Berba11

Did you manage to get these photos @Luca456?

I'm not saying I have - only that Bicer's aftercare is often cited as a positive in pretty much every thread I've seen. If something didn't turn out so well, I think she's a safe bet for making sure things get resolved. I have a vague recollection of a case involving Bicer where someone had to go back for a second pass and did so without issue, so hopefully someone here can point you in that direction if that's the case. @Melvin- Moderator will be the guy to ask. My understanding is that Demirsoy is a big favourite within German HT forum-circles. Might be worth trawling through there with the translate option on to see what you can find.

I remember you said you were going to post your own progress thread a while back. We're all waiting mate!

One thing I'd add about Demirsoy... He has a tendency (as evidenced in numerous patient threads on this and other forums), to reduce his graft-count assessment once he's seen you in person. That's a good thing - it speaks to a level of integrity and ethics that you would want from your surgeon. It's also always nice to spend a little less than you anticipated you would! You'd be making good choices with either Dr. There does remain the question about post-op care if something goes wrong. Bicer's aftercare is highly regarded and evidenced plenty. Demirsoy's less so, largely owing to the fact that I've never seen a bad result from him. That's a double edged sword; on the one hand... Great! He produces consistently good work. On the other... If your case doesn't come out as planned, nobody quite knows for sure what the response will be (good or bad). It's probably the single biggest reason I've plumped for Eugenix over Demirsoy for my own surgery in a few months. Aftercare is largely redundant when everything goes well. But what if it doesn't? If you are going to limit your destination to Turkey, I'd argue that part of your research should be to find out the answers to these unknown elements.

Great write up. Also I couldn't agree more with what you said in your second post... For me an absolutely critical step that every bloke should take before getting a HT is to buzz their hair short to differing lengths & fades and rock the look for a few months. It suit most blokes perfectly well, is easy to maintain and will save a load of money & hassle. It also always - ALWAYS - looks better than a balding comb over job or crap wispy frontal hair with gaps etc. If after that a HT still appeals then fair enough! But it should be considered essential research in my view.

Demirsoy will likely produce a really good, solid result. If you wanted to maybe 'top up' the same area with a little more density later down the road, or lower things a little, then one strategy would be to start with a more wallet friendly choice like Demirsoy & then down the line use a European clinic of distinction for any smaller (and therefore less expensive) work/refinement. Is there £4000 worth of difference between Demirsoy & HLC? Probably not in reality. HLC are one of the top clinics in Turkey, but they also have several lead doctors, meaning higher overheads and therefore higher costs. You're not necessarily paying for extra quality in this particular shoot out. If HLC's prices are within reach, then that also opens up other options elsewhere, such as Bruno Ferreira in Portugal, among others. The quality of the work itself between Demirsoy, HLC & Dr Bruno for example will be minimal. Where you might actually see the value at the higher price point will be the quality of the aftercare that you will get from someone like Dr Bruno versus the Turkish clinics, which can be very hit & miss even among the best ones.

Hairline at 5 months now looks far, far softer than before. Those singles look to have sprouted through and really restored the naturalness of the hairline.

Your passport issue has saved you from going to a cheap, budget clinic which would be a total lottery as to what the result would be. I'll never quite understand why guys don't do some serious, serious research before getting an operation done on their head that could mess them up for life in the wrong hands, but that's just me... You have quite a lot of hair loss and quite a lot of coverage needed. You'd honestly be better off getting in touch with a clinic that are good with higher norwood cases like Eugenix in India and seeing what they say. Don't limit yourself to Istanbul just because it's nearer to Bulgaria. The best clinics in Turkey are going to cost quite a lot more than the cheap and terrible clinics such as the one you were booked in with originally. Your age is ideal - 30's. Whether you'll be a good candidate for a HT will really depend on the strength of your donor area and beard (in your photos your donor appears a little thin, but that could just the lighting) - you'll probably need a combination of grafts from both to reach the desired number of grafts for good overall coverage. Again, only way to truly tell is get yourself looked at by a good clinic. Luckily you're in Bulgaria - reach out to Dr Zarev for a consultation as a minimum to find out how many grafts you'd have available and what you would need overall. You should be on finasteride to preserve what you have left of the crown & midscalp. Ultimately you need a proper in person consultation/examination from a reputable clinic before you move forward in my view.

3,500 grafts is a pretty normal number of grafts - it's not very high. Most people who aren't suffering any problems with their donor will be able to go beyond that quite comfortably, and if needed, can supplement with beard grafts (provided you have a reasonable beard). Eugenix are excellent but as I've said, the only people you should be contacting right now is a reputable clinic that you can get your donor area examined with. You don't want to travel to Turkey or somewhere as far away as India only to discover your donor strength won't allow what you need. Get it checked first. If everything is fine, then think about clinics for surgeries.

Yes definitely! They should probably have sent them to you already quite frankly so definitely get them & share them here.

@Luca456, I know you've been asked before, but did you clinic take any high resolution pictures immediately before and immediately after the surgery?

Getting a good HT and being on finasteride are two totally distinct things. Finasteride will prevent *further hair loss* of your native hair. Given the extent of your hair loss, it's usefulness to you could be debated, but you should certainly be seriously considering it as it may well help preserve your lower crown, lateral humps & strengthen your donor area. Please do not go to Hair of Istanbul unless you think your head is worth no more than a lottery-style gamble. You may get a good result. You may get butchered. Your call! There's no point in going to Dr Saifi again either. I'm concerned that you keep asking the wrong questions. At this stage your only concern should be getting a serious evaluation of your donor area from a reputable clinic. If I were you I'd be getting in touch with the Maitland Clinic in Portsmouth under Dr Ball and spend £130 getting an in-person evaluation & consultation on your donor. I appreciate that's a load of hassle flying over from Ireland, but it's a lot less hassle than flying to Turkey to find out you can't get what you wanted on surgery day. If he thinks your donor is good for a decent sized surgery, then - and only then - should you start looking at possible clinics. John has given you a list of the best games in town in Turkey. If budget is an issue then I'd not be looking past Dr Bicer or Dr Demirsoy personally.

Somewhat ridiculous for him to not recommend Finasteride and for you not to take it. You need to do something to strengthen that donor area & ensure the lateral humps don't dip. Granted you haven't got a great deal of native hair left to lose elsewhere, but anything you do have you'll want to cling onto (provided a second HT is possible). You've a bit of a forelock left from your native hair, for example, that will likely go without intervention. You also need to go and get an in-person inspection of your donor area from a reputable clinic and see what they think your donor capacity actually has. If your donor is strong enough to get an extra 2000+ (or so) grafts and you've got a decent amount of beard hair that you could utilise, you could probably end up with a much improved (but never perfect) result. Your your original surgeon's estimate of your donor is wrong and you've got a decent amount left to play with, there's no reason you couldn't end up with a good amount of coverage all over in the right hands. As it stands, the cosmetic difference before and after isn't nearly dramatic enough to warrant the 5,000EU spend. You either need to get an evaluation of what's possible moving forward, or cut your loses and save the money and hardship.

Bicer, Demirsoy & Eugenix are very good options. I'm booked with Eugenix myself for late November. Hair of Istanbul do very, very aggressive hairlines. They seem to be greatly more concerned with getting "wow" looking results for Instagram than they do in considering the long term prospects & future hairloss of their clients. Aggressive hairlines at young ages (which seems to be HOI's modus operandi) will use up a lot of grafts that will be needed later on. How old are you? What is your hair loss pattern? Are you on finasteride? Have you sent any photos off to clients to get expert feedback on graft estimates? These are all important factors.

There's simply no such thing as a number 1 or number 2 etc... There's lots of very excellent, elite level surgeons, many of whom are listed on this website. There's little difference between any of them. Any of the top names in Belgium, Spain, the US, Canada etc... will likely get you where you want to be.

It depends on the extent of your hair restoration requirements and how much research you've done into HT's. There are a number of good clinics that have affordable pricing but before you consider any of them you need to make sure you've done some serious research into what factors go in to creating a natural and undetectable HT result, as well as knowledge of medical treatments & a long term game plan. What research have you done into HT's in general at this stage?

Thanks! Looks like I might have to consider a little bit of temple point work for myself after all. Wouldn't want to be the only one in the club without a temple point touch up!

Wow! To get so many more grafts from your scalp after not only the 1st surgery, but after being told by others you weren't a candidate at all! This will look incredible, though I must say even in your "unfavourable" pre-op photos, your hair looks superb and natural. Will be following! I'm booked myself for 27th November

If you're somewhat determined by price but happy to travel, you may also want to consider Dr Arika Bansal of Eugenix. They've got excellent female results on their website: https://www.eugenix.in/female-hair-transplant-results.html I know every clinic on earth - good or bad - posts their best work on their websites and that first hand patient journeys on forums are a better litmus test for judging a given clinic's body of work, but we already know Eugenix are a top clinic from innumerous male cases (which I'll personally be adding to later this year, Covid-travel hurdles permitting!), so I'd see no reason to doubt the validity of their own selection of work on females. It's not a factor for me personally, and there will no doubt be many, many excellent male surgeons who can produce excellent female HT results, but I can imagine there's possibly some additional value in a female HT surgeon leading or being involved in a female HT. Dr Arika or Dr Bicer probably would certainly be two options that I'd be looking at speaking with.

Awesome! Would be great to see a good shot of your donor area to see how it looks buzzed down to that length. Epic result!

It would be great if you started a thread documenting your journey! You came here to ask for advice so it would be great if in return you could help out others with a regularly updated thread of your progress

@baldslacker I don't know if you went ahead with this but regardless... I'll only address Q1 as it's the immediately relevant one... You absolutely should not be selecting your hair transplant clinic based on proximity to your house. We're talking about surgery here - a surgery that takes a long time to complete, that takes a long time to show final results, a surgery that will likely not be a case of "one and done" and one that could radically alter your appearance both positive and negative. It's also a type of surgery in which there are more (many more!) bad clinics than good ones. That you happen to live near Dr Cooley is great, and if he's in your price range, even better. That's a convenience most people don't get to enjoy. But even still, it seems you've narrowed your choice down to two clinics that happen to be conveniently located, rather than based on any in depth understanding of their work, reputations and the intricacies of good hair restoration more broadly. Regardless of how reputable and good Cooley is, you shouldn't be going to him or considering him on the basis of location. You should be considering him based on in-depth research. Despite getting slightly lucky by being near to Cooley, you've put down a deposit on some other clinic that you've already said you'd seen mediocre work from is concerning and exactly makes my point. I don't know anything about Dr Vories other than your own words, for the record. You shouldn't even be thinking too much about the answer to Q1 until you've adequately found answers to Q3, 4, 5 etc and done some serious research on HT's. I'd be interested to know what you did in the end, if anything.

Doesn't look like there's anything wrong with your crown to be honest, but without earlier photos for comparison, it's hard to say for sure.

I don't really get where you're going with this. If you have a big forehead, then you have a big forehead. You can only bring a hairline down so far. If you bring the hairline down to a reasonable level, then it's going to look better than an even higher receded hair line/forelock, isn't it? And it's also sensible as it reduces the amount of grafts extracted that may be needed later on for a second or third surgery. You can always get things lowered a bit more later.

My honest advice is just keep buzzing down - it suits you and looks good. But I'm not a surgeon or a dermatologist, so it's their expertise you'll need to consult. But at 25, with what looks like very diffuse hair all over and not on Finasteride... Honestly I'd just forget about it. Beard hair transplant works best as a supplement to scalp hair. Personally I'm not keen on SMP but I'm not an expert on it. There's others here far better qualified to comment on it than I am.