I've written extensively about hair transplant clinics in Turkey since my initial visit to see Dr. Emre Karadeniz back in May, 2015 and again in June, 2015 when I returned to Istanbul for the 3rd Annual Mediterranean FUE Workshop. I still have a lot to write and a lot of video footage to edit but I wanted to share this latest video by Hair Transplant Mentor™ partner doctor, Dr. Emre Karadeniz of AEK Hair Institute.
Hair Transplant Clinics in Turkey...Be Careful
Dr. K discusses the three types of hair transplant clinics found in Turkey. Did you know that there are estimates that put the number of hair transplant clinics in Turkey at 500 clinics nationwide? That's more than will be found in all of Europe combined! When I first learned this I was floored but once I got to Turkey and did some digging I realized that the estimate is probably pretty accurate. I was seeing hair transplant clinics in Turkey every few minutes when traveling through Istanbul.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPQUUcaYZC8
Dr. Karadeniz starts by describing the dominant form of hair transplant clinic in Turkey, and that is the "technician" clinic. This is a clinic that, if you see a doctor at all, it will be in the morning when he passes you in the hallway or in some cases he'll draw a hairline for you before he disappears and you don't see him (or her) for the rest of the day. If you do your research to find hair transplant clinics in Turkey this is the type of clinic that you will find nine times out of ten. These are the types of clinics that you will find performing ten and even twenty surgeries IN ONE SINGLE DAY! I spent time in one such clinic and recorded my experience, which I still have to edit when I get the time.
The second type of clinic is a "doctor supervised" clinic. This is a hair transplant clinic that uses a doctor to make recipient site incisions for the grafts to be placed but the technicians are the ones that perform the graft scoring and excisions, assuming that you are dealing with FUE. These clinics will typically run up to four hair transplant surgeries per day and each is supervised by a doctor so you have some assurances knowing that you are not left alone with technicians only with no proper doctor oversight.
The final clinic in Dr. K's video is the "doctor only" hair transplant clinic. This means that technicians are involved but they do not perform, in any way, any part of the procedure that involves breaking the skin and piercing tissue. By definition this is surgery and in these clinics only a doctor performs this part of the procedure. The doctors scores each graft using FUE, he extracts each graft to ensure they are healthy and have little to no transection, and the incisions to place these grafts are also made by the doctor so that the technicians can place them into the patient's scalp. These are the rarest of all the clinics in Turkey and these clinics will have two surgeries per day in some circumstances but usually they are relegated to one surgery per day. The advantage is that you get full doctor supervision attention that can only be given when the doctor's time is not divided among many other patients. The only downside is that the procedure will cost a bit more than the other options but when you're still looking at less than 2 Euro per graft this trade-off is ridiculously easy to absorb.
Dr. Karadeniz has more videos coming and of course I too have a lot more footage I have to edit so stay tuned and look out for more updates soon.
