I often come across patients who want to undergo a transplant but it's not the ideal treatment for them; in their case, taking medication and being patient is more effective. In summary, I encounter a lot of ignorance during consultations.
To achieve significant improvements, whether through medication or transplant, you need to have a very clear idea that not all areas of your scalp and not all patients are the same.
The problem is that sometimes we only have a hammer which is either a transplant or medical treatment, and it seems like all problems are nails, but that's not exactly the case. I recommend that you take a small pen or pencil, and I'm going to give you some small scores here. I think you should note down these scores, and then calculate what number you get at the end. With that number, you'll be able to roughly know if a transplant or medical treatment would be more cost-effective for a certain area. The first thing is to understand that each area has a different outcome, as some are easier to improve than others with various treatments.
Let me make a comment first, and that is that the current best treatment for androgenetic alopecia is a combination of treatments. A transplant alone is not the best, nor is medical treatment alone the best, the best treatment is the combination. Let's talk about age; if you're between 20 and 40 years old, you need to add a point, as it's the age (generally) when medical treatment responds best. If you have more than 2 family members with a history of hair loss, you need to subtract a point from the overall score.
Let's talk about the area; if you want to improve the crown, you add a point, if, on the other hand, you're evaluating the vertex area, you add two points. If you want to improve the front area, you subtract a point, and if you want to improve the central area, you subtract two points.
Let's imagine a patient who is 35 years old (+1 point) wants to improve the vertex area (+2 points) has no multiple family history (+-0 points) and also has no history of responding or not responding to treatment (+-0 points) and finally has a lot of medium-sized hair. We set the limit at 4 points, where the patient should undergo medication treatment, and therefore, in this case, they are on the borderline between transplant and medical treatment. As you can imagine, this test is not performed in the medical consultation, but it can provide clarity to understand if a transplant makes sense or not, and what the individual medical treatment is.
To make it easier for you to follow the questionnaire, I am including an explanatory video for you to watch. As always, it is essential to seek a professional without an interest in performing or not performing a hair transplant. Each case should be studied separately and personalized to achieve the final desired goal for the patient. For you.