1. Yes. First of all you have two options, strip or FUE. Strip: a strip from the back and sides of your head is excised, and then dissected into individual hair follicles, which are then planted in your thinning/balding areas. Leaves a scar, matter what. In the right hands, though, the scar is very thin and easily covered by the surrounding hair, assuming the surrounding hair is a reasonable length. A "good" scar is 1-2 mm wide. A bad scar can be 5-10 mm wide - there are horror stories where this has indeed happened. FUE: Follicles are extracted one-by-one. You don't get a linear scar as you do in strip. However, you DO get as many tiny scars as follicles extracted. Many argue that these are not noticeable, so FUE can be considered scar-free. Technically that is not true, if you extract 1000 follicles, you will get 1000 tiny scars. They may not be noticeable, but they will be there. Other risks with FUE: if you take out too many grafts, you risk a moth-eaten look in your donor area. Some docs have also said you can lose pigmentation in the skin or something to that effect, and that would of course be noticeable. FUE costs way more than strip on a per-graft basis, but healing is WAY nicer. You'll be laid up for several days after a strip surgery, not so much after an FUE surgery. So, lots of pros and cons to consider. If I could afford it, I would probably do FUE for a smaller session - but if I wanted a smaller session, I probably wouldn't go through the hassle of a transplant in the first place. I don't care if I have hair like a movie star, I just want to look like a guy who kept his hair as he aged. You can achieve that look if you're a NW3, no transplant needed.
2. Yes. Success = 100% growth, but let's face it, there's no way to actually measure that, so success really = your satisfaction with the result. Since you don't know what your satisfaction is going to be, you must read patient stories and asses THEIR satisfaction, so you can make an educated guess as to what your satisfaction will be.
3. As long as the donor hair was going to stay. In other words, you see a bald guy with the horseshoe shape of hair. If that hair was going to last a lifetime on its own, then it's going to last a lifetime when it's transplanted.
4. No. There are only biased rankings. I saw your questions over on HTN and I saw that the moderator suggested you consider their list of coalition members. There are some excellent doctors in that list, but there's also Dr. Straub, and you would be wise to do some digging on him (check out baldcasanova's recent posts, in particular a recent picture of an inexcusable scar, created for a piddley 600 grafts. In MY admittedly biased opinion, there are a handful of docs/clinics that do excellent work. It won't take you long to find out what the consensus is. I went to Dr. Seager and from everything I have learned, my entire procedure was textbook perfect. I do not believe it could have gone any more smoothly anywhere in the world. It may be that it would have gone AS smoothly in another clinic, but not likely that it could have been better.
5. You should stay away from MHR and Bosley. There are FAR better options. MHR and Bosley may have some good cases, but the list of complaints and number of poor results speak volumes about the risk factor. You have one head and if they butcher it, you're sh*t out of luck. Never mind that you'll never get your money back, you'll never get your donor hair back and that's way more irreplaceable than money, not to mention you may look really bad when they are done placing grafts incorrectly.
Good luck.
