Twelve questions to ask a hair transplant clinic abroad

You are choosing a surgeon in a country you have never been to, from a website, in a language that may not be their first. The only real protection you have is the quality of the questions you ask before you pay a deposit, and how willing a clinic is to answer them in writing. Below are twelve, in the order we would ask them, with the shape of a good answer and our own answer to each. Copy them into a message and send them to every clinic on your list, including us. A clinic that treats the list as an insult has answered question one.

The clinic and the surgeon

1. Is the facility licensed, and as what? A good answer names the licence and the authority that issued it and offers to show it. Vagueness here ends the conversation. Ours: a licensed clinic in Tirana, with the address published as Rruga Mine Peza 3, Njësia Bashkiake 10, 1016 Tirana, which is the same address on the Business Profile and on the invoice.

2. Who is the surgeon, and what do they do themselves? You want to know who assesses you, who operates, and which parts of the day are theirs. A clinic that answers with “a team of specialists” has made a choice about accountability. Here: The specialist who assessed your hairline is the one in the room from extraction to the final graft. The division of work is on our surgeon and team.

3. Who performs each step of the operation? Ask specifically about extraction, the incisions and placement. A good answer is a sentence with names of roles in it, not the word “supervised”. Ours: The specialist who assessed your hairline is the one in the room from extraction to the final graft.

4. How many operations are scheduled on my date? The number tells you how the day will run and whether the surgeon can be present throughout. Ours: a small number of.

The surgery itself

5. How many grafts, and how was that number reached? A good answer refers to your photographs, your Norwood stage, the area to be covered and measured donor density. A bad answer is a round number offered before anyone has seen the back of your head.

6. What is the maximum you will harvest in one session, and why? The published safe range for a single session is 2,000 to 4,000 grafts depending on donor density. Ours is 4,500, and if your plan needs more it becomes two sessions twelve months apart.

7. What punch diameter do you use, and is it single-use? Extraction punches are typically 0.7 to 0.9 mm. The point of the question is not the number, it is whether anyone at the clinic can answer a technical question without checking with someone else. Sterile single-use instruments are not a feature, they are a baseline.

8. Can I see month-twelve photographs of patients with my graft count and my hair type? Ask for the graft number and the date for each case shown. Before-and-afters taken at month six flatter the clinic; month twelve is the honest checkpoint. Ours are published by graft count, with consent, and a case we do not have we will not show you.

The money and what happens after

9. Is the price final, and what is inside it? A good answer is a list you can tick off. Ours: €2,500 for FUE, and the package covers pre-operative blood tests, the procedure with the medical team, post-operative medication and care products, hotel accommodation in Tirana, airport transfers, and the follow-up checks. Outside it: Flights and personal spending. Deposit €200 deposit, payment by by card (Visa, MasterCard, American Express) or bank transfer, in euro. The full line-by-line version is on what is included in the package.

10. What happens if growth is poor at month twelve? This is the question that separates a clinic from a sales desk, and the answer should exist before you need it. Ours reads: A written guarantee for life: if transplanted grafts do not grow as planned, the corrective session is covered, though not the natural thinning of hair that was never transplanted.

11. Who follows me up, in what language, and for how long? The result takes a year, and almost all of it happens at home. Ours: photo check-ins for 12 months, read by the surgeon who operated, in English, Italian and Albanian.

12. What are the risks, and which ones have you had to manage? A clinic that says there are none is either inexperienced or not listening. Folliculitis, swelling, numbness, poor growth in a zone and shock loss of surrounding hair are all part of the territory, and each has a management plan. Ours is set out plainly on risks and complications.

Two questions that are not on the list

How good are the reviews? Reviews are worth reading and worth distrusting in equal measure. Look for dates spread over years rather than a burst in one month, look for reviews that mention month nine or month twelve rather than the day of surgery, and read the two-star ones properly: what the clinic did about a problem tells you more than a hundred five-star ratings.

How does the clinic talk to you before you have paid? Speed matters less than substance. If the first reply contains a price, a discount and a date but no questions about your hair, the conversation you are in is a sales conversation. If the first reply asks for better photographs, asks what medication you take and asks your age, someone clinical is reading.

FAQ

What is the single most important question?

Who performs the extraction and the placement, and how many operations are running that day. Almost everything else you might worry about, price, city, hotel, technique names, either follows from that answer or matters much less than it appears to. The second most important is the graft ceiling and how it was decided, because that is the one decision in this process that cannot be revised later.

Should I choose a clinic because it is cheaper?

Only as a tie-breaker between two clinics you would each be happy to be operated on by. Price differences between countries are mostly differences in the cost of running an operating room, so a lower figure is not evidence of anything by itself, in either direction. What you should never do is choose on the difference between two quotes you have not interrogated: the published bands across Albania, Turkey, Italy, Spain and the UK are on Albania versus Turkey.

What should I have in writing before I fly?

The graft number, the technique per zone, the price and what it includes, the deposit and how the balance is paid, who will operate, the date and duration of the surgery, the aftercare instructions, the follow-up schedule and whatever the clinic’s policy on poor growth is. Ask for it as one document. A clinic that produces it in an hour has produced it many times before, which is itself the answer to several of the twelve questions.

Does a written growth warranty mean anything?

It means something if it says what is measured, when, by whom, and what the remedy is. A slogan that promises the result means nothing at all, because nobody can promise how an individual follicle behaves. A useful policy names a review point, usually month twelve, a comparison method, usually standardised photographs, and a remedy, usually a further session at a stated cost or none. Read it before the deposit, not after.

What if a clinic will not answer the questions?

Then you have your answer and it cost you nothing. There is no shortage of clinics, and the ones worth travelling for are used to being asked. Reluctance is rarely about secrecy, it is usually about who is answering: a sales team cannot answer question three, and a clinic that routes patients through a sales team has decided that is acceptable. You do not have to agree.

Clinically reviewed by the treating surgeon. Last reviewed 25 September 2026.