Spencer Kobren speaks with IAHRS accepted member Amir Yazdan, M.D. about the the growing reality of untrained and unethical physicians hiring unlicensed, per diem technicians with a few clicks on an app to perform unsupervised hair transplant surgery on unsuspecting patients. You can’t make this stuff up!

Spencer Kobren: Their original ad that was in the flight magazines was so elegant and simple and all it was was a guy with a strip and then a guy without a strip.

Amir Yazdan, MD: Right.

Spencer Kobren: No results, nothing. That sold the concept. You need and nothing else. No other words. And it really shows just honestly the brilliance of this company.

Amir Yazdan, MD: It's marketing. And you know, absolutely. It's like the app was a genius idea. But I mean, it's really scary on our end where doctors are now using app to bring in an an assistant or a technician based on an app and reviews on an app-

Spencer Kobren: To essentially cut somebody open.

Amir Yazdan, MD: Right, right. I mean to make 2000, 3000 incisions on the back of someone's scalp with a large diameter punch, and-

Spencer Kobren: It's even beyond that, you're actually, you're performing many organ transplants-

Amir Yazdan, MD: Essentially, that's very true. It's crazy. But the app idea is genius, but it's scary when you see it. And I mean, I looked at it and I said, wow, this is actually pretty neat. But you know what? Would I feel comfortable ever bringing in some random assistant into my office who's going to fly in and do the surgery. There's something wrong with that. And a consumer should also know that. I mean it's like I said, you show up in the doctor's not doing your surgery. You should leave that practice.

Spencer Kobren: Honestly, how are they going to know unless they find our resources. And that's what we're trying to do now. Now we're trying to move the needle and it's, I'm telling you, dude, you are a rarity Doc. You really are. The younger guys are kind of, they're more in line with your thinking. But the guys my age or older who been doing this for a long time, I hate to say it, but they're fucking dinosaurs, man.

Amir Yazdan, MD: I'll tell you why. Because it's taxing on you. It's hard to do this. I mean, if I'm 60, I can't, I definitely won't be able to do the cases that I'm doing right now.

Spencer Kobren: Well you go to the gym, but these guys just need to get in shape and stop putting people's lives in danger or stop.

Amir Yazdan, MD: Yeah. Yeah.

Spencer Kobren: Because I can tell you this, if I was doing this surgery now, I would want to do it myself and I would make sure that I was in good enough shape to make that happen. Otherwise I would stop.

Amir Yazdan, MD: Just stop. You just have to accept that, stop and they have the ARTAS now and the ARTAS is okay. It's helping the docs that are a little bit older. I'm not 100% against the ARTAS. I've seen decent ARTAS cases. I just don't like the ARTAS 'cause the punch is big. But if a doctor's got good skill to use the ARTAS it's getting graft.