Greetings to all,

I had a consultation with Dr Armani's office regarding an HT yesterday. I had previously booked a session about a year ago but had to cancel. I do have a deposit from the the first booking that I am trying not to lose, so that is why I am leaning towards Dr Armani. The person who interviewed me told me that as of October 1, 2007, the strip procedure will no longer be available and in fact you can't even book one at all. The reason for this decision I was informed is due to "complications" that they have had with the strip procedire???So I was told that FUE is the way to go. In my case I would need 4500 grafts(NW5). This could be done over a two day session. The cost seems to be extremely high, however, and the price changes on whether Armani does it himself or one of his trained surgeons does it. I would prefer of course if Dr Armani did it , but I just can't afford the price. Also, FUE has been the topic of contoversy on this site as to what the final result may look like. If anyone could offer some input It would be appreciated. I will be posting some pics of myself this week. I will asking Hasson and Wong If they do mega fue sessions as well. For some reason I just don't get a good feeling!! I may just be paranoid .

Cheers

strat......

Ive heard alot fo good and bad things about Dr. Armanis operations, in particular, being creative with donor estimates and final graft counts.

If i were you Id cut my losses with the deposit and go with Hasson and Wong for a mega strip procedure....you'll probably get a better result and spend less, afetr losing your deposit. They do not do FUE....Strip is still the way to go......Im sure this thread will attract alot of attention so keep looking back at it.....

Stratman, I can completely understand why you'd be tempted to go to Armani as he truly does do great, thick hairlines.

I do have issues with his donor assessment (estimates everyone has 10-15,000 'on average' - so some even have more?!), how high he goes on FUE (into the danger zone by going too high), and how he is too aggressive on young patients before their respective hair loss characteristics are finalized or stabilized.

Again, having said that, if a person does their research and is older, then it may prove very beneficial.

Now I've wondered how he could perform so many surgeries all over the world, and then finally it came to light that he only does a fraction of the actual surgeries himself. Most of the great success stories in the past were from Armani doing his own surgery and doing it by Strip. So - no - there wasn't high risk in doing strip. I think it has a lot to do with what could be charged and the appeal of FUE to younger men with virgin scalps - his target audience.

Now, while still putting out high standards, he is becoming a 'chain' where you can choose Armani (similar to the option in the past to select Dr. Bosley himself) or one of the 'unknown' Doctors trained by Dr. Armani (sounds again similar to a Bosley brochure).

The question or concern I'd have now is which Doctor is working on me, what is his/her track record? I believe he charges $14 per graft for FUE for Armani, vs. $7 for another trained Doctor vs. about $4 (and less once you get a larger size session) for world renowned doctors, such as Dr. Hasson, Dr. Ron Shapiro or Dr. Feller, etc.

Even if you drop your deposit, you can more than save this amount by going elsewhere that charges less. Another option is to perhaps have a small 'postage size' FUE session to use up the value of your deposit.

One has to wonder if the reason they are no longer doing strip is because with the price getting down under $4 per graft it's no longer very profitable to do them compared to doing FUE which they can charge 3 times as much money for.

Anyway... are they willing to hold the deposit for another year? I like M&M's idea about doing a small amount of FUE to use up the deposit, but I think I'd choose to do a strip procedure first with someone else and then 10 months to a year later go to Armani and use up the old deposit for a bit of FUE for fill in.

Armani has shown very nice work regardless of our judgement on their patients choice. My main concern here is I do not know who my doctor would be ? Lastly, I would surely get a 2nd and 3rd opinion in this matter. You are talking about some BIG BUCKS.

I cannot see what "complications" they would experience with strip surgeries. From a business viewpoint FUE is much more profitable without the dissection.

stratman,

Everyone has given some sound advice. It's nice to have so many knowledgeable members here sharing their input.

My opinion of Armani in a nutshell...

He is technically sound but his ethics are questionable...

M&M has already explained in detail his 10-15000 donor FU average availabilty. Doing the math, it doesn't add up.

He makes decisions based on this such as doing aggressive hairlines on extremely young patients with minimal loss.

I have a problem with that.

In your search for a doctor I would also consider consulting with one of our coalition doctors. Even if you choose Armani, getting a second and third opinion is best practice.

Good luck,

Bill (Falc)

Thanks to everyone for their input. That deposit is gone as they would only honour it if I was to book a complete session with them. I accept that as I did cancel the first booking however much it does hurt to lose that cash. In my initial interview with Dr. Armani he noted that I had some thinnig in my donor areas but it would not pose a problem. This time around I met with one of his reps and was told I could easily yield 10-12k of grafts as I had "thick" donor hair. It is this type of inconsistent info that worries me about him. I will be posting a picture of myself later to show exactly where I am at

Thanks again to all.

stratman,

I'm not sure what the magnitude of your deposit is, but if it's a large one, you may want to consider one of Armani's "other" docs. Additionally, if you're willing to go on short notice [i.e. take a cancelled slot], I believe they drop the price to $5/graft.

If it's not a large deposit, I personally would go the strip route for a mega-session in lieu of FUE. I believe you can maximize your donor yield by utilizing strip to the extent possible before going to FUE. That's just my opinion, and you can do a search on this forum regarding this subject for some more info/opinions.

Good luck!

My two cents:


-- The strip/FUE issue is bigger than the price of any deposit, even if that deposit is a couple thousand bucks. Choose which of the two procedures you really want to go forward with, and then act accordingly even if that means losing the deposit with Armani. IMHO, Armani's decision to go FUE-only seems like it's purely for financial reasons rather than any technical ones. Dr. A was great with strip jobs when he did them.


-- The chief complaints with Armani are basically hairline aggressivenes & the donor estimates. (I agree, you can't trust their donor reserve estimates WHATSOEVER. Their numbers are absolute pipe-dreams for anyone who wants to keep the extractions within the permanent zone while retaining a normal-looking donor area.)

But having said that, you never hear any bad things about the results from a technical point of view. Not even from the other docs within the clinic. So if neither of these ethical things stand to affect your own HT decisions, then in your case going to Armani doesn't seem any worse than anyone else.


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stratman,
If I were you I would even try to get the deposit back. I know all these doctors give us the "nonrefundable deposit" routine when booking procedures, but if you're not using their services, why should they be allowed to keep your money? You put down your money to reserve a date, they've kept the deposit in the interim and probably earned interest off of it, and now they're no longer offering the service (strip) that you had contracted for. Too bad for them. You can't purchase what you want from them even if you were willing to go through with it now. On top of which, Armani is giving you some excuse about strip "complications" that sounds like total b*llshit. If there are complications, why are they still doing surgeries up until October 1st? I would insist that they give you your money back lest they receive any more negative publicity from your case. And it sounds like they're inventing criteria on the spot about you having to book a full session in order for your deposit to be honored. If you charged the deposit, why not issue a chargeback? I don't think Armani's reasoning on this issue, or on many other issues (as other posters have already discussed) adds up.

Here is the picture that Armani's staff took of me this week. 4500 grafts is what I need for sure in order to get a decent result.

L'Anonyme,

thanks for the advice. I always felt somewhat resonsible as I did cancel the procedure after all. However, I gave Armani plenty of notice to fill the spot , and all I wanted was to move the date. He wouldn't honour the initial price as he said it was a "special". I did not know that one could charge back the deposit to one's credit card or I might have done just that. It was for $2000.00 and I think I will look in to that further. Not sure what recourse I have now as that happened over a year ago.

armani_resized.bmp (212 Kb, 42 downloads)

stratman,

Unfortunately I'm not surprised the Dr. Armani wouldn't honor the initial price.

In my experience though he is technically a sound physician, his ethics are out there - especially with his new found advertising of FUE a "nonsurgical" procedure which of course, is very ridiculous.

I think 4500 grafts however, is a good estimate of the number of grafts you would need to give you good coverage and density.

So what are your plans moving forward?

Are you on any hair loss medication to prevent future loss?

Falc

Falceros,

I have been on Propecia for 2 years. IMO it has not done much for me. Going bald is not an option for me as it is something that eats at me each and every day. I will be doing an online consultation with H&W this week to get their opinion.

Thanks