Consultation with Dr Konior

[1978matt]

I am seeing him on tuesday and will post my experience here.

 

[Having arrived in the US I bought 6 months Supply of CVS minoxidil foam today! Works out at GBP8.70 a tin]

[TommyLucchese]

Did you fly over just for the one consultation? What's your plan?

[1978matt]

Did you fly over just for the one consultation? What's your plan?

 

I tend to have a break in the US every couple of years and decided to drop in to Chicago on the way back. I'm currently elsewhere in the US but have been to Chicago before.

 

With a bit more planning I could have tried to see Keller and Panine at the same time.

[Eman]

Great doc, very personable and make sure you have some deep dish pizza while here!!

[1978matt]

So I met with Dr K and we had a consultation that lasted an hour and a half! He could talk for hours about HTs!

 

I need to catch a flight but will post details of what I learnt in the next day or so.

[1978matt]

As promised here’s my review of meeting the Doc.

 

I arrived Chicago O’Hare late morning and was basically transiting for 8hrs until flying back to the UK. The plan was to collect a hire car, drive to Dr Konior’s Practice for a consultation and then return to the airport. (I did consider public transport but he’s based outside of town where it is virtually none-existent).

 

The car rental buses stop right outside the airport terminal buildings – just follow the car rental signs. Standing outside was quite a shock as it was absolutely freezing! I think weather reports said it was –4 degrees Celsius. Anyway, I eventually got to the Hertz car rental building and was offered an upgrade to a 400hp Dodge! This was my first attempt at driving overseas so I was a little apprehensive. Fortunately I know a little bit about the rules of the road having been to the states quite a few times but I’d recommend others to do a bit of internet research beforehand.

 

I was a little early for my appointment that afternoon so I set the satnav to the Oakbrook Center which is basically an out of town shopping mall located about a mile from the Practice. Driving on the opposite side of the road was pretty daunting and you have to remind yourself constantly about where you should position the car. Overall it wasn’t too bad – I made a few wrong turns due to misunderstanding the satnav prompts and for some reason the system cut out and had to reboot. This part of the journey took about 25 minutes.

 

Just so others are aware Chicago has some Toll-roads which you can either pay cash ($1.50) or use an auto-transponder. The car had the latter installed which is basically a box beneath the rear view mirror, which you slide out when you pass through the toll gate. The rental firm then picks up the tab and adds it to your bill.

 

I had a bit of lunch at the mall and looked around the shops for a bit. There’s a Macys there where you can kill some time shopping.

 

When it came to finding the Practice the satnav could not pick up the right address, so a quick check on my smartphone confirmed I didn’t really need directions. I was only a few blocks away according to google maps.

 

I got into the office and the receptionist gave me two sides of A4 to fill out, basically background information and what your HT goals are. As I was filling it out Tom Ruiz came out to introduce himself. Strangely enough he kind of looked like I had imagined based on the phone call/email we had previously.

 

So after completing the form Tom showed me to the consultation room and a few moments later in entered the Doctor…

 

I guess the most surprising thing was how modest Dr Konior was and everything he explained was totally downplayed. There was no‘sales pitch’ at all. You could imagine other doctors saying: “Yeah sure we can do your procedure for you and it will be an amazing result”. There was none of that which is probably why he is so highly regarded.

 

We talked a bit about his goals for every patient – basically naturalness and density – and went through some of my hair loss history.

 

He had a look at my donor area and made the comments that:

 

• My density looked pretty good, probably 80+ units/cm sq
  
• There were noticeable 2s and 3s in there. I think he may have seen some 4s but I’m not 100% sure on that.
  
• Laxity was good and he thought c4000 grafts should be no problem.
  
• Hair caliber was better than average.
  

On the subject of hair caliber he talked in length about how the different types of hair and groups can be a major factor in how dense the outcome was. I think he said 30%-50% original density would probably give a reasonably dense appearance in my case.

 

We talked about hairline placement, even discussing the Da Vinci calculations regarding ‘the perfect features’! Interesting stuff. Anyway, we kind of agreed that my case would require around 4000 grafts to get good coverage to the apex of the head.

 

I asked about shave/non shave options. Not surprisingly he preferred the shaved option. A lot of it is to do with being able to see the orientation of exiting hairs more clearly when they are short stubs as opposed to long hairs lying in various directions. The donor area would not need to be shaved for FUT.

 

One thing I was surprised to hear was that he does perform a fair bit of FUE work. (There was mention of having done 3000 grafts the week before, spread over 2 days.) Dr K said he has various extraction methods (both motorised and manual) and I got the impression he tries the different types first to see how the grafts are coming out before deciding on which instrument to continue with. I’m pretty sure he still regards FUT as being the gold standard in most cases, since there is less chance of damaging the grafts.

 

He also told me some quite technical stuff about skin types and how that can affect the FUE extraction. He’s working with that FUE guy in Atlanta (who’s name I cant mention on the forum) on a book or something.

 

I asked about how his immediate post-op pictures are so ‘blood-free’. He said he likes to spend a lot of time creating the correct size graft incision to minimise bleeding. As has been mentioned before in the forums, he is quite a perfectionist and does a lot of the work himself.

 

I was keen to know what causes a stretched scar. Dr K indicated a big factor is the patient not following post-op care guidance to avoid movements that stretch the scalp. I agreed, as that had always been my own theory about it.

 

It was nice that near the end he commented that I seemed pretty clued up about HTs!

 

We spoke for about an hour and a half and by the end of it he was still willing to spend more time answering any other questions I might have. My only regret now is that I did not ask to have a quick peak in the operating room.

 

After we finished Tom printed out a quotation based on the probable 4000 grafts I would need. Again, there was no ‘selling’ at all. Anyway, with that I said I had some thinking to do and left to continue my journey back to the UK.

 

[i should probably just add the disclaimer that the above is my recollection of the discussion and may not be the views/opinions of the Doc!]

Edited July 17, 2013 by 1978matt

[chrisdav]

Great write up 1978Matt.

 

If I have surgery again in the future, Dr Konior will definitely be one of my choices as I think he is excellent.

 

Would be nice to see him posting some Fue also at some stage.

[TomCruise]

Matt, that was a very thorough review and enjoyable to boot. Lot of interesting information there.

[Masato]

Thanks for sharing your experience Matt. I'd be interested in seeing some of is FUE work (wasn't aware he did FUE also).

[1978matt]

Thanks guys, I hope some of the travel tips are useful for others too who may wish to visit.

 

A couple of things I forgot to add:

 

The Dr spends 100% of his time on HTs these days and does about 4 cases per week.

 

His waiting list is currently about 4 months.

[rev3]

great review!

[Tao]

I'll add my total endorsement of Dr. Konior here. He really is meticulous, does much of the work himself, and his work is extremely neat and clean. I had two transplants done by him and went to work after 10 days each time and no one noticed anything. It was amazing. He didn't shave me down either time. And oh yeah, I got great results from his work. I think he really is one of the best.

[Spanker]

That all sounds very familiar. Let us know what you decide.