctor be involved in the procedure itself.
Out of the three steps - Extract Graft (EG), Make Graft Openings (MGO), Place Graft (PG) this is what I found:
H&W - Doctor (MGO) - Technicians (EG) (PG)
Lorenzo - vague answer "technicians will assist through out entire process, he will do what he thinks is fundamental on each patient"
Bernstein - Doctor (EG, MGO) - Technicians (PG)
Lupanzula - Doctor (EG,MGO) - Technicians (PG)
Konior - Doctor (EG, MGO, PG)
With the exception of H&W (only one out of hundreds of great reviews) I haven't been able to find a bad review/feedback from any of these doctors, so I understand their process yield great results. However, if you ask me If I would prefer, Dr. Konior or Dr. Lupanzula to extract the grafts vs. a technician in another great clinic, I will prefer the actual doctors. For that simple reason I decided to not move forward with H&W and Lorenzo. For Bernstein, I haven' t found a bad review but in comparison to the other doctors there are very few reviews available. They only due the FUE with ARTAS. There are some bad reviews about ARTAS damaging donor area, or having issues. None of those reviews were patients of Bernstein, but it make me less comfortable. For that reason I am currently only considering Lupanzula and Konior.
Following my same logic if you ask me who do I prefer to place the graft Konior or Lupanzula technician, I will say Konior. However, I am still indecisive because most of the reviews and results I found for Konior are for FUT while for Lupanzula are for FUE. Overall I know I can't go wrong with any of them.
I wanted to share this post I think the involvement of the Doctors during the procedure is important factor to understand, at least it was for me. It also gives you a better perspective when it comes to pricing. For example Konior can be twice as expensive as other top doctors, however, it seems he can dedicate more than twice the time so the price becomes relative. He does one procedure a day while other's do multiple, so it makes sense he charges more.
If you have this information of the involvement of procedure by top doctors, it will be great if you can share here.