Before you embark on a hair transplant in Turkey or anywhere oversees for that matter there are some fundamental questions you need to be asking yourself.
People come in droves because while a hair transplant can cost up to $20,000 in the US, in Istanbul, it ranges from $600-$2,000. Too good to be true? You’ve heard the saying- YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!
Yes, your hair restoration procedure will most likely be considerably cheaper than the US but there are reasons for that. Having a surgical procedure shouldn’t be taken lightly as there are many CRITICAL risk factors involved. Let’s discuss the facts and questions you should be asking yourself before buying a plane ticket to Turkey.
- Springing up like rabbits-There are over 500 Hair Transplant clinics in Turkey and of those 500 – only 32 of them are members of the ISHRS-International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery – of those 32, about half are qualified and real hair transplant surgeons. The rest are just “technician clinics” performing your hair transplant despite LEGAL requirements that all transplant operations are performed by a doctor. Not a good sign. (more info on the importance of surgeons being an ISHRS member)
- These clinics will stack upward of 15 hair transplant patients in a single room all being operated on at once. Your risk of infection now plummets through the roof. This would never be tolerated in the United States. A Hair transplant requires concentration, focus and attention to detail-how is this possible with 15 other surgeries happening right next to you?
- If you’re part of the majority that’s being operated on by under-qualified technicians, your risk of a botched operation increases significantly. Risks include (but certainly not limited to)
- Skin infections
- Disastrous scarring on both front and back of the head
- Ingrown grafts which will require another operation for removal
- Unnatural results due to inexperience of graft placement and angle
- Low graft survival rate
- Zero results
If you are you okay with subjecting your body to these grim risks and the unknown.. then Turkey may just be the place for you, but it is very unlikely.
As you can see in the photo above, this is a fitting example of a gentleman that went oversees to Turkey for ‘what he thought’ was going to be a cheap hair transplant. Only to get back to the states with excessively large ingrown grafts deeply burrowed under the skin at his hairline. How is this caused? By someone that’s inexperienced making recipient sites far too deep resulting in one graft getting placed on top of one another. Now you have a double ingrown hair growing out of one incision. The site depth must always match the length of the hair graft. Finally, you’ve now learned your lesson (unfortunately after the matter) and you’re ready to make an appointment with a board-certified experienced hair transplant surgeon in order to successfully remove the cyst formations. You’ll need to be put under another local anesthetic while your physician makes an incision into the scalp to remove the infected cysts. You are then stitched back up even furthering your chances of more scarring in front of the hairline which leads to even more complications.
Over the years, Dr. Yazdan has seen and fixed countless botched patients coming to him and his qualified peers for reconstructive surgeries to fix the operation Turkey’s clinics have mishandled. Unfortunately, many reconstructive hair transplant doctors have slowed down accepting patients due to several factors. After a patient has been neglected, it’s extremely hard to repair once the damage has been done and while your reconstructive results may help, its likely you’ll still be less than satisfied with your overall outcome. As professionals in the field, we highly recommend staying within the US, finding an experienced and successful doctor that’s easily researchable via the internet with excellent reviews, before and after photos and is a member of the ISHRS.
For questions or to schedule a consultation, call one of our offices conveniently located in Irvine, Newport Beach, Beverly Hills and Las Vegas at 888-717-5273 or contact via our website at contact Modena Hair Link