HT in Istanbul - 3 months progress so far

[FUE2014]

You lucky bastard ;-)

[wibbles180]

Looks great , how did you contact the clinic who did this work ?

[KConK]

Thanks for the positive comments guys!

 

Wibbles180 - I went to the Health Travel International website and filled in their consultation form - then one of their team Elizabeth Swann got in touch with me later that day and we went from there. She was great, I think I've said before that what I really liked was that I could ask all the questions I had in mind and got really informative answers cause of them being an English team.

I was nervous about how long recovery would take before I could go back to work (self-employed), she sent me lots of patient images of people throughout the first 14 days with hair and skin types similar to mine so that I could see what I was in for, and also the same type of images of people who had PRP so I could see a difference in recovery times, but I liked that it wasn't pushed on me to purchase.

 

I still speak to Elizabeth as she emails me to check on my recovery progress and see updated images. She even sponsored a charity event I'm doing on my 'just-giving' page - so overall they are a really personable company and seem to care for each individual patient, which for me is what I needed to proceed, I know everybody is different.

[CalvinJR]

Price for procedure?

[thewalker431]

Which doc did your procedure? and cost please?

[KConK]

Which doc did your procedure? and cost please?

 

Dr Deniz (Health Travel International) did my procedure. I paid just over ?4,000 with PRP included

[KConK]

Price for procedure?

 

I paid just over ?4,000 with PRP included

[Cant decide]

All I hear about is prices, I would not pay 10 dollars a graft to Tavel to the middle east as an American....All due respect of course. If you are from that area originally, have at it.

[KConK]

I'm from the UK, price was in British pounds don't know why it came up as a ? instead of the pounds sign.

The price I paid was for a package which included my flights, 5 nights 4* accommodation and transfers.

I don't think it's all about price, I think it's important to feel comfortable with where you're going to have the op. My op wasn't the cheapest by far but also not the most expensive by far. Before I did proper research I had the same opinion about going abroad at all for surgery and thought people who did were a bit cuckoo but after being on here and doing lots more reading, I found out that Turkey is one of the best places to have an FUE. I personally know 2 people who had botched surgeries in the UK and paid nearly 3 times as much as me. I've also seen people on here have botched surgeries in Turkey too. I think it's all about research to find the right clinic/doctor for you more so than being based on price per graft/op or just location

[KConK]

Hi guys

 

So I'm 12 months post-op now. Here are some recent pics. I'll do some before and after pics and post them at some point.

[Tav1]

Just read your entire thread KConK - fantastic results early on, and amazing results now one year post-op. You are without a doubt a case study in tremendous success for anyone looking for a little encouragement! And from your posts you seem like a cool dude - so congrats!

[Croatia44]

Awesome transformation!

How many grafts did you get? I couldn't find it in the thread

[KConK]

Awesome transformation!

How many grafts did you get? I couldn't find it in the thread

 

Thanks man It's major how much it can change your whole look.

 

I got just under 2500 grafts. They gave me a document which had the exact number of grafts taken, split into the different graft numbers with groups of 4,3,2 and single hairs and the total number which I don't remember exactly but it was just under 2500.

 

Thanks again for the comment bud.

[KConK]

Just read your entire thread KConK - fantastic results early on, and amazing results now one year post-op. You are without a doubt a case study in tremendous success for anyone looking for a little encouragement! And from your posts you seem like a cool dude - so congrats!

 

Wow thanks so much dude, that's really kind. It's good to hear my case may give encouragement to others cause posts on here definately did encourage me to take the plunge. Thanks again man!

[wibbles180]

Hi mate , do you know if it was a manual or motorised extraction process ? Also do you know the grafts per square cm that they were able to achieve ? Looks awesome by the way !

[RKHT02]

I have to say this looks so good and is really encouraging because looking at your pics you looked totally different before!! I went with HTI and hope mine turns out as good as yours - congratulations KConK!

[hairweare]

Many docs and followers here believe that your yield would have been much greater along with better hair quality and preserved donor area had you chosen to go with the gold standard of having a 1.5 x20 cm chunk of flesh hacked out the back of your head and then closed with fishing line strength sutures. Do you have any regrets at this point with your decision to go with the alternative procedure?

[KConK]

Hi mate , do you know if it was a manual or motorised extraction process ? Also do you know the grafts per square cm that they were able to achieve ? Looks awesome by the way !

 

Hi mate, thanks a lot! motorised extraction, the tools were little hand held motors with spinning heads which they kept changing to all different sizes, some were tiny! For density I know from my plan that they aimed to get 30-35 grafts per square cm but they said it varied as it went away from the hairline as obviously I have more hair there. Here is a pic staight after the op if that helps

[KConK]

I have to say this looks so good and is really encouraging because looking at your pics you looked totally different before!! I went with HTI and hope mine turns out as good as yours - congratulations KConK!

 

Hi man, that's awesome, how did you find it? You got any pics?

[KConK]

Many docs and followers here believe that your yield would have been much greater along with better hair quality and preserved donor area had you chosen to go with the gold standard of having a 1.5 x20 cm chunk of flesh hacked out the back of your head and then closed with fishing line strength sutures. Do you have any regrets at this point with your decision to go with the alternative procedure?

 

This cracked me up mate I think its safe to assume, no, definately no regrets!

[wibbles180]

Whilst I am impressed by this result , and would love to have the balls to just say fuck it I'm going to have a ht with a pretty unknown clinic with very limited online results .... I may be over thinking things but I just can't bring myself to book a surgery with any of these clinics just purely because of the lack of documented cases ! Hope you don't think I'm having a go , because your results seem to speak for themselves , just think I'd be more conformable using a more well known clinic

[Mick50]

why is this post been bumped we have all read about you experience

[KConK]

Whilst I am impressed by this result , and would love to have the balls to just say fuck it I'm going to have a ht with a pretty unknown clinic with very limited online results .... I may be over thinking things but I just can't bring myself to book a surgery with any of these clinics just purely because of the lack of documented cases ! Hope you don't think I'm having a go , because your results seem to speak for themselves , just think I'd be more conformable using a more well known clinic

 

Hi man, no not at all, I totally understand where you're coming from. I actually agree in part and did feel the same at the start when I was trying to pick a clinic to go with. For me personally, (I don't know if other people have had similar experience) I enquired with a lot of clinics, both here and in Turkey and I just didn't get the kind of feeling from any of them that made me trust going ahead. Don't get me wrong, some of the results I saw looked really good, but I'm a people person and a couple of the doctors I saw in London and Manchester just seemed really like not bothered about me and my end result, they were really clinical and not friendly. I know you might think that doesn't matter as long as you get a good result and theyre a good surgeon, but I had lots of questions I wanted to ask and they made me feel like I was taking too much of their time, and considering they wanted over ?10,000 from me, I just felt like they were a bit rude and were more concerned about the payments rather than answering my questions.

 

What put me off after that is that I met somebody through my work that had an op over here and paid ?9,000 and he looked bloody awful. That's when I started looking on here and then enquiring with some turkish clinics (over 2 years ago). I sent my pics out but was a bit dissapointed with some of the responses from the clinics which seemed to have lots of results online. The English wasn't great and even though some of the prices were good, I didn’t feel confident that I would be ok once I got out there because I couldn’t communicate with them properly. I was told by some (after I kept asking!) that it would be technicians who did most of the work and that put me off a bit cause I read some stories on here with people complaining about the same thing, where the doctor wasn’t really there except at the start. Also, some of them hounded me with phone calls and spam daily emails once I had got a quote from them, and that really got on my wick! When I got my response back from Health Travel International, I liked that it was from an English woman. I asked her loads of questions and she was always really careful to explain everything really well and was really knowledgeable about the whole thing. They didn’t chase me to book and didn’t get annoyed no matter how many questions I asked before booking. I think it was around 6 months before I went ahead with them (and convinced the Mrs to let me spend the money!).

I asked to see some results similar to mine, and they sent me lots of results by email, and also gave me some contact details of 2 patients that were local to me. Meeting those patients and hearing their experience first hand was really helpful and it was great to see the results up close instead of just on pics. I’m good mates with one of the guys now which is a bonus.

Like I say I know everyone is different and looks for different things but for me it was that I was treated as though I was important to them that made me book. Maybe I was too common for the London doc, but I reckon travelling from Manchester and being willing to spend so much of the money I graft hard for, should mean they would show a bit more effort in the short consultation. Anyway I’ll stop babbling sh!te now haha – thanks again man,

[feldeghast]

Great outcome mate - looking very good indeed. Surprisingly full head of hair for less than 2500 grafts. I had 4100 grafts done 4 weeks ago also in Turkey and if I get as good a result as you I will be thrilled. Thanks for posting - reassuring for an ugly duck right now.

[RKHT02]

Hi man, that's awesome, how did you find it? You got any pics?

 

To be honest it was much better than I was expecting. I'm a real worrier and over analyse everything. Sometimes I'm shocked that I even went ahead with it and I know I must have driven my patient liaison crazy because without exaggeration I hounded them with questions for over a year. The whole thing was pretty much a breeze compared to what I thought it was going to be. Like you say, I was well taken care of and the standard of clinic totally exceeded my expectations, I think that's when I relaxed for the first time since booking. I suffer from psoriasis on and off so there was a lot of back and forth with the surgeons and my dermatologist here about whether I could have the ht or not but thankfully I got the green light. Been taking pics as I go but I will put some when I have been able to dye my hair again (only 1 week left til it's safe so I'm told). Here is one pre-op and one post-op for now.