HAIR TRANSPLANT IN TURKEY: Overview by Dr. Karadeniz

[Yalfassi]

You are missing one of the main points here: The clinic in question isn't just having techs do all the extractions and seating of the grafts in recipient sites. It is even having technicians create all the recipient sites!! The creation of the recipient sites is the heart-and-soul of ultra refined hair restoration surgery. We have NEVER read of this and we have NEVER read of ANY clinic -- and certainly have not recommended one -- that removes the surgeon from the procedure entirely and allows non-physician technicians to perform the entire hair restoration surgery, from start to finish. In fact, from what I can gather, the physician who owns the clinic in question has no experience performing hair restoration surgeries at all and merely hired a team of technicians to perform hair transplants as a second profit center. This is the kind of clinic that we should recommend to members or even grant Coalition status to?

I would like to replay to PupDaddy.

I have made my operation with Dr Koray Erdogan few days ago. (I will upload my progress in a few days)

I'm not familiar with other clinics in Turky, but I have made a vast research before I decided to do my operation with ASMED clinic, and I can tell you that:

1. At the beginning I had a consultation with Dr Koray and he explained to me every step of the procedure and how it's going to be. and he promessed that the incisions which what you've called "heart and soul" of this entire operation, will be done Only by him. And I can tell you that - he kept his promiss. All the incisions have been done only by Dr Koray and not by any other of his stuff.

2. The extraction part was made by him too, and after a while, another doctor (not assistant) toke over and finished the extraction.

 

I'm not sure if you have been in Istanbul and like I said, what you re saying may be true in other clinic, but not in this one.

Yaniv.

[Dannyboxing]

I am looking to have surgery unemployed so not much cash alarmed by what Dr k had to say so hoe do I get the best at a lower budget than europe

[Dannyboxing]

To Dr Karadeniz What you are saying makes sense I am interested in having FUE can you send me more details of what you offer thank you daviddesous60@gmail.com. Thanks

[txtransplant]

I am new here and bumping an old thread. But new people here read lots of old posts and this was an important one and has good info from an active and busy Dr.  I have been considering a HT in Turkey and all signs pointed to Dr. K being a top shelf choice. I still think he is a great choice today from what I can tell, but things have changed and it is very different than what he posted here.  First, though his website AEK says he performs all the surgeries himself, that is simply not accurate. Evidently at one time he did. But now he sees 2-4 patients a day according to the person I communicated with at his office. The price is very reasonable for a technician performed procedure in Turkey by a smaller and higher end operation that I feel AEK is. But don't be confused. When I was about to book, I double checked to make sure Dr. K was doing the graft extraction per his own impassioned words here.  I was informed he simply supervises procedures. If I wanted him to actually do the extraction it would be at least 5,000 euros vs the aprox. 2,500 euro price I was quoted.  Again, I feel all of these prices are fair (they charge for procedure now, not per graft or hair)  Assuming they can do the 4-5k hairs  (they go by hairs, not grafts) in one session they claim they can...great prices for an experienced Dr. or a higher end technician done job. I was offered upon expressing my concerns that Dr. K would do the incisions for me at no additional charge and I appreciated that. Maybe he just could not fight the tide of the business model in Turkey. IDK.  But he is operating against what he suggested was a bad idea here 4 years ago. I am still considering Dr. K if I do decide to go down the part of a "technician" performed FUE surgery. If you want to go the route I can't seem to think of a better possible value when other top Turkish Dr.s are following the same model with amazing results. With all the great information I have gotten here and still doing research in fact. Actually that's how I found this thread again and thought it was really important to know Dr. K seems to be a solid option. But has a very different business model that may be great for some people reading this. I have yet to decide on a Dr.  Communication is great at his clinic and I truly get the feeling he would not hire just anybody. With so many clinics and technicians working in turkey, I would assume there are many experienced technicians and one would think they would be found at a place like this and not the hair mills where I suspect they learn as they go.. 

Edited August 13, 2018 by back2clas

[Bill - Seemiller]

Back2clas,

 This is indeed an old topic, presented in 2014. But I do agree that it’s an interesting topic to consider and discuss today. Now, I can’t speak for what Dr. Karadeniz  is doing today however, he definitely was very passionate about doing the procedures mostly himself back then… In particular, harvesting follicular units from the donor area.    But it is interesting to hear how things may or may not have changed. 

 That said, it does appear that most clinics who perform FUE have technicians either assisting or directly performing the excisions during FUE.   Back when this practice started, a lot of people were very uncomfortable this however, I think it has become more and more acceptable to patients especially as they continue to see excellent results coming out of a particular clinic. At the end of the day however, the supervising physician is responsible for the results.   A good hair transplant surgeon will still remain deeply involved in the procedure by remaining in the room and ensuring that each technician  is doing their job correctly and that each follicular unit  is perfect with no damage.  

I know that some positions previously have been criticized for their lack of hands-on involvement however, it appears to be more common place today. However, where I begin to have a major problem is when a physician  is sitting at their desk answering emails the entire day while their technicians do all the work with  essentially little to no supervision from the hair surgeon.  

Best wishes,

Bill

[Sean]

Technician extraction for the most part is illegal in North America due to medical regulations, where it is allowed in Turkey (some surgeons who do multiple surgeries a day utilize techs to extract).  It is up to the patient to have a “surgical” part of surgery done by the doctor or by a technician.  You are paying for a service and it is up to you to decide if you are paying for a doctor and his/her name or a tech to do anythig considered surgery (scoring of flesh).  The laws of the land will allow it or wont.   Techs come and go, doctor and his/her name on business remains until their clinic remains.  

[Michael8]

On 10/17/2014 at 2:03 PM, Ali Emre Karadeniz said:

Dear Members and Future HT Candidates,

 

I am writing this short overview about how things work in Turkey hoping that it will be useful for future candidates. As a relatively new member to the forum I am seeing a lot of wild discussions going on at multiple threads about HT in Turkey. I will try and give objective information, avoiding being for or against any clinics in Turkey as I am a Turkish plastic surgeon and hair surgeon myself.

 

It is estimated that there are about 500 hair transplant teams or clinics in Turkey; therefore this country has been one of the main centres in the world for hair surgery and attracting many patients around the globe. The two main characteristics of hair surgery are that the prices are very cheap and surgical teams solely consist of technicians and staff from various backgrounds such as nurses, ambulance paramedics, anaesthesiology technicians, cardiovascular surgery pump technicians, car mechanists, secretaries and even housewives! Hair transplants are not perceived as surgical procedures by this nation and are treated like going for a hair cut. A Turkish billionaire who drives a 1 million Euro car will hope to have a HT for 1000 Euros!

 

There are around 10 medical doctors in Turkey that actually do parts of the surgery such as graft harvesting and recipient site incisions. The remaining 490 teams do not have a doctor that is a part of the operation. Not surprisingly FUE is the only technique used by these teams. They quickly teach each other how to drill down the patients scalp to extract grafts and the teams multiply in number rapidly. To my knowledge there are only 4 clinics left in Turkey that are able to do FUT. Despite being a huge HT country, there are about 30-40 technicians in Turkey that know how to prepare grafts from a skin strip. There are 4-5 technicians that are trained to do slivering; that is less than the number of hair surgeons! The financial balance between the two techniques are altered and it is 3-4 times more expensive for a Turkish clinic to be able to offer FUT, compared to FUE.

 

Under these circumstances, is it a good idea to go for a HT in Turkey? I think it is as long as you know what you are buying.

What do you buy when you go for a HT in one of the technicians FUE clinics and who should go for it? This is what you are going to get: Technicians will aggressively drill down through your scalp for about 5000-6000 times. You can usually see this if you look at immediate postop photos of the donor area. The transection rate is going to be 50-70%, which means you will get 2000-4000 grafts that are severely transected. These grafts will be placed but will show growth less than expected. About 2000 grafts will have disappeared due to total transection. Since partially transected grafts grow some hair, there will be significant improvement despite the wasted grafts. Since these technicians have a very primitive knowledge of recipient site incisions, it will usually look unnatural, or at least too widely spread. The major problem will be at the donor area. When a Turkish technicians operates on your donor area, the donor is mostly finished. Most patients will have significant moth-eaten appearances at the donor area. Patients who have a very strong donor might still not show signs of weakness and permit another session of FUE, but that will be it. There is no hope of doing 3 or 4 procedures. I usually do only FUT if I know a Turkish technician has operated on a patient. I have tried many times to do FUE after a technician and failed to get anything.

Now is this acceptable for a patient? It can be if the patient just wants some hair on his head and feels that he has no hope of getting a proper one in his life time.

 

If the above scenario doesn't suit you, is there a better option in Turkey? Certainly; the 10 doctors in Turkey including the 2 recommended surgeons on this network can provide excellent HT procedures for a much cheaper price than their counterparts in Europe and USA. The only difficulty is to find them, because they typically are much smaller companies than the large technicians clinics who do 10-20 procedures a day. These boutique clinics have a hard time surviving in the market due to the wide unlicensed competition with very low prices. Doing these procedures for even double the price of the technicians doesn't make it a very profitable business, considering that they can do only 1 patient a day. They don't have much of an advertising budget. Agents usually prefer to work with technicians to get more customers and make more profit. So only the patients can find these boutique clinics.

 

I think this is enough information on summarising this topic. I once again want to emphasise that I do not want to be involved in any competition with other clinics and have no intentions of advertising my own. I hope it will serve as a guidance to future patients.

 

Regards,

Dr. Ali Emre Karadeniz

 

Thank you Dr. K,

 

This is an interesting thread about TRANSECTION RATE and how only trained physicians should be doing this part.

 

A true trained doctor will have a better eye and as you follow the thread Dr. K does say that there could be techs who are trained up and could do just as a good job but the gamble of having a newly unexperienced tech/assistant doing the graft harvesting and site incisions should be only done by a doctor.  

 

I would like to know who the 10 doctors are that he speaks of and those are the doctors we should all go to. 

 

Cheers

[baldspotbarry]

I read this thread years ago when I first started researching HT for myself, and now coming back and stumbling across this thread several years later is a great reminder as I choose the clinic to perform my HT.

txtransplant brings up an excellent point about Dr. K's change in practice at his clinic, but I feel it probably belongs in a different thread which I am going to search for now and probably create a new thread if I don't find one. The reason I found this thread is by searching for Dr. K's name as I've been 90% sure he's who I'm going to schedule with.

Lately I've been very interested in learning who these great technicians are as they are the ones responsible for the good results you see coming out of the technician based clinics. As with most people price point is a major factor for me as I'm not rich and Turkey really is my only option.