What are the Costs and Financing Options for Hair Transplant Procedures?
While hair transplant surgery is not inexpensive for most people, it is a life-time investment in appearance and in many cases, self-confidence. Hair transplants are generally permanent because the follicles are taken from areas that are not destined to become bald as one ages, such as the back and sides of the head. What is the price of a life time of pleasure and self-esteem one will achieve from this type of surgery?
The actual cost depends on many factors and varies from one doctor to another. I have seen prices from $2 per graft to $20 per graft. The less expensive grafts are the strip type procedures. This is when a strip of scalp is surgically removed from the back and sides of the scalp and the hair follicles are then dissected from the strip before placing them into the recipient sites. The good part is the price. The downsides are the sutures or staples and the resulting scar. Also the recovery is long and painful and often there is a scar deformity making it difficult to wear short hair and significant numbness in the scalp.
FUE (follicular unit extraction) surgery is when each follicular unit, consisting of 1 to 4 follicles, is removed individually with no resulting scar. When this is done manually, about 750 follicles can be removed at one sitting. The price then goes up, often to $10 to $12 per graft or more. When an automated FUE is performed such as with the NeoGraft, the price is generally $6 to $20 per graft. However, up to 2500 grafts can be taken at one sitting.
A “lunch time” hair transplant may be only 200 grafts. At $10 per graft, this would be $2,000. Due to the cost, patients may prefer to have a smaller number of grafts per session, repeating the procedures every 6 months or so when their financing status permits.
One must be careful to ask how many follicles and thus hairs will be in each graft. I know of surgeons that use only one follicle per graft. This means that 1,000 grafts can yield only 1000 hairs. If done properly, the FUE with NeoGraft technology, the hairs should vary between 1 and 4, with an average of about 2.5 hairs per graft. Thus, 1,000 grafts would yield an average of 2,500 hairs. You would be getting over double value if the price were the same per graft. Plus, more than double the density and appearance.
A doctor will usually charge more per graft for a procedure with fewer grafts than with more grafts, e.g., 500 grafts may cost $10 – 15 per graft and 2,000 may cost $6 – 10 per graft, according to the doctor and the doctor’s location.
If body hair is used for transplantation, the cost may be as high as $12 to 15 per graft. Only about 750 to 800 grafts can be taken from the body per procedure, and it is more tedious. In fact, though we offer body hair transplants, very few doctors offer this as an option.
Another very tedious procedure is hair transplantation to the eyebrows. This will thus cost more, typically $12 – 15 per graft.
The fact that hair transplant surgery with the most advanced technology is not cheap is why many people finance their hair transplant surgeries. To get the results they want, some patients would have to come up with more money than they can gather at one time. Some examples of financing options are credit cards, finance companies, and bank loans.
Some finance companies such as CareCredit specialize in providing loans for cosmetic surgery. You may be able to finance either part or the entire cost of your hair transplant operation with no down payment. Our schedulers can help you with this option.
Hair transplant is costly, but with the right financing, you can do it if you choose to, and again, it is a life-time investment. Financing gives you the opportunity to use the doctor you want and get the number of grafts you need.
