ISHRS 2019

So today I registered for the ISHRS 2020 Virtual World Congress. That made me realize one thing: I didn’t write my blog of the 2019 one! So this will be a quick post about that.

The 2019 ISHRS World Congress was last November in Bangkok, Thailand. I’d never been there, so I was excited to check out the city. I was also tempted to hop on the plane to the islands and get some much deserved sun and relaxation at the beach, but alas, that was not possible as I was needed back in Porto and had to focus on my work.

So today I registered for the ISHRS 2020 Virtual World Congress. That made me realize one thing: I didn’t write my blog of the 2019 one! So this will be a quick post about that.

The trip itself was easy. I always enjoy these long haul flights with no internet. I get so much stuff done it’s not even funny! Just me and my books, my pen and journal, my offline email (on which I can actually clean up the inbox!), a couple of movies, etc. So yeah, I don’t want in-flight internet. Not having wi-fi for a set amount of time is actually rather enjoyable.

I try to arrive one or two days earlier to do some sight-seeing as when the congress starts it gets pretty intense, pretty soon. There’s just so many people that I’m so glad to see and hang out with that, along with the sessions, visiting exhibitors, keeping an eye on how things are going back at the clinic and how patients are doing, I barely have time to get a little workout in.

The congress itself was pretty good. There were some new topics and some not so new ones. Some things that I thought were super simple but important, such as the presentation on ergonomics (with live audience exercises!). That was a fun one. Ergonomics is something I worry about quite a bit and I do take care of my body since surgeries can be very heavy and take many hours. And since time passes super quickly, I sometimes notice I’ve been sitting in the same position for 4 hours! So it was nice to see that there was a presentation on this.

I loved the presentations from Dr. Ramon Grimalt! Super engaging and interesting. Very good and on some controversial topics. His presentations on finasteride and PRP were my favourite ones this year.

Dr. Grimalt’s talk. This slide on Post Finasteride Syndrome was so on point!

And at the end, we always have the gala dinner, which is always fun and engaging as all work is done and we finally get to relax and let loose. Some embarrassing karaoke moments from some of the attendees might have happened, but let’s just say fair play and leave it at that. :D

Hanging out by the pool at the end of the day’s sessions.

After hours, me, Dr. Josephitis and Dr. Pinto and a few others went to the most unlikely little bar right over the river. I’m not even sure if the light was on! Haha The locals were super friendly. They had a guitar with them and I even played and sang a bit with them. Good fun.

The night ended with the concierge taking us on golf-kart ride around the vicinities of the hotel (not even sure how that happened!).

On the last day before my flight, me and my good friend Dr. Pinto went to do some sightseeing and, of course, went to get a Thai massage. We found Dr. Josephitis there who was basically addicted to massages at this point! :D The woman who did my massage was super friendly. That woman proceeded to “destroy me”. She bent me in ways I though I could not be bent! I never though someone so small could be so strong.

All in all, a great congress. This year sadly there won’t be a live meeting, but a virtual one. Once again I’ll be part of the faculty in the FUE Basics course, albeit in video form. Honoured to a be part of it.

Overlooking the beautiful city. Bangkok has amazing rooftops.

Until next time!

(Hopefully in a shorter time period than the last blog.)

Beautiful lunch view from this restaurant.

Bruno Ferreira 6/14/20 Bruno Ferreira 6/14/20

Why Travel For Surgery?

We’re an international clinic. Patients contact us from all over the world, all the way from Australia and New Zealand (yep, literally the most distant civilization from where we’re located) to South Africa, to North America, to…well…next door. This is something I take pride in. Our philosophy revolves around very high quality of service and results, not volume.

Ok, so the first challenge for me here is to write this without it ending up sounding like an infomercial. Because of course I really enjoy having patients come from all over the world and we do get business from them. So let’s just get that “disclaimer” out of the way.

Porto (OPO) Airport. Photo by Xavier Sanz (flickr.com)

I firmly believe this is way better for the patient’s experience and result, since we really end up dedicating ourselves to one case at a time, thinking thoroughly about the strategy and performing the surgery without any sense of time constraints, stopping only at the closest we can possibly get to perfection. It’s nice to see patients relaxing and totally surrendering the outcome of their surgery to us. This is the highest level of trust there is and means a lot to me.

So, with this in mind, I know other people from around the world might want to benefit from this type of experience. They might really like the results we achieve and how we achieve them. They might resonate with our philosophy and way of doing things. Or they might simply trust me and my team as their best option to fulfill their desires of achieving the hair they want to have.

And we don’t take this lightly.

When someone takes the darn to actually get up and travel to a different country to get surgery with THAT doctor at THAT specific clinic, that means they care immensely about their result and went through the work of researching who could be the best option for them. There is of course a second type of person who travels for surgery, on the basis of price. These people are usually not as well informed, not as demanding with their results and are just looking for the cheapest way of getting surgery. They don’t compare doctors, they compare prices. I guess there is a market for that and rightly so. I just advise people to do their due-diligence and please keep your health and well-being a priority.

On our end we work continuously to make the experience as seamless as possible for the patients who choose to travel to us. And we’re still developing new ways and services to improve on this. Having better and closer patient support before, during and after. Creating ways for patients to always know what their next move is and not feel like they need to figure anything out, so that they’re always at ease and comfortable. Fortunately, Portugal is a very welcoming and friendly country. Actually, Portugal is the third most peaceful country in the world according to the Global Peace Index 2020 only topped by Iceland and New Zealand. The Portuguese have this habit of going out of their own way to help strangers and try to understand even languages they don’t speak. Most of the important signs are written in multiple languages and thus tourists find it very easy to navigate around here. We also have excellent weather year-round, which should not be a deciding factor for a hair transplant, but it’s nice to have and nice to know.

The beach where I sometimes go to relax or for a run after a long day of surgery.

Our clinic is located 5 minutes away from the beach which is also a pleasant way for patients to recover from their surgery or get ready for it, even if they can only look at it during their first post-operative days. Porto the city as also won the European Best Destination award 3 times and once again, while that should not be a deciding factor, it’s nice to know/have. And since some patients are very busy and may want to bring their family during the little free time they have during the year, their family get to enjoy the city while they’re in our company.

But this is 2020, and we’re now in the midst of a pandemic. Fortunately things have improved greatly since March, which was when we had to go into lockdown and suspend all our clinical and surgical activity. We were also very fortunate here in Portugal since we were hit much less seriously than other western-European countries and I’m very glad to say that, at the point of this writing, Porto hasn’t had a new case of COVID-19 in 6 days.

Of course traveling is still restricted and it may take a while for things to get back to a resemblance of normal, but we’re getting there. We’ve also taken many different measures to ensure safety at the clinic and thus, things have been going rather smoothly.

I can’t wait for when we’ll be able to provide our new services to our patients, but in the meantime, we’re very happy with how things are progressing and patients as well.

But the pandemic was not the focus of this article. Actually, I started writing this long before there was even a SARS-CoV-2. So, in conclusion, traveling for surgery is like traveling for any specific thing someone may wish to do or see. It’s not located where they are and thus they must travel to obtain it. Our goal is to make as enjoyable, as easy and as comfortable as possible and we continually work on that.