NW3 picking his doctor. De Freitas / HLC / Ferreira / Others

[Fabulous]

Hello guys. First of all I’d like to thank you for stopping by and I encourage you to share your opinion, they are all welcomed.

About me: 25yo, NW3 (pictures attached), started to notice hair loss since I was 16-17.

Medication: Minoxidil 5%, hair vitamins and Nizoral(or other keto shampoos) since I was 19. This helped me a lot to retain my hair, I didn’t notice much change in the hairline since I started with them, just some miniaturization. Finasteride 1-1.25mg/day since May 2021.

Below I summarized my current choices, but I’m also open to consider another surgeons. Are there any other doctors would you consider ? Which one of those I mentioned would you pick and why ? Is there a superior technique between DHI and Stick&Place ? I know what S&P means but I'm not familiar with the DHI process. What's the difference between them ?

Also, does anyone know how many patients does De Freitas operate per day ? The lady from HR told me this is confidential and she can’t tell me, but for me it is an important aspect.

 

 

[Melvin- Admin]

I believe De Freitas does 2 per day. His work is probably some of the most impressive out of Europe. Also, HLC have three different doctors, as far as I can tell, you can’t choose the surgeon. Personally, I would not put them in the same category as De Freitas. You’d be doing yourself a big disservice if you didn’t consider Bisanga, Mwamba and Feriduni in Belgium. 

[digi23]

1 hour ago, Fabulous said:

Hello guys. First of all I’d like to thank you for stopping by and I encourage you to share your opinion, they are all welcomed.

About me: 25yo, NW3 (pictures attached), started to notice hair loss since I was 16-17.

Medication: Minoxidil 5%, hair vitamins and Nizoral(or other keto shampoos) since I was 19. This helped me a lot to retain my hair, I didn’t notice much change in the hairline since I started with them, just some miniaturization. Finasteride 1-1.25mg/day since May 2021.

Below I summarized my current choices, but I’m also open to consider another surgeons. Are there any other doctors would you consider ? Which one of those I mentioned would you pick and why ? Is there a superior technique between DHI and Stick&Place ? I know what S&P means but I'm not familiar with the DHI process. What's the difference between them ?

Also, does anyone know how many patients does De Freitas operate per day ? The lady from HR told me this is confidential and she can’t tell me, but for me it is an important aspect.

 

 

Personally I prefer Dr Ferreira because he is only doing 1 patient a day and max 3500 grafts a day, which is important for me. I guess you could say that the end result is the most important thing, then De Freitas have some excellent ones.

Edited October 31, 2021 by digi23

[JayLDD]

I'd focus less on who is doing extractions and how many surgeries a clinic is performing per day and more on who is consistently achieving the best results from those both clinic and patient posted.

All three of these clinics do good work, but Freitas I would comfortably suggest does among the best hairlines in the world. Unless there are specific patient posted results that are poor that can be pointed to that show a lack of consistency its not logical to focus on concepts like "how many surgeries per day" that are removed from what is actually relevant, which are the results and success rate. 

I think its likely which ever clinic you choose your results will be of a high standard, not entirely sure of how the multiple doctor system of HLC works though which would make me direct more towards the other two options. 

[A Fue Good Men]

Absolutely focus on how many patients per day a doctor does and who performs extractions. Anyone that suggests otherwise will lead you into a potential disaster. I’m speaking from experience.

IMO if a doctor does more than 2 patients a day they are the definition of a hair mill. You have no idea who will be performing your extractions, what their credentials are, or how many hours they have working on tissue.

 

a doctor that juggles multiple patients per day will have rushed consultations and not be able to provide sufficient oversight. This introduces more chance of error. Each hair follicle is literally a small organ, treat this as a serious surgery. You have limited donor. 
 

your list so far is good. bruno pinto in Portugal is another great name to add. Bisanga is one of the top surgeons in Europe IMO. In North America you have good options as well such as konior and Cooley.

[AZ67]

The problem with Dr Fereira is that we have not seen many cases from him. So if you have not seen many cases simillar to your case how can you select this doctor? So its a bit risky without many results to see. I would suggest you to consider Villa, Pekiner, Erdogan as their costs are simillar to the ones you mentioned and they are good options.

Edited October 31, 2021 by AZ67

[JayLDD]

1 hour ago, 5BetaReductase said:

Absolutely focus on how many patients per day a doctor does and who performs extractions. Anyone that suggests otherwise will lead you into a potential disaster. I’m speaking from experience.

IMO if a doctor does more than 2 patients a day they are the definition of a hair mill. You have no idea who will be performing your extractions, what their credentials are, or how many hours they have working on tissue.

 

a doctor that juggles multiple patients per day will have rushed consultations and not be able to provide sufficient oversight. This introduces more chance of error. Each hair follicle is literally a small organ, treat this as a serious surgery. You have limited donor. 
 

your list so far is good. bruno pinto in Portugal is another great name to add. Bisanga is one of the top surgeons in Europe IMO. In North America you have good options as well such as konior and Cooley.

You speak from experience but not understanding. 

"You have no idea who will be performing your extractions, what their credentials are, or how many hours they have working on tissue."

You can say this about literally *any* clinic, this is just vapid word salad. Feel free to tell the qualifications and names of Bisanga's technicians for example. Problem is you can't because you have no idea. If a surgeon did the entire procedure themselves but can't produce consistently good or aesthetic results, I don't care less. The question is whether they have a system in place that produces consistent results and have the technical ability to produce an aesthetic, natural result. That is something that should be referenced to patient and clinic posted results, not "how many cases per day". 

Number of cases per day and use of techs is correlated to poor work because of Turkish hair mills for example, but it isn't a causal relationship. 

Various surgeons you mentioned clearly aren't at the level of Freitas. 

Bisanga I would consider, Konior is more than triple the price which compared to the prices OP mentioned doesn't seem particularly useful. 

[ML488]

15 hours ago, AZ67 said:

The problem with Dr Fereira is that we have not seen many cases from him. So if you have not seen many cases simillar to your case how can you select this doctor? So its a bit risky without many results to see. I would suggest you to consider Villa, Pekiner, Erdogan as their costs are simillar to the ones you mentioned and they are good options.

Dr. Ferreira was included on the "World's Top 25 Hair Transplant Surgeons" in 2021 by Spencer Stevenson. So I wouldn't ever consider going to him "risky". The work I've seen from him on his social media pages looks top of the line.

De Freitas does amazing work and constantly produces great results as seen all over this site and his social media. 

HLC is one of the very few clinics in Turkey imo (and this is after years of research on my part) that are a relatively safe bet. That being said if it was me, I would go with one of the other two first.

[AZ67]

1 hour ago, ML488 said:

Dr. Ferreira was included on the "World's Top 25 Hair Transplant Surgeons" in 2021 by Spencer Stevenson. So I wouldn't ever consider going to him "risky". The work I've seen from him on his social media pages looks top of the line.

De Freitas does amazing work and constantly produces great results as seen all over this site and his social media. 

HLC is one of the very few clinics in Turkey imo (and this is after years of research on my part) that are a relatively safe bet. That being said if it was me, I would go with one of the other two first.

I dont doubt about Ferreira's work. But because he was working with jose lorenzo in Spain, he does not have many cases on forums from real patients. So I would select doctors with much more results published on forums from patients. That's my opinion. So I would prefer freitas or HLC.

Edited November 1, 2021 by AZ67

[Fabulous]

17 hours ago, JayLDD said:

If a surgeon did the entire procedure themselves but can't produce consistently good or aesthetic results, I don't care less. The question is whether they have a system in place that produces consistent results and have the technical ability to produce an aesthetic, natural result. That is something that should be referenced to patient and clinic posted results, not "how many cases per day". 

You're right, i didn't think at it before.

[SD1984]

17 hours ago, JayLDD said:

If a surgeon did the entire procedure themselves but can't produce consistently good or aesthetic results, I don't care less. The question is whether they have a system in place that produces consistent results and have the technical ability to produce an aesthetic, natural result. That is something that should be referenced to patient and clinic posted results, not "how many cases per day

Well said but at the same time places who do multiple surgeries a day (ie More than 2) are usually the ones that don’t produce consistently good results. 

[Melvin- Admin]

3 hours ago, ML488 said:

Dr. Ferreira was included on the "World's Top 25 Hair Transplant Surgeons" in 2021 by Spencer Stevenson. So I wouldn't ever consider going to him "risky". The work I've seen from him on his social media pages looks top of the line.

De Freitas does amazing work and constantly produces great results as seen all over this site and his social media. 

HLC is one of the very few clinics in Turkey imo (and this is after years of research on my part) that are a relatively safe bet. That being said if it was me, I would go with one of the other two first.

I think Dr. Ferreira is great, but just look at this thread to find out about Spex.

As for technicians vs. surgeons doing extractions. I do prefer surgeons performing the extractions, but there are talented technicians that can extract better than surgeons, even hasson and wong has mentioned this about their practice. 

Now, you don’t want to go to a place that does 8-10 surgeries a day, there’s no way one surgeon can oversee that many surgeries. I believe 2-3 is doable depending on the size of the surgeries. Above all, consistency is important. Does the clinic produce consistent results? Do they have patient reviews and journeys? These are the questions you should ask yourself. 

[Charlii]

Hi

I did my HT at HLC and i am very happy with my result.

Nevertheless, I would decide against HLC on your list.  After seeing several reports, I would choose De Freitas. In my opinion he is doing the most authentic hairlines.

Greetings

 

[Strugglehair]

Good things are written in Asmed and HLC in Turkish forums

[deeznuts]

With techs doing extractions, I think you want to have techs that have been with the doctor for quite a while or at least have a lot of experience in the industry. 

Techs are just like doctors in that their experience matters.

I personally prefer a highly experienced and consistent tech over a doctor doing extractions as long as you know the tech has been with the doctor for quite a while. I think Konior for example said his tech has been with him for like 2 decades or something like that so you know that the tech has been consistently delivering results and honestly even integral to delivering results. The reason being that a tech can bring costs down while not necessarily bringing the overall quality of the procedure down. In fact they might improve the quality of a procedure because someone with 20 years of experience extracting grafts 8 hours a day is gonna have more experience than someone with 20 years of experience extracting grafts, implanting grafts, making incisions and doing the entire process. It would also give the doctor more hours spent on actually implanting grafts, making incisions or whatever else. And also, they reduce the amount of work for the doctor which can help make fatigue less of a factor in delivering quality results. But if you're opting for a tech, I'd want to know the tech has experience with the doctor and has been delivering results with the doctor for a long time which is why some people prefer doctors doing everything as when the doctor does the whole thing you're dealing with one less variable in your results. 

Edited November 2, 2021 by deeznuts

[MachoVato]

On 10/31/2021 at 4:10 PM, 5BetaReductase said:

IMO if a doctor does more than 2 patients a day they are the definition of a hair mill. You have no idea who will be performing your extractions, what their credentials are, or how many hours they have working on tissue.

There was one other patient during my procedure with Bisanga. He has a limit of about 4000 grafts per day. I had 1500 grafts so the other patient had around 2500. If you needed 4000 grafts, you would be the only patient. He does the extractions (motorized) and incisions (technicians do the implantation).

Being a patient of HLC (which stands for hair line clinic), and being exceedingly happy with the results, of course I would recommend them. Even though I would *prefer* to know the exact doctors working on me, the results speak for themselves. All that said... I believe De Freitas is producing the best hairlines in the game... at any cost. Even with my HLC success, if I did it over I would select De Freitas. I tried to get him to do my second procedure but it takes more than 2 months to get an online evaluation... so I went to Bisanga. 

I'm a fan of Ferreira, too, but his lack of actual patient cases also troubles me. I think Rolandas has really made him popular. He's increased his fee from 2.5 to 3.0 and waiting times are long. For 3 Euro, I can't imagine picking him over De Freitas, who is about the same price. 

[Fabulous]

Thank you for sharing your opinions @Charlii and @MachoVato. I followed your journeys with HLC very closely and I was very curious if you would pick De Freitas over them. I still believe they are great, just that De Freitas's hairlines look better to me.

[htc]

@FabulousCurious if you ever picked a surgeon? I am currently considering Dr. De Freitas.

[Fabulous]

Yes, I'm booked with De Freitas on January next year.