AHD Dr. Hakan Doganay 2850 Grafts FUE - DETAILED REVIEW

[ILtrooper]

<<I WILL REGULARLY UPDATE THIS THREAD AS MY SITUATION PROGRESSES>>

I promised myself I would type up a very detailed review of my experience if I ever got one done because I know how frustrating it can be researching this and finding the right surgeon for you. It’s a long read, but if you are considering doing this, trust me, is worth reading.

BACKGROUND:

34 year old Caucasian male, Chicago native.  My hairline had been receding for years now. Forehead got larger and larger. Then my existing hair began thinning progressively and I began to entertain the idea of hair transplant. I think that was about 2-3 years ago.

 

RESEARCH STAGE (GRAB A POPCORN ??

While I was entertaining the idea of getting hair transplant done, I began checking out some YouTube videos. I don’t know but it looked terrifying to me. I watched a FUT operation video and I was like, hell no! Then I stumbled across FUE Procedure and was like, okay, I think I can deal with that. So, I made a couple of phone calls in the Chicagoland area. I was quoted some astronomical numbers and I quickly realized that getting an hair transplant done here in the states was not an option for me. I am an IL State Trooper and make decent money, but not enough to blow 20k into an hair transplant. I began looking into Mexican doctors. I figured everything is cheap in Mexico, so why not. Well, I began reading some horror stories coming from Mexico. Let’s say I killed that idea as well. I then stumbled across a video of a guy who got his done in Istanbul Turkey. I checked out some Turkish doctors and learned that Turkey was one of the biggest hair transplant industry in the world and prices were reasonable. 

I made some calls and narrowed it down to 3 surgeons: Dr. Hakan Doganay, Dr. Koray Erdogan and Dr. Mutallip Keser. I had bunch of other guys blew smoke up my ass, promised me that my hair would be like I was 18 again.. warranty certificates and all. I don’t know, they tried way too hard and it was a red flag for me. But above doctors weren’t like the others and their prices were pretty close to one another:

Dr. Hakan Doganay - 2 Euros per graft

Dr. Koray Erdogan - 2,5 Euros per graft

Dr. Mutallip Keser - 3,5 Euros per graft

 

I looked very closely to these guys and they had phenomenal results. I mean, I couldn’t believe how good their work looked. When I was talking to their people, they were helpful. Out of all 3 of these doctors, Dr. Doganay’s communications director Didem was very attentive. She answered all my questions. I mean I bugged this girl with the silliest questions ever and at random times, but she was always there to answer. Both Erdogan and Keser’s team also were helpful, but not as swift and effective as Doganay’s team. At least with me. Doganay’s price was also very reasonable. So, that had some weight of course and I was leaning towards him for that and some other reasons, but then I read a couple of negative reviews. It concerned me for a second. After doing further research, I began to read negative reviews about Erdogan and Keser as well. I quickly snapped back to reality. I mean, who has 100% positive feedback out there anyways? There will always be someone unhappy for one way or another. I looked at the bigger picture and that was, Doganay did a fantastic job overall, his prices were reasonable, and he certainly didn’t blow any smoke up my ass and kept it very real with me. Gave me very realistic expectations. That gave me a lot of comfort. Plus communicating with his team was very easy and effective. The LAST thing I want is to get this done by someone whom I can’t get a hold of whenever I need to. Screw that! I don’t care how popular you are, you cut into my head, I will have some concerns, questions, etc. I need to be able to communicate. So for those reasons, I decided to go with Dr. Hakan Doganay.

TRAVEL AND MEET DR. DOGANAY STAGE:

Hopped on a plane and Doganay’s customer service specialist Tolga picked me up from the airport. This kid was polite and a lot of fun. Short ride to the hospital and I met Dr. Doganay in his office. After the quick introduction, his first question to me with a smile on his face was “how are you feeling now?” I am assuming I loooked nervous as hell, because i was lol. This is my head people! Plus, I am in a different country. 

He quickly eased my mind and said it would be just fine. He checked my hair, said I had a very good donor area. Estimated 2500ish grafts because I told him I wanted a dense packed hairline and lower it down a bit. Drew a nice hairline and  I checked into my room at the hospital. As a Police officer / State Trooper, I scope every area and people I walk into. It’s the nature of the job, so I checked out the area and it was spectacular. Very clean and professional people. The staff also appeared very sincere. I was starting to feel less and less nervous. Hospital room was awesome too. I felt like royalty!

SURGERY STAGE:

Shaved the back of my head and kept the top at number 2. Took some pre-op pics and walked into the room where they began harvesting my hair follicles from the donor area. 

One of their experiences technician’s names Ahmet began extracting the hair with a micromotor. Not gonna lie, I was kind of nervous. After all,  I was there because of Dr. Hakan Doganay. However, I was told that Dr. Doganay doesn’t do the extraction and he has trained two technicians and they do it. They had been doing it for years. I was like, you know what, I am gonna trust this guy. He has been yielding great results, so obviously it isn’t done by some rookies, in a dump somewhere. Plus, Dr. Doganay was constantly walking in the room and chatting with us. The staff looked extremely organized. Everyone knew their roles and they communicated well. I couldn’t help but kept asking questions, and they answered very politely each time. I actually felt like I had been friends with this staff and Dr. Doganay for quite sometime. They were seriously very cool people. 

They extracted the donors and we began the implantation. Dr. Doganay densly packed my hairline and I reallyyyyy loved the hairline. It appeared very dense, for a hair transplant, very well placed and perfect, natural looking hairline. While implanting the hairs, I was chatting with dr. Doganay. I bad mouthed a couple of hair transplant locations that blew smoke up my ass. Doganay was like “I don’t like talking bad about other surgeons, don’t believe in it so I will refrain commenting on that, but there are lots of people who claim to be good, but they just aren’t”. Right there, I respected the man much more.  Doganay said he extracted and planted maximum 2000 grafts per day because doing more than that would yield in not so good results. He believed the job was very delicate and had to take your time doing it. He said some locations try to schedule multiple people in a day and rush through procedures which yields in bad results. He said he had first hand experienced that back then when he was trying to get through multiple people, but quickly learned his lesson and began changing his approach. He has been taking his time on all of his transplants. Right there, I no longer worried. I was like i m good hands!

Anyways, the job was done and I was very happy. Everyone was just awesome. The reason I am writing this so passionately is because these people were amazing to me. I felt like I was family or something. They deserve a detailed review. Heck, everyone who is out here researching HT deserves a detailed review. This is serious business!

After everything was said and done, I made my payment and they drove me to the airport. I was well taken care of from the airport until I return to the airport. 

Anyways, something VERY BAD happened as got off the plane.. thankfully not in Chicago. I was still in Turkey. I walked into a restaurant to grab a quick bite and boom!!!! I hit my head to a low hanging wall.. it was the same color as the ceiling and blended very well. Didn’t see it. I hit right my transplanted area. Long story short, as I was bleeding heavily, I saw a ton of my hair follicles were stuck to the wall. I looked at myself in the mirror and a large section of my hairline was missing. Tell me how you would feel. I didn’t know if I needed to be angry, sad, cry, scream.. I was heart broken!

This is the biggest reason why i m typing this long review.. these guys are INCREDIBLE! I called Didem and told her what happened. I sent her a quick pic. She acknowledged it was bad, but they would take care of it. I bought the next flight back to Antalya, which was the next day and business as usual, Tolga picked me up. Staff greeted me, washed the bloody area.. Dr. Doganay checked it out and was like big deal, let’s fix this up. Piece of cake. They extracted I think like 80 grafts and Dr. Doganay transplanted them quickly. I seriously could not see the difference. Like it never happened.

best part, when I asked how much a I owed them. He was like, you have gone through a lot with this unfortunate incident, no need to pay. It’s on us.  I decide to tip each staff member, so made a payment that way.

I would never consider going to any other hair transplant surgeons, even though I know Dr. Erdogan and Dr. Keser are great as well, but not only Doganay was cheaper with the same natural results, also the experience was phenomenal! 

 

If you you have any questions. I mean anything at all, I would love to help. Direct message me or simply reply to this thread. Preferably reply here so everyone can benefit from the answers, but if you have some private concerns, direct message me. I plan on sticking around here and sharing my experience with others.

 

Anyways, onto photos!

Before, right after day 1 and after my incident and then lastly fixed version. P.S. I requested the photos they took and will be posting those as well:

 

Edited October 18, 2018 by ILtrooper
Fixed some grammatical errors

[ILtrooper]

P.S. ignore some of the grammatical errors up there. I typed the whole thing while I was flying. 

[ILtrooper]

Day 2 POST OP:

[Dr. Hakan DOGANAY]

Many thanks for sharing your experience here. Please keep updating us. 

Edited October 22, 2018 by Dr. Hakan DOGANAY

[LonelyGraft]

I can only imagine what was going through your head and the emotions you felt after you hit your head. Very happy to hear the doctor took care of you. Happy growing 

[ILtrooper]

DAY 8:

I experienced some swelling, nothing crazy and can be seen on above pics. It cleared completely in a couple of days. So far things are solid. People tell me they can’t tell that I had just gotten a hair transplant because it blends in very well with my preexisting hair. As for the donor area, they tell me that it looks like I simply cut it short.

 

 

Edited October 23, 2018 by ILtrooper

[ILtrooper]

Day 10 and with very mild scrubbing, most of the scabs fell out. There is still some left.

 

what do you guys think of this density? It’s looks pretty dense for a HT to me, or is it me?

thanks

 

 

[MrOneSeries]

Looking superb so far! I honestly can’t believe that incident happened to you, jeez I would’ve totally freaked out. Sounds like you handled it great though. 

[LonelyGraft]

What shampoo do U use 

[ILtrooper]

2 hours ago, jj51702 said:

What shampoo do U use 

Johnson baby shampoo

5 hours ago, MrOneSeries said:

Looking superb so far! I honestly can’t believe that incident happened to you, jeez I would’ve totally freaked out. Sounds like you handled it great though. 

Thanks bud! As I said, I had a moment of clash of emotions. Didn’t know how to react. Just took it lol

[ILtrooper]

On 10/26/2018 at 3:32 AM, jj51702 said:

What shampoo do U use 

Johnson baby shampoo

On 10/26/2018 at 12:14 AM, MrOneSeries said:

Looking superb so far! I honestly can’t believe that incident happened to you, jeez I would’ve totally freaked out. Sounds like you handled it great though. 

Thanks bud! As I said, I had a moment of clash of emotions. Didn’t know how to react. Just took it lol

[ILtrooper]

Day 12

[ILtrooper]

Day 15 and hairs are starting to shed. I was hoping to be the exception to this rule lol.

some of you folks can pull this buzzed head look pretty good. I was just not molded that way...

so, am I looking on par for a post op day 15? Thanks!

 

 

[ILtrooper]

Say hello to my little friend.. his name is Ugly Duckling ?

started to shed and you can clearly see it. I honestly just now noticed it... I hope to keep whatever is on there, but that isn’t gonna happen. 

This whole hairline repair thing seem to suck more. Hairline looks worse than it did before. I mean much easier for people to notice. Or maybe it’s in my head.

 

 

 

Edited November 5, 2018 by ILtrooper

[LonelyGraft]

Honestly it’s not bad at all and I’m sure most ppl won’t notice. R u middle eastern?

[ILtrooper]

14 minutes ago, jj51702 said:

Honestly it’s not bad at all and I’m sure most ppl won’t notice. R u middle eastern?

I notice it and my buddy told me he could see it yesterday.  I mean it is what it is, but it wouldn’t be fun without complaining a bit right? Ha!

And to answer to your question, negative. 

[LonelyGraft]

he’s probably just ultra analyzing it because he knows you got a procedure. I think we r our own worst critics. I’m 6.5 weeks out so I know how much all of this can mess with out minds. Ugly duckling sucksssss

[ILtrooper]

8 minutes ago, jj51702 said:

he’s probably just ultra analyzing it because he knows you got a procedure. I think we r our own worst critics. I’m 6.5 weeks out so I know how much all of this can mess with out minds. Ugly duckling sucksssss

True! I agree. I am 3 weeks in now. I think day 20? 21?

i am scared to wash my hair like I normally do so they don’t fall out ha! Once my hair grows a bit, I am gonna nerd it out and push it forward with a killer bang style cut and call it a day. Can you say dumb and dumber? Lol. I wear a cover at work and throw a ball cap on when not working and I am set

[Shifty]

Wear a hat for the time being?  I mean you're a trooper, this is a great excuse to wear one of those awesome trooper hats! lol

 

I see an officer wearing this walking up to me, I know he means business.

 

[ILtrooper]

6 hours ago, Shifty said:

Wear a hat for the time being?  I mean you're a trooper, this is a great excuse to wear one of those awesome trooper hats! lol

 

I see an officer wearing this walking up to me, I know he means business.

 

Ha! Yup, that’s precisely it. It’s mandatory for us to wear it out of our vehicles. Like here.

Oh and I mean business every time. Then I get to go home and take the damn thing off and cry looking at my ugly duckling in silence lol.

 

[voxman]

You are going to have a great result - that density looks really really good.  The tough part is now but I am fairly certain you will handle it , trooper.  Are you a Vet too?

[ILtrooper]

On 11/6/2018 at 9:34 AM, voxman said:

You are going to have a great result - that density looks really really good.  The tough part is now but I am fairly certain you will handle it , trooper.  Are you a Vet too?

Thank you sir. Fingers are crossed for that. I look forward to having long hair again.

To answer your question, negative.

[ILtrooper]

1 Month progress. Well, there is no progress. But this is how it looks now

[LonelyGraft]

Looks like ur holding onto a decent amount of grafts after a month. Ur hair grows fast, u use supplements?

[ILtrooper]

3 hours ago, jj51702 said:

Looks like ur holding onto a decent amount of grafts after a month. Ur hair grows fast, u use supplements?

It continues to shed though. If I touch it even mildly, I see a couple fall out. So I suspect in the next couple of weeks rest will fall out. 

I feel like it isn’t growing fast enough, ha! I just take my daily vitamins and 10,000mcg biotin a day. That’s it. Oh I am also on proscar, but doubt that makes hair grow faster.