How To Get the Best Hair Transplant in Turkey in 2021!
written by Matt Dominance
In this post you’ll find out:
- 10 Things to pay attention to when researching a hair transplant clinic in Turkey
- How to avoid risky clinics and mistakes guys do during their hair transplant clinic research in Turkey
You can also Fill out the Contact Form below this Article for Finding out the best Clinic in Turkey for your Budget!
1. Clinics accepting 1 vs 8+ patients per day
Clinics/doctors focusing on 1 or 2 patients per day are known for:
- Having an extensive hair consultation with the surgeon (up to 60 minutes)
- High doctor involvement in the procedure (consultation, extraction phase, incision-making phase, implantation phase)
- Quality focus
Clinics/doctors focusing on 8+ patients per day are known for:
- Very brief hair consultation with the surgeon (5 – 15 minutes) due to many patients waiting for the consultation on that day
- Low doctor involvement in the procedure (consultation, extraction phase, incision-making phase, implantation phase) due to many patients
- Quantity focus with high reliance on the skill of the team members, who are no doctors often times
2. Proper graft extraction during FUE! What’s proper and what’s not?
The goal of a proper graft extraction:
1.Minimal hair follicle transection
2.Minimal scarring on the donor area
3.Homogenously spread extraction over the whole surface of the donor area
The most important factors which affect the outcome of the graft harvesting:
- Experience of the surgeon or a technician
- Extraction tool used (manual vs motorized punch)
- Punch size (0.6mm – 0.95mm)
- Extraction limit per day (by larger FUE cases of 2500+ grafts)
Make sure you always double-check the experience of the doctor/technician who is about to perform the graft extraction on your scalp. The ability to precisely isolate follicle after follicle several thousand times comes with experience. The higher the experience, the lower the hair follicle transection rate generally is.
Turkish hair transplant clinics are known for utilizing motorized punch allowing them to perform the surgeries faster, accept more patients per any given time period and be able to perform FUE mega-sessions of up to 6000 grafts per day.
Unfortunately, some clinics are able to perform such sessions in one day.
The usual punch size used by the best doctors is 0.8mm – 0.9mm. Thicker punches than these increase the scarring on the donor area, while thinner ones may increase the hair follicle transection rate.
Every good doctor uses FUE variables and combines different sized punches for an optimal result. If the hair follicle is very thin (single graft), there is no need to use a large punch (1mm) because this will unnecessarily increase the scarring on the donor area.
The selection of the punch should be just big enough to successfully surround the hair follicles which the doctor intends to isolate.
The best clinics in Turkey have an extraction cap/extraction limit set per day. This will result in less donor over-harvesting and lower follicle transection rates.
With a motorized punch, the limit is usually set on 2500-3000 grafts while with the manual punch it is only 1400-1700 grafts.
3. High doctor involvement in the procedure
In Turkey, the prices for hair transplants vary mainly due to surgeon involvement in the procedure.
In this post I explained what are the 3 types of hair transplant clinics in Turkey.
- Package Zone Clinics
- Signs of the Safety Zone Clinics
- Safe Zone Clinics
I refer to safety as the likelihood of ending up with a natural-looking hairline and properly managed donor area.
By looking at hair transplant offers in Turkey, make sure you always focus the most on the ones with high doctor involvement in the procedure. This will increase the chance of you ending up with a great result!
If you are interested in finding out good deals in Turkey – high doctor involvement for a reasonable price, make sure you check out my “Ultimate Hair Transplant in Turkey GUIDE” with a list of the best 14 clinics in Turkey!
4. Single grafts in the hairline
Placement of single hair follicles (single grafts) in the frontal hairline and temporal regions is crucial for getting a natural-looking result.
Single grafts create a feather-like appearance on the hairline which is how a non-transplanted hairline non-affected by male pattern baldness looks like.
You have to become a detective for a little while and precisely zoom in on the hair transplant results in the before and after photo gallery.
During my 1st hair transplant in Turkey, I have unfortunately got plenty of multiple hair follicles (multi grafts) transplanted in my frontal hairline which created a very robust – looking appearance. Eventually I had it removed during my hairline correction surgery.
In order to avoid it, make sure you do your detective work right!
5. Providing a detailed breakdown of hair follicle types
Unfortunately, many Turkish hair transplant clinics don’t provide patients with a detailed breakdown of hair follicle types, which look something like this:
Why it is important?
Such breakdown can tell patient how many hairs he got transplanted, not grafts.
The number of hairs decides how dense and full the result will look.
Let’s say you got 1656 grafts extracted:
421 singles
785 doubles
450 multiples (3s and 4s)
How many hairs?
421×1 + 785×2 + 450 x (multiple means 3 or 4= 3.5 on avg.) = 3566 hairs
Why many Turkish clinics don’t do it?
- The team doesn’t have enough time to count and sort the hair follicles
- It costs more money to hire additional team member who is responsible for counting and sorting the grafts
Which clinics in Turkey provide patients with hair follicle breakdowns?
90% clinics in the “Package Zone” unfortunately don’t provide it but the more expensive clinics (charging 1 Euro per graft and higher) do provide it. You should always ask for it though.
6. Using surgical loupes with 6-8x magnification
Using surgical loupes with 6-8x magnification is very important. Loups help the doctor/technician:
- Decrease the hair follicle transection rate during the harvesting phase
- Properly place the hair follicle in the recipient area without damaging the surrounding hair
- Better dense pack the grafts
7. Strict qualification criteria for new technicians/assistants entering the clinic
If you have a feeling that the clinic you are interested in is likely to be focused on quantity of patients operated per day, make sure you double-check the clinic’s requirements for accepting new staff.
In such clinics, the assistants/technicians are physically responsible for 90% of the hair transplant, unless the clinic employs a half a dozen of doctors. It’s a very unlikely scenario though.
The clinic shouldn’t allow any technicians/assistants to “touch” the patient until the technician has already completed a reasonable time period of extensive training at the particular clinic.
Such period should normally be no shorter than 3 years. It could be done as an internship in a particular clinic.
8. Detailed before and after photos on the website, YouTube posts/videos, Forum posts
Many of the Turkish hair transplant clinics have increasingly started using Instagram as their nr. 1 platform for posting before/after results.
Instagram enables clinics to organically reach many people on Instagram for free by deploying the hashtag strategy on their before and after photos.
Drawbacks of Instagram before and after results
- The photos are often times not detailed enough and only show what people want to see – big hair transformations without showing the result from different angles.
- Clinics have low incentives to post donor area before and after results as this is not demanded so much by the Instagram audience, und thus won’t get rewarded by likes and comments.
In case you can’t find before and after images of a clinic anywhere but on Instagram, make sure that the clinic is able to provide you with high resolution before and after photos from different angles incl. the donor area before and after photos. Ask them to email you these.
Turkish clinics on Forums and YouTube
Finding additional results from a clinic either on reputable hair transplant forums or YouTube always brings more transparency and clarity into the decision process. One should never rely on before and after photos coming from one source only.
9. Stressing the importance of taking anti hair loss medication
After researching 100’s of Turkish hair transplant clinics over the last 4 years I can say with confidence that 80% of them don’t stress about their patients being on anti hair loss medication before undergoing a hair transplant.
This can unfortunately turn out as a huge mistake – especially for young patients with ongoing hair loss.
Asking the clinic a simple questions like: “Should I use medication before I get a hair transplant at your clinic?” or “Should I wait 6 months for Finasteride to kick in first and then come to your clinic?” can already tell you whether the clinics has some ethics or just tries to sell you the hair transplant asap.
Clinics in Turkey which prefer you to get on medication prior to the hair transplant instead of explaining you why hair loss medication isn’t necessary, are usually the ones with higher ethical standards, higher quality focus and they have also a better clue about long-term hair transplant planning.
10. Why Afro hair patients should be extra CAUTIOUS when going to Turkey in 2021!
Facts about Afro hair:
- Afro hair is more suitable for FUT instead of FUE due to unpredictability of the hair follicle curl underneath the skin
- Getting FUE with Afro hair is possible but the follicle transection rate is always higher compared to Caucasian hair
- Sharp punches during Afro hair extraction with FUE are risky!
Even the most experienced clinics in Turkey don’t perform hair transplants on Afro patients on a regular basis. It’s because they understand how complex and unpredictable the Afro hair can be during the FUE.
How come so many clinics in Istanbul have no problem harvesting 3000-4000 hair follicles per day with FUE on Afro patients? The answer is simple: Little to no ethics and inability to provide conservative quotes.
The best piece of advice I would give a patient with Afro hair who wants to go to Turkey for his hair transplant would be: “Get a small FUE session and wait for the hair regrowth first, observe the graft survival and then decide whether it makes even sense to get another FUE.”
Unfortunately, there will be also many Afro patients in 2021 who decide to opt for a FUE mega-session without understanding its consequences.
It keeps happening, because clinics don’t take these consequences seriously enough and keep accepting Afro patients for larger FUE jobs.