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~2700 grafts with Dr. Cinik (FUE)


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Will be using this thread to document my journey. The clinic told me 2700 grafts, but to me it looks more like 2100-2300. Regardless, it doesn't really matter to me as they charge a flat rate. 

Day 2 post op:

 

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I'll try to recall as much as I can. First of all I have to commend their professionality and commitment to service, everything from the beginning to the end was very streamlined. To begin the process I was in contact with members of their team via Whatsapp. I'd booked everything months ago. I flew into Turkey on Wednesday, and they had a driver pick me and two other gentlemen up from the airport. We were driven to the Cinik Hair Hospital where they took our blood work, and after that we were taken to our hotels. The next day a driver picked us up from the hotel and brought us to the hair hospital where we first went over some preliminary stuff - talk about the process, signed waivers, they set up a peripheral IV lock, and finally I had a consultation with Dr. Cinik. During the consultation I showed him old pictures of my hairline, what my desires are, and then he drew a proposed hairline, to which I asked for minor changes and he obliged. From there I was taken to take pre-op pictures, get a haircut, and then after the haircut I went into the operating room for the surgery. There was a team of 4-5 technicians that all had particular tasks. First they gave me some sort of oral painkiller, not sure what it was. After that was the local anesthesia. As a buffer they used a needleless anesthesia, which they administer through a compressed airgun to direct some sort of numbing agent onto the scalp and then one of the technicians massaged it in. The intention is to minimize the pain from the actual local injections. I have read people on here who said it didn't help much and so I wasn't expecting it to (they included it in my package for free), but the local anesthetic injections were honestly pretty close to painless. They felt like little pinches. One of the other guys I met had his injections without the painless anesthesia and he said it was some of the worst pain he's ever felt. So I guess it works. Anyway, after that they begin harvesting grafts. This took 2-3 hours. At some point they gave me some lunch (15 minutes or so to eat) and then we continued. Dr. Cinik came in a few times to check up and see how I was doing. After the harvesting, Dr. Cinik came in to do the channel openings (You have to pay extra for Dr Cinik to do the channel openings, otherwise it's a technician that does them). While he's doing the channel openings there is a technician there counting the openings to make sure they match the amount of grafts harvested. I wish I had paid attention to this part so that I wouldn't have any doubts about how many grafts they got. After that the technicians begin inserting the grafts. This took about 1.5 hours I'd say. After that, you meet with one of the reps and he/she goes over some information in terms of post-op care. You are then taken back to your hotel. The entire surgery day lasted from about 8AM - 4:30PM. The next day you go back for a wash and to take the bandages off. This was actually the most painful part for me, but still it was pretty quick. Then they put a headband on you, you take post-op pictures, and then you are taken back to the hotel or to the airport to fly home depending on how you planned the trip. Overall a very efficient and professional experience. However, the most important part of a hair transplant is the results, so we'll have to see how those pan out in the months to come! 

Edited by silent1337
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2 minutes ago, JovsGata said:

Did they make you take a EKG or heart check?

Yes they did, that was done on the first day alongside the blood tests. What is the EKG done for? Just to discover any heart abnormalities that could interact with pain / anesthesia? 

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2 hours ago, silent1337 said:

Yes they did, that was done on the first day alongside the blood tests. What is the EKG done for? Just to discover any heart abnormalities that could interact with pain / anesthesia? 

There really is no need for the heart check, never heard of that for a HT. Blood check and blood pressure check should be enough.

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5 hours ago, Newyear newhair said:

Me neither, I never had that with Dr Cinik in October.

Something they just added literally a week ago. That was never mentioned in the package so they should've had your approval to do that. We knew about the blood test and blood pressure test as it was previously stated before hand, but to hook you up with all these wires and do heart tests on someone without their consent or even knowledge before hand is not professional.

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And lets be real here... They are just doing this for more "fluff" to showcase in their promo video, it's like the 10 year guarantee certificate deal, it has no substance, just used as a promo tool for marketing.

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True, well ECG is not an invasive or dangerous diagnostic test so I don't think it's a big deal. They give you a copy of the ECG report too so you can analyze your heart beat later, lol! 

Anyway, here's some day 4/5 pictures. I have a question. I gently poured some lukewarm water over the grafts in attempt to clean them, and I noticed afterwards that there were tons of little white specks all over, many in places where I didn't even think there was a graft. Initially I was thinking that each red scab was a graft, however If I were to count the white flakes seen in the picture, I would believe that there has been ~2600 grafts placed in the frontal hairline, and so my question to you guys is: Is every one of those white flakes a graft? Or do I just count the red scabs when dry. I have a lot of time to kill in hotel quarantine and so I've been trying to count the grafts lol20210508_203824.thumb.jpg.dcea6e30fca8bd125a7d94223fb2e7c8.jpg20210509_201142.thumb.jpg.c208249bf2501d639752bdb50ce9ec98.jpg

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Day 12... What do you guys think? Is it possible that some grafts aren't visible at this point, i.e. the hair fell off already? The reason I ask is because there are some spots that look like they could've used a graft, but I'm wondering if maybe there's already a graft in that spot but the hair fell off when removing scabs. Also, what % of grafts will survive? I would hope all of them but I'm curious as to what kind of result I can expect from these initial hairs

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Edited by silent1337
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  • 4 weeks later...
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Hey yeah the shedding started at about ~25 days in, and it's been shedding like crazy since. My hair looks worse than it did pretransplant at this point, but this was expected so I don't really care too much. My hair has been itchy in the recipient areas for the past couple of weeks, but I presume that is also a normal part of the process.

 

Here are some pics I just took minutes ago:

 

I guess another month or two of shedding/waiting until the growth starts to (slowly) begin

 

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  • 1 month later...
  • 3 weeks later...
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Here are some pics I took today in favourable lighting, just over 3 months. 

Growth seems to be kicking in. However I can see a fair number of multi-hair grafts (a couple with 4 hairs)  in the hairline, which probably isn't a good thing. C'est la vie. 

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Edited by silent1337
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