As in Turkey, hair transplant surgery is one of India’s fastest growing industries and in general, the standard of care provided by many of these pop-up clinics are not good. With that said there are a handful of exceptionally skilled and ethical surgeons in the region performing truly state of the art hair transplant surgery. IAHRS accepted member, Mumbai hair transplant surgeon Pradeep Sethi, M.D. flew half way across the world to sit down with Spencer Kobren in his Los Angeles studio to discuss the current state of the industry in India and how prospective patients can avoid making a bad decision that will effect the rest of their lives.

Pradeep Sethi, MD: What happens in India now is very bad. A lot of advertisements coming up and almost every second road has got a hair transplant clinic and everybody says that I do full hair transplant and give some package something like that and it is very difficult now to find out who is a genuine doctor. So all our old patients or new patients when they come to us they say other clinics or other doctors or sops they are doing so much advertisement and they are offering things in such a cheap price.

Pradeep Sethi, MD: Then what I have decided to tell them that you should be very, very cautious about choosing the doctor because once the job is bad it will be very difficult to repair it.

Spencer Kobren: Right.

Pradeep Sethi, MD: And your number of [inaudible] everything you have got on the scalp is finite.

Spencer Kobren: But here's the thing and that's actually we want all good doctors to give that message but sadly because the industry has been so commoditized, consumers in their mind they're thinking well maybe this guy is telling me this because he wants to charge me more money or maybe this guy is telling me this, he wants to save the sale. So I always think it's important for physicians who are in your position to be able to provide them with third party information from credible resources and say look no matter what you decide to do, read this before you make a decision and that's why we created the International Alliance of Hair Restoration Surgeons to really help separate the real doctors, the good doctors from all the rest and that's why I'm actually really glad that you are becoming a part of the organization because especially in your part of the world, it's so difficult for not only good physicians to distinguish themselves but for patients to have any clue of who to go to.

Pradeep Sethi, MD: Yeah I have been following your forum your studio talks and they have been all great and inspiring and educating. The material is very much educating.

Spencer: I appreciate that.

Pradeep Sethi, MD: So what I tell my patients that thy should be going for research and the research says the first thing the doctor should be able to produce a lot of references, old patients. If the doctor is not able to produce references in our kind of places at least 1000 references should be there. And if the doctor not producing, or he cannot or he hies then straightaway one should not go to that place.

Spencer Kobren: Well how do patients when you tell them this, how do they react to it? Are they appreciated or do they just like well thank you but I'm going to the next person.

Pradeep Sethi, MD: No, no they appreciate it. [crosstalk] they say that the doctor will not tell me those names for a secretive kind of thing. But I will if the patient is so happy with the result then he will like to speak for the doctor. So that is the first thing, second thing I say you should ask the doctor or the team or the [inaudible] to tell in details who is doing the procedure. Whether it is technician lead or doctor lead. Who is leading the team? The third question is whether the doctor who does the procedure is only doing hair transplant or he also does other things like other cosmetic procedures like there is also lip jobs other cosmetic procedures like nose and rino. So in that way probably somebody can distinguish between the doctor who does only hair transplant, hair restoration surgeries versus who does everything.