Every question below exists because a document says the answer varies. Not a forum opinion, not an industry norm: a statute, a regulation, an audited filing, or a peer-reviewed paper. Each comes with what a good answer looks like.
1. Is the price quoted per hair or per graft?
Korean statutory fee schedules are banded by hair count. Modaol’s own footnote states that its figures are on a hair basis and that for non-incision extraction one follicle carries an average of two hairs. Turkey, Thailand and India quote per graft. So a Seoul “3,000” and an Istanbul “3,000” are roughly a factor of two apart, and the Istanbul one is the larger operation. A good answer names the unit and converts it for you. The graft versus hair guide does the arithmetic.
2. Where can I read your published fee schedule myself?
Korean law requires a provider to publish its non-covered fee schedule on its own domain, which is why one Gangnam clinic’s top band, 4,500 hairs and above, is readable as $4,865–11,780 for surgery alone, read 2026-07-28 at ECB rates of 2026-07-27. A good answer is a link to the clinic’s own domain. A price that exists only on a facilitator’s page is that facilitator’s price for its own service, whatever clinic is named beside it. The pricing page shows what each market’s figure measures.
3. Who opens the recipient sites?
Turkey’s 2023 hair transplant regulation reserves the channel-opening stage to a physician holding the applier certificate, under article 9(3). India’s NMC notice of 2022-09-20 classifies any skin incision as surgery reserved to a Registered Medical Practitioner. This is the step most likely to be physician-only anywhere, which is exactly why an answer about it does not settle the other two questions below. A good answer names the physician.
4. Who extracts the grafts?
Turkey’s article 9(4) permits certificated non-physician health personnel to extract under supervision. China’s voluntary standard T/CAPA 3-2021 reserves extraction to the surgeon, but it is voluntary; the binding regulation, §18, says only by or under the guidance of the attending physician. Yonghe Medical’s IPO prospectus does list extraction among the steps physicians perform personally. A good answer is a name and a role, not “our team”.
5. Who implants the grafts?
This is the question the others distract from. NHT Japan prints in its own FAQ that nurses perform graft dissection and implantation while the physician does anaesthesia, harvesting and slits. Yonghe’s prospectus lists anaesthesia, extraction and incision as physician-personal steps, and implantation is absent from that list; the same group reports 1,037 nurses against 221 doctors. AHRS-India’s own guideline permits technicians to implant into premade slits. Korea’s Medical Service Act §27 prohibits the delegation outright, and a transplant performed by a nursing assistant counts as unlicensed practice even under supervision. A good answer is specific and unembarrassed either way.
6. How many rooms will the physician be responsible for during my operation?
Article 9(6) of the Turkish regulation allows one physician to be responsible for as many as five treatment rooms at once. That is the regulation’s own ceiling, not an allegation. It means “a doctor performs your surgery” can be entirely true while four other operations run in parallel. A good answer is a number. The guide on who holds the punch quotes the clause in full.
7. Are you registered to treat foreign patients?
Under Korea’s Act on Medical Overseas Expansion and Foreign Patient Attraction Support of 2016, a clinic must register with its province before treating recruited foreign patients, and registration requires at least one board-certified specialist per treating department plus proof of malpractice liability insurance or mutual-aid membership. Facilitators must register too, and an unregistered clinic cannot lawfully take recruited foreign patients. The register is public and searchable in English at medicalkorea.or.kr, so the good answer is one you verify yourself: Mojelim is M-2010-01-08-1562 and the KNUH Hair Transplantation Center is M-2009-03-01-0013, both checked 2026-07-30. The clinics page lists 13 with registry-sourced numbers.
8. Is the revision term written down before I pay?
None of the three Istanbul price pages this site checked prints a revision term. Bangkok’s Hairtran publishes a one-year free re-transplant, conditional on attending follow-ups. Japan’s Shonan AGA publishes a written guarantee offering free re-operation where the surgeon judges growth clearly poor, with no refunds. In India, one Pune clinic prices revision at INR 20,000–60,000 and calls it always extra, and another publishes a flat no-refund policy. A good answer is a document, agreed before travel, that names the trigger, the remedy and the deadline. That is the shape this site’s own revision model takes.
9. What follow-up do I get after I fly home?
Article 10(3) of the Turkish regulation requires photographs before treatment and within 72 hours after, plus a photograph at the sixth month, and then waives the six-month requirement for patients arriving from abroad under health tourism. Evidence the regulation requires of a domestic patient is not required of you. Aftercare across a border is contractual, not regulatory. A good answer says who assesses your photographs, at what intervals, and what happens if they look wrong.
10. What donor density will be left behind?
Published donor arithmetic puts safe single-pass excision at 10–15 excisions per square centimetre, with 40–50 follicular units per square centimetre left in place, against an occipital baseline density of 61–63 follicular units per square centimetre in Asian scalp and 65–85 in Caucasian scalp. A graft count your donor area cannot supply in one pass is a quote for something that will not happen, and the donor area is a lifetime budget, not a one-operation one. A good answer gives your measured baseline density and the arithmetic. The donor capacity guide sets it out.
11. Does your recovery timeline match the peer-reviewed intervals?
Ask for the clinic’s timeline in writing and compare it with the intervals below. A clinic promising a materially faster course is promising something the literature does not describe.
| What happens | When, or how often |
|---|---|
| Crusts | Appear days 2–3, clear by 7–10 days |
| Forehead swelling | About half of patients, peaking days 2–3 |
| Folliculitis | 12.1% |
| Numbness | About 2%, recovering over 4–8 months |
| Infection | Under 1% |
| Shock loss | Onset 2–8 weeks, regrowth from about 3 months; reported incidence 0.15–15%, and 3.7% overall against 20.9% among women in Okochi 2024 |
The recovery timeline guide explains which widely copied monthly density curves this site leaves out, and why.
12. When is the result final, and what is the plan for the hair I have not lost yet?
Maturation takes about 12 months on the same peer-reviewed source, and second sessions are recommended after that point rather than before it. Anything judged at month four is judged early. The second half of the question matters more: Norwood’s 1975 classification, on 1,000 men, put prevalence at roughly 35% at age 50, which is a reminder that pattern loss continues after the operation. A hairline designed for the pattern you have today, with no donor budget reserved, is a plan that ages badly. A good answer covers both. The Norwood scale guide and the how many grafts guide cover the staging.
Using the list
You will not get twelve clean answers anywhere. The list is for separating the questions a clinic answers with a document from the ones it answers with a feeling. Questions 1, 2, 7, 8 and 10 can each be checked against something the clinic does not control, which makes them the most useful five. If you want your own graft count and donor budget worked out first, you can request a graft plan.