How Doctors Do Their Personal Hair Transplant Research. IAHRS accepted member Baubac Hayatdavoudi, M.D. explains  how he was able to effectively research his hair transplant options and what resources helped him avoid becoming one of the “walking wounded” of the hair transplant industry. If you are considering hair transplant surgery and are currently trying to do your research, this is a segment you want to watch.

Dr. Baubac Hayatdavoudi: My research in hair loss began during my undergrad years at UC Santa Barbara, and as it continued, I still had enough density and I still was having a difficult time putting my arms around the process of hair loss and whatever that connotes. It became my muse, in a way, my hobby, and learning as much as I could about the process. At that time, I transitioned into medical school, and I had access to PubMed Journals, and the most recent research.

So, I began looking, hoping that I could figure out a solution for myself. Thereafter, after about six months, I realized that it's an ominous task. There are a lot of smart folks that are actively researching this field and they have a lot more resources and knowledge than I did at that point. So, then wanting to live my youth quite honestly the way that I wanted unencumbered, unlimited, I really began looking at various options, medications, surgical, everything that was available at that point.

I realized that with the hair loss that I had where the temple angles had gone back and the hair line in the temples had really recessed, at that point, at the age of 23, folks thought I was in my late 30s, early 40s. It has an impact on you. So, I began really delving into the surgical options. At that time, the internet was not as vast as it is now. I quickly turned on to a few sources, yours being one of them to guide me in terms of experiences, what I should look for.

At that time, actually your source was fantastic because as it remains today, it was really unbiased. It was patient-protective. I found myself going to it as well as other forums to see what's out there. The forums were a little bit [inaudible 00:02:36] because you have different clinics that were on there, each promoting themselves. I quickly leaned on all sources that I could.

I began doing research on various clinics. I had set my mind that surgery was something that I was going to do. At that time, you still saw a lots of results that were scary. We just passed Halloween last night. Those results kind of stick out, although now technology and surgical skill set has tremendously improved.

Spencer Kobren: I'm going to interrupt you. It has improved for those who are willing to improve the infrastructure of their practice and really learn how to perform state-of-the-art surgery, but there's a huge problem where I think things are going back to where it's even worse in some cases than when I started in this industry, because of these turnkey devices that are being sold to cosmetic surgeons, plastic surgeons, who are unwilling to take the time that it takes to learn this craft. They're depending on, in some cases, relatively skilled or even unskilled labor, in my view.

People that don't have medical licenses. There's some great techs out there, but to me if the captain of the ship doesn't know what their doing, and you're depending on individuals to come in on a per diem basis to perform surgery ... I mean, this is cosmetic surgery ... you're going to get a lot of bad outcomes, and we're seeing that today. So, speaking of Halloween, I see scary outcomes from procedures that were performed six months ago, or eight months ago, using so-called state-of-the-art methods.