Who are the best alternatives in the UK/Turkey to Dr Laorwong?

[jmac]

After dealing with daily anxiety around my hairloss for the last 8+ years (taking minoxidil for 6 years, fin/dut for 4 years, which has more or less stabilised the hairloss, or at least slowed it), and reading and seeing some of the incredible success stories on here and over on the r/hairtransplants subreddit, I’ve decided to go ahead with a transplant at some point this year. As you can see from my photos I’ve got diffuse thinning from just behind the hairline to the crown. Luckily my hairline is mostly intact….so far.

Based on the many positive recommendations of Dr Laorwong on the hairtransplants sub, this week I emailed him and today I received a reply, in which he quoted between 3000-3500 grafts at 80 Baht p/graft. So somewhere in the region of £6000 / USD$7000. 

By most accounts, he seems to do incredible work, and I’d be willing to spend that kind of cash if I could get some assurance of the kind of density I’d like. I’m not expecting miracles, but it’d be nice to not have any glaringly thin patches.

But for that amount of money I’m thinking I should be looking at clinics closer to home (UK), because once travel and accommodation etc is factored in (I’d probably stay in Bangkok for 2 weeks to allowed the initial healing to happen), the total cost will be closer to £7500-£8000. He’s also booked out solid until 2025 and I’d ideally like to get things moving sooner than that.

It seems that my kind of diffuse thinning is a tricky one to do transplants on so I feel like I will probably need to spend out to get it done right. I don’t feel like I see all that many similar hairloss patterns on here so would welcome any success stories from people who’ve gotten transplants with a similar starting point. 

Where’d you go? What was the cost? How are the results?

Thanks in advance!

[Berba11]

1 hour ago, jmac said:

because once travel and accommodation etc is factored in (I’d probably stay in Bangkok for 2 weeks to allowed the initial healing to happen), the total cost will be closer to £7500-£8000.

A return flight to Bangkok is probably going to be around £600-800 depending on the time of year, and you could cut your post-op stay down to no more than a week. Accommodation costs can be as expensive or as cheap as you like in Bangkok and food is super cheap, too. You should easily be able to keep things at no more than £7.5K.

Your best UK options are going to be at least £3 per graft, so a 3K graft surgery will put you decently above your estimated costs for surgery in Thailand. Same deal in Europe really. The better options are going to be starting around a similar price point, from 3-4EUR per graft minimum.

FUT tends to be cheaper than FUE, so you may find some savings to be had with surgeons/clinics that offer both options, and 3-3.5 grafts from a strip surgery is worthwhile (you want to get as much out of a strip as possible ideally).

1 hour ago, jmac said:

I’d be willing to spend that kind of cash if I could get some assurance of the kind of density I’d like.

Unfortunately this is a gamble we all take when going for elective surgeries. The best we can do is mitigate risk as much as possible by carefully selecting surgeons. Dr Laorwong is a very good and experienced surgeon indeed, so you'd be mitigating the risks of a poor outcome by choosing him. But all top doctors have poorer cases within their portfolio nevertheless.

[FutureHT1208]

Booked out til 2025 really? I spoke to him a couple of months ago and he still had availability in may and June this year 

[Maorizio]

I don’t think there is someone with Laorwong skill at his price range, 80 baht is something like 2 usd per graft.

And a friend of mine has booked with him early this year for June so I don’t think he’s fully booked for 2024, and even if he does it’s still worth waiting if your budget is tight.