Hattingen Hair Clinic
Dr. Sever Muresanu scared me. I first heard of Hattingen Hair Clinic and Drs. Sever and Laura Muresanu over ten years ago, around 2006 or 2007, when I was reading the forums and someone mentioned a clinic in Europe that was performing hair transplant megasessions using the strip (FUSS) technique. For those of you that weren’t around back then this was quite unusual to read about because in 2006-2007, it was extremely difficult to see a clinic in Europe that was performing hair transplant surgery of over 2500 grafts. Hair transplant megasessions were the domain of only a small handful of clinics and they were all located in Canada and the United States. In fact, Europe in general was never really looked at as a destination when it came to getting megasession hair transplant surgeries. There were a LOT of patients that would come from Europe, to North America, solely because that is where better FUSS work was being performed. This is a fact that has been forgotten in this FUE dominated world. However, there was one clinic in Europe able to consistently perform these hair transplant megasessions and it was Hattingen Hair Clinic, and Drs. Sever and Laura Muresanu. When I first heard about their work, I was worried. When I first saw their work, I new that the reign of North American strip surgery superiority was finally being challenged.
Today, the concept behind hair transplant megasessions has changed dramatically. Where once the idea of a megasession was anything over 2500 grafts, today those references are assuming that the procedure performed is FUE. However, the case for larger strip sessions still holds merit, and in fact, large FUSS surgeries can potentially be safer and a better utilization of your finite donor hair resources than FUE over the longer term, if you have an aggressive pattern of hair loss.
Hattingen Hair Clinic is in Schaffhausen, Switzerland but it was started in Hattingen, Germany (hence the name) before relocating in 2009. As I mentioned before, I’ve known of the clinic since at least 2006-2007 and I finally met Dr. Sever Muresanu in 2013 at the ISHRS World Hair Conference in San Francisco, California. Dr. Muresanu had sought me out personally because he had a gift that he wanted me to give to Dr. Wong (he couldn’t attend). Dr. Muresanu had known who I was since I was the online representative known as “Jotronic” for the eleven years I worked for Dr. Wong so I was fairly well known when forums still had relevance. This was the first time I was able to meet Dr. Muresanu and it lead to us meeting at various conferences over the years. That finally that leads us to today.
Straight Forward Information
Here are some of the things that I like about Dr. Sever Muresanu. He is a lot like me in that he isn’t interested in telling people what they want to hear, only what they need to hear. In other words, if he believes something to be true he won’t say otherwise if the popular opinion on the subject is different from his own. This is one of the reasons why he has not abandoned strip surgery in favor of FUE only, as most other clinics in Europe have done. I guess when you’re one of the few clinics in Europe doing good strip work to begin with, that decision makes more sense, but he has stuck by his position that strip hair transplant surgery is warranted for many patients. I happen to agree with his position as my own case could never have been corrected or improved to the point that it has been with FUE alone.
Drs. Muresanu also purposely avoided FUE early in it’s development only because they knew that it would not offer the benefits that great strip offers. The only reason why FUE exists is to not have a strip scar. This has been the truth from the beginning and he understands this clearly. As the technique improved he began to get more serious about FUE and formally started offering it in 2009 when he and Dr. Laura felt that the results were consistent and of high quality. Drs. Muresanu have been offering FUE ever since but they have maintained their position as one of the few elite strip hair transplant centers in the world.
I like the fact that Hattingen Hair Clinic is adamant about making sure patients understand the reality of hair transplant surgery. They stress to patients that they should take their time to understand as much as possible about the procedure(s) they are considering and that surgery is the last resort. Hattingen Hair Clinic always remind their patients that non-surgical hair restoration options should always be considered first before “getting cut”.
"Doctor Only" Hair Restoration Surgery
Hattingen Hair Clinic has had many opportunities to expand and grow so that they can mirror what is being done throughout most of Europe but they realized early on that in order to do this they would have to compromise on quality. Hattingen Hair Clinic has the philosophy that if you have high standards for yourself, which are already rare and hard to find in the industry, how can it be expected to find a new team of technicians that share the same passion and requirements for excellence? This is only one of the reasons why they have decided to keep it simple and remain a “boutique” hair transplant clinic where they can control all aspects of the procedure. For FUT, Dr. Sever and Dr. Laura of course take out the donor strip and the technicians sliver and dissect the tissue into healthy and undamaged follicular units.
Using high powered stereoscopic microscopes for fifteen years insures that the clinic has the experience that is necessary to properly separate single hair grafts for the hairline from doubles, triples, and quads that will go elsewhere in the scalp. This applies to the clinic’s FUE procedures as well, which is becoming more of a rarity than ever and is why we have been seeing a massive amount of unnatural work with most FUE clinics worldwide.
Dr. Sever and Dr. Laura have been involved with hair restoration their entire adult lives. Dr. Sever was even exposed to his first hair transplant surgery when he was only fifteen years old as his mother was a hair transplant technician in Toronto, Canada after they escaped from communist Romania. Dr. Sever and Dr. Laura married after meeting in college, and after both graduated from medical school they set out to learn as much about hair restoration as possible while working in various clinics throughout Europe. Eventually, they settled down to start their own clinic, first in Spain, then Hattingen, Germany and finally in Switzerland where they’ve been ever since.
I like Dr. Sever Muresanu for his frankness about the realities of hair transplant surgery and his dedication to running a clean, safe clinic that produces world class results on a regular basis. It’s nice to have Dr. Sever and Dr. Laura, and the team at Hattingen Hair Clinic, on board as a Hair Transplant Mentor™ supported clinic especially knowing that they are as good as any clinic in the world for high density, FUT hair transplant megasessions, and knowing they take a personal and professional approach to producing FUE results that have a naturalness that rivals any other clinic around.
Drs. Sever and Laura Muresanu has passed my rigorous review process before being given Hair Transplant Mentor™ accepted member status. The review process is based on my own high standards based on over twenty years of working with world class clinics. Once accepted, every Hair Transplant Mentor™ member clinic pays a monthly retainer fee for membership and my services.