AEK hair clinic, limited shave- April 19

[Harvey]

Since my first H.T i still wanted to fill in temples and decided i would get a 2nd hair transplant. The first i had done was Athens 2 years ago and I went to the Advance hair clinic. In hindsight they did an ok job considering the amount of hair i allowed them to shave as I was never comfortable getting full head shaved. I needed somewhere that did limited shave so I could cover donor area after with longer hair. I have attached a before photo from top angle of head.
I have been receding at the temples since 20 years old at a slow rate and am now mid 30s.
I emailed many clinics and decided id go to turkey, there was only a few clinics who replied who did limited shave. The best communication was with originally Omer then Gokce at Aek who was very quick to reply and professional.
I looked into the doctor and Dr K is highly qualified, he is member of ABHRS although fairly cheap which always makes you think. The price options were €3000 partly done by the doctor and €1600 done by technicians. I opted for technicians option hoping that they had been trained extensively by the Doctor.
So the day came, I arrived in the new Istanbul airport, met the driver and it took 2 hours to get to the silence hotel due to traffic. It only took 45 mins coming back.
The hotel was very busy but decent.
Next day i met the contact at the airport and also the 2 other patients getting the procedure that day. One Australian and one American although both had Turkish origins and spoke the language. They were both good guys and you could tell they were nervous which as i had it done before actually calmed my nerves a bit.
So we walked 5 mins to the surgery which is in a large block of flats with what looks like a mix of business and residential. They offered prp which i decided to do, they took the blood and before photos.
I confirmed that i didnt want full head shaved and they didnt seem to know this despite many emails discussing it. They asked me to write down what i wanted which i thought was strange but once youre there and travelled so far i was never going to back out.
So 10 mins later it was time for the operation. I was taken through and again reiterated what i wanted. The technicians speak limited English so they got a gentleman to translate and to explain that this would limit the number of grafts which i was aware of.
When emailing they had sent me a photo of limited shave and they lift the hair at back which id grown quite long on purpose and shaved thin sections below crown so they cover afterwards. What they actually shaved was large section right through crown and round side about 15cm long and 3cm wide. I didnt notice this till afterwards , my crown has been thinning for a while so didnt think for a second they wouldnt take grafts from denser area below. Im not sure they knew what they were doing in this respect.
After they had extracted the grafts Dr K came in and drew the hairline. He advised i need to strengthen the hairline and not prioritise filling in temples. He said i can alter if I wanted but I decided he knew best. I regret this now which is down to me. This was the only conversation i had with Dr Karadeniz. I was told that the €1600 was procedure done by technicians and supervised by the Dr which didnt happen.
The rest of the procedure went alright and only uncomfortable part is the anaesthetic.
It took in total about 6.5 hours
After the operation they bandage you and you get a blaxk headband, they show an aftercare video, i arranged to go back for hair wash and was able to go back to the hotel for the night
The next morning i went in and they washed and dried the hair. It was only when I got back to the hotel and the bandage had been removed that i noticed the massive shaved area and i was definitely not be able to cover it.
They said they took 3170 hairs and
1550 grafts which was more than i expected beforehand and they didnt appear confident about the number but maybe I'm wrong.

To summarise I would say they were good aspects and some not so good.
The customer care is very good both from Gokce and the the gentleman translator whos name i cant remember.
If you decide to go to Aek I would make sure you spell out exactly what you want. I think the communication from my emails of the procedure was non existent.
I am not fully confident that it will be a succesful outcome due to where the grafts were taken and hope they havent taken too many grafts from the crown else all they have done created a new bald spot but time will tell and ill be happy if im wrong. I'm also not sure about the hairline as it doesnt fill in the temples but will wait till final results to evaluate this. Dr K said he prefers sharper angles as he believes it looks more natural.
I would say if you go for full head shave it could be a viable cost effective option and I only had issues because I opted for limited shave.
I have attached some photo's before and after.








 

Edited April 23, 2019 by Harvey
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[Lennney]

Wow, what an experience...

I'm surprised at your just-go-with-it nature. Having clear expectations and not having confusion from docs and techs on a permanent cosmetic surgery is mandatory for me.

The good news is that your hair looks great from the front, easy to style over. The HT looks like it will support your hairline, and looks like it's healing well.

With you placing so much emphasis on not shaving your head, it feels like you sacrificed more than you gained (and ultimately received a less than flattering buzz on the back of your head). At this point, with so much effort in concealing a HT, I think your experience may help others consider a FUT procedure. I've seen several users here recently post their FUT scars amongst the untouched hair. At this point, I think you'd have to get a haircut to even out the back. Go for a hipster/ straight edge look, like #1 on this site: https://eighteeneight.com/lajolla-ca/6-new-hairstyles-men-try-2017/

I also heard recently that temples are notoriously difficult, but I agree that you should consider doing it in the future if you aren't satisfied without them.

Donor area that I can see looks great, the hairline looks good, and your experience definitely helps contribute to the forum. Keep us updated on your progress!