Istanbul options

[Fitamess]

Looking for suggestions on the best place to get a HT in Istanbul. I have been looking at Asmed, serkan Aygin and academic esthetic.  Asmed seems to have great reviews, but also significantly more expensive.  Do you get what you pay for or is it purely a name ? Are there Any others I should consider ? Can I also assume that a manual extraction is better than a “machine” ?! thank you 🙂

[Britanium]

Why Istanbul? No I wouldn’t consider those as good choices. Turkey has Dr Bicer, HLC, Pekiner, Keser and the more affordable Demirsoy and Yaman.

But if you want to have even better choices you could consider other European Clinics. Dr Bisanga, Dr Mwamba, Dr Lapunzula, Dr Freitas, Dr Vila, Dr Ferreira, Dr Feriduni, Dr Pinto and HDC @Doron Harati just for some examples !

Can you give some more details about yourself ? Age, current loss, med regime and show some pics ? Thanks 🙏 

Edited October 8, 2021 by JohnAC71

[Fitamess]

I was lead to believe turkey was the place to go. Istanbul , because i can get a direct flight. Will research the others you suggested.  I’m 38 , Norwood 03 or maybe 04. Based in the US.

[Britanium]

5 minutes ago, Fitamess said:

I was lead to believe turkey was the place to go. Istanbul , because i can get a direct flight. Will research the others you suggested.  I’m 38 , Norwood 03 or maybe 04. Based in the US.

It’s a common misconception. The best Drs/Clinics are elsewhere! And hey you do have some pretty awesome choices in the US/Europe Have you seen the forums full recommended list:

https://www.hairtransplantnetwork.com/Consult-a-Physician/hair-transplant-surgeons.asp?sr=HRN-MOB
 

Edited October 8, 2021 by JohnAC71

[Britanium]

Eugenix in India is another excellent choice for the higher Norwood Levels. Would you be able to show some pics ? 

[Fitamess]

Thank you. No pics just now but all clinics I’ve contacted have quoted around 400 grafts

[Fitamess]

Thank you 🙂

[ITA]

7 minutes ago, Fitamess said:

400 grafts

400 grafts?  Are you sure?

[Fitamess]

4000**

[Halu]

Which clinics? Clinics in turkey?

[Fitamess]

Clinics in Istanbul 

[Halu]

I don’t know, which clinics you already contacted. When those clinics are hairmills, they will tell you much more grafts then you will need.

Check the list above and contact them. I’m sure they can do with  
fewer Grafts more and a natural hairline. And you will not regret your decision to have a HT. 

[Portugal25]

4 hours ago, Fitamess said:

I was lead to believe turkey was the place to go. Istanbul , because i can get a direct flight. Will research the others you suggested.  I’m 38 , Norwood 03 or maybe 04. Based in the US.

@Fitamess who told this either hates you or is totally clueless.
Turkey is the world capital of botched hair transplants. 
There are hundreds of hairmill clinics where underpaid technicians  without a medical background (taxi drivers 1 month before doing your surgery) are doing surgery on several patients per day.

You can be lucky to get a very experienced tech team and get a acceptable result or join the list of countless botched transplants that require a repair surgery with a propper Doctor.
There was a Italian guy that actually died in one of these hairmills and was wrapped in towels.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9989033/Italian-man-mysteriously-dies-heart-attack-hair-transplant-operation-Turkey.html

Hairmills copy results from great Doctors like Bisanga, Couto, De Freitas and post them on their website and social media. This is enough to capture uninformed patients looking for a cheap surgery. 
They have also schills that register at HRN with different usernames to promote their hairmills (very discretely to make it seem they are not schills). Any minute now a schill will be coming to this thread about a guy thinking of going to a hairmill in Instambul to insert the name of his hairmill in this thread. This happened at HRN just yesterday. 

ASMED is a hairmill with techs doing surgery on several patients per day with zero to little involvement from a Doctor.  Several HRN members were left with a botched surgery and ASMED mistreated them. 
Academic is one of hundreds low cost hairmills. 
Aygin is not a Doctor I would ever recommend here’s one lf the reasons why: 

You need to start researching Doctors  by looking at their real patients posting the results from day 1 to 12 months after surgery. 

Take a look at this table that will help you get started with your research. 
 

I highly advise you to start taking Finasteride 3x/week in order to stop your hairloss and strengthen your native hair (donor area). 

If you want a low cost Doctors you have Dr. Arika at Eugenix at 1.60€/graft.

Extracting Manually or Motorized has no impact on the quality of end results. A good Doctor can do both types of extractions during the surgery depending on what the graft they are extracting requires. 

Wish you all the best and hope you stay clear of Turkey unless it’s go to Dr. Pekiner or Dr. Ozgur at HLC (or at least Dr. Bicer). 

Edited October 8, 2021 by Portugal25

[Fitamess]

thank you for the feedback, im so glad i joined this community.  Although i think i'm a little scared now haha.

I was also hoping turkey would be more affordable too.  Sounds like the "approved" turkey list is:

Dr Bicer,

HLC,

Pekiner,

Keser 

Demirsoy

Yaman.

 

Any suggestions in the US?

[Berba11]

3 hours ago, Fitamess said:

Looking for suggestions on the best place to get a HT in Istanbul. I have been looking at Asmed, serkan Aygin and academic esthetic.  Asmed seems to have great reviews, but also significantly more expensive.  Do you get what you pay for or is it purely a name ? Are there Any others I should consider ? Can I also assume that a manual extraction is better than a “machine” ?! thank you 🙂

When you’re looking at clinics, what exactly are you looking for? It seems to me you don’t really know much about HT’s to begin with, which begs the question… Why are you looking for clinics if you haven’t got the fundamental framework of understanding of HT’s to properly assess whether a clinic is good or not? How can you possibly decide? How can you know what questions to ask of a prospective clinic?

I see this issue all the time. People ask “which clinic?”, and totally skip over the stage where they actually take the time to learn about HT’s first. The “which clinic?” question should be the last part of your research, not the first bit. 
 

You’ll get given a list of good clinics on this forum (so at least you came here first!), but surely you’d like to understand *why* the clinics that people will recommend here are good ones? It’s your head, after all!

[Fitamess]

I disagree Berba11.  I'm quite comfortable with my "fundamental framework of understanding of HTs".  I'm not sure how that directly ties to assessing a clinic.   I think determining what "good" means differs from person to person.  But i think for me, and perhaps the majority of other people, its a clean/safe practice that provide natural looking, non-botched hair transplants for a reasonable price - performed by professionals. 

[Britanium]

33 minutes ago, Fitamess said:

thank you for the feedback, im so glad i joined this community.  Although i think i'm a little scared now haha.

I was also hoping turkey would be more affordable too.  Sounds like the "approved" turkey list is:

Dr Bicer,

HLC,

Pekiner,

Keser 

Demirsoy

Yaman.

 

Any suggestions in the US?

The forums recommended list for US are within:

https://www.hairtransplantnetwork.com/Consult-a-Physician/hair-transplant-surgeons.asp?sr=HRN-MOB

[Britanium]

We all might have a budget in mind but it should not be the driving point for a hair transplant. Saying that the really good European options are both excellent Drs and very good value per graft ! Think €2 upwards. 

[Portugal25]

55 minutes ago, Fitamess said:

thank you for the feedback, im so glad i joined this community.  Although i think i'm a little scared now haha.

I was also hoping turkey would be more affordable too.  Sounds like the "approved" turkey list is:

Dr Bicer,

HLC,

Pekiner,

Keser 

Demirsoy

Yaman.

 

Any suggestions in the US?

If you can afford Pekiner and HLC then book either Dr. Ximena Vila, Dr. Bruno Pinto or Dr. Bruno Ferreira (best in my opinion) that are better and cost the same price. 

Edited October 8, 2021 by Portugal25

[Berba11]

1 hour ago, Fitamess said:

I disagree Berba11.  I'm quite comfortable with my "fundamental framework of understanding of HTs".  I'm not sure how that directly ties to assessing a clinic.   I think determining what "good" means differs from person to person.  But i think for me, and perhaps the majority of other people, its a clean/safe practice that provide natural looking, non-botched hair transplants for a reasonable price - performed by professionals. 

It directly ties to assessing a clinic because you need to know in detail the following when looking at their work:

Are they using microscopes? Are they placing only single hair grafts in the frontal hairline (and temple points)? What if they can't extract enough single hairs for hairline restoration? Are they skilled & proficient in cutting multi-hair grafts in singles? Do their hairlines have micro & macro irregularities in the design? How is their graft angulation & direction work, particularly in the corners of the hairline where it meets the temple points (an area that often sorts the wheat from the chaff and shows up frequently in the work of Turkish hair-mills)? Also especially when it comes to crown/whorl recreation/restoration? What do you know about their aftercare? Who actually performs the surgery? etc etc

Everybody wants a "clean/safe practice that provide natural looking, non-botched hair transplants for a reasonable price - performed by professionals", but that's vague as hell. I'm asking if you know *how* and *what* a prospective clinic has to be able to do/have in their arsenal/skillset to be able to create "natural looking" results? Knowing this info is how you end up at a good clinic, and avoid one that will botch you.

Given that two out of three of your initial list of potential clinics do not have a track record of excellence, that does somewhat suggest that the depth of your knowledge going in is lacking. Would you, for example, have thought to ask Academic Esthetic if they are able to create single grafts from multi-graft hairs if they weren't able to extract enough singles for the hairline from your donor area initially? Is that a question you'd have known or thought to ask? I'm looking at some of their results and I can see from the few reasonable quality pics that they have that there's some very linear looking hairlines. I can see what appears to be multi grafts in the hairlines (meaning they likely aren't using microscopes). I can see a terribly unnatural looking beard restoration, and I can see that they do all sorts of cosmetic surgeries. Avoid this place like the plague! But the reality is that Academic Esthetic would simply not have been on your radar to begin with if you'd known as much as you should know before having surgery done on your head!

"Good" hair transplants are mostly NOT subjective. There is clear objective & universal "rules" so to speak for what constitutes good results & best practice.

Please note that I'm challenging you a bit not to be a dick, but to try and get you thinking about this a little differently (and anybody else casually lurking who might be in a similar stage of their "research" to you) and to ultimately end up making a much more informed choice.