Turkey has become a destination of choice for men seeking affordable hair transplant procedures, but as results are mixed, it is important to carefully research any clinic before travelling Alex Meehan
GAA star Philly McMahon, broadcaster Dáithí Ó Sé, influencer James Kavanagh and newly elected Dublin councillor Gavin Pepper all have one thing in common — they’re among the growing number of Irish men to have gone public about having a hair transplant.
A procedure that was once rare and even more rarely discussed now seems to be relatively commonplace. For men who find themselves with a receding hairline and a growing sense of self-consciousness, a hair transplant is a procedure that can restore the appearance of a full head of hair.
Going bald can certainly prematurely age a man, and while some are perfectly happy to just shave it off and be done with it, others aren’t. In extreme cases, their mental health can take a beating from looking in the mirror each morning and seeing a bald man looking back.
But hair transplants aren’t cheap, and bills for multiple procedures can run into the tens of thousands. There are plenty of reputable clinics in Ireland that will carry out the procedure, but in common with dentistry and other forms of cosmetic procedures, there is a growing trend for Irish people to travel overseas in order to pay less.
Turkey in particular has become synonymous with the industry, to the point that flying ‘Turkish Hairlines’ and coming back from Istanbul with suspicious bandaging has become an internet meme. Instagram and TikTok are chock full of video diaries featuring young Irish men jetting off to avail of cut-price procedures, and judged purely on the finances, it’s not hard to see why.
Why would anyone pay for work done here when they can easily shave off two thirds of the price by going abroad? According to medical experts, however, there’s a lot more to these procedures than is commonly portrayed, and anyone thinking of travelling for a transplant is strongly cautioned against basing the decision purely on price.
“The problem is that people are going to Turkey because it’s cheaper without any insight into why that is and, without realising the jeopardy they’re putting themselves in. Medical tourism in general is a real issue there, and a number of people from the UK and Ireland have actually died from complications that developed from cosmetic procedures they’d had,” says Dr Maurice Collins, a consultant surgeon with Hair Restoration Blackrock (HRBR) in Dublin.
“The level of mortality coming out of that country from people who’ve visited for procedures is frightening. The standards there are appalling.”
Collins has seen a big rise in the number of people seeking help at his clinic as a consequence of what he describes as “poorly executed” hair transplants performed at clinics in Turkey. So many, in fact, that he’s made the decision not to take on any more patients coming back from there, publishing a notice on his website to that effect.
“The reason we’ve taken this stance is that it’s really difficult to fix some of these botched procedures. The people carrying out the operations have often made it very difficult to clean up after them. A good doctor will assess not just how much hair loss a person has now, but how the pattern of hair loss is likely to continue,” he explains.
“A bad one will tell you what you want to hear — that they can give you a full head of hair for a bargain price — but they’ll leave you in a mess later on when the work doesn’t last. For example, many balding men don’t realise that progressive hair loss doesn’t just stop. It keeps going, and any work underdone has to take that into account. It’s not just about how it will look now and for the next year, but for the rest of your life.”
In a typical hair transplant procedure, hair follicles from the back of the head are transplanted to the top and front of the head one by one, with the goal of recreating a natural-looking hairline. Once a follicle has been taken, though, new hair doesn’t grow back at that site.
This means that if a man in his 20s with early hair loss gets a transplant and it goes badly, he can be left with issues that will last for the rest of his life. For this reason, Collins suggests it’s not a good idea for young men to get these procedures done at all if it can be avoided.
‘You need to trust the clinic’: Murat Alsac, co-founder of Estenove, an Istanbul hair transplant clinic
Instead, there are medications that can be used to delay and forestall further hair loss, putting off the need for a transplant for five, 10 or more years. This kind of advice is unlikely to come from a clinic that makes its money on selling procedures, however.
“They’re promised a full head of hair, and that if they bring a pal or two with them, they’ll get further reductions. The pitch is verging on ‘come out on holiday, have a party and go home with hair.’ But it’s devastating what’s being done to them.”
Collins says he has seen cases where Turkish operators have taken too much hair from the back and sides and moved it to the top but over time, as the person’s baldness progresses, they’re left with hair on top of their head or just at the front and nowhere else. This can’t be repaired and so they’re forced to shave it.
“When you remove hair from somebody’s donor region at the back of their head, the hair does not regrow there. Once it’s taken, it’s gone. The surgeries in Turkey we were seeing were getting bigger and bigger; they were harvesting too much and the patient was left with an abnormal hair line,” he says.
“You can end up as a man with a female hairline, which looks wrong. They’d come into us traumatised and looking to repair the damage, but there’s no hair there for us to transplant. You can only harvest from the patient themselves, you can’t use anybody else.”
Collins found that counselling and explaining to people that there wasn’t much that could be done for them was taking up significant time.
He is a strong advocate of the need to get proper advice before getting any work done, and to make sure you’re talking to a doctor and not a salesperson.
“There are no standards in cosmetic surgery in Turkey, it’s just a business and it’s aided and abetted by the Turkish government. It’s not just an issue for hair,” he adds. “Talk to any dentist or cosmetic surgeon and they’ll also tell you they’re seeing the fall-out from it.”
Tom Brett from Portsmouth in the UK found himself in this very situation when he went to Istanbul in 2019 and paid around £2,500 for surgery and a two-night stay in a hotel. The same procedure at home would have cost him around £5,000.
“I thought my hair transplant looked alright for the first few months, but at around the six-month mark it started falling out in patches,” he says. “I found myself looking worse than I did before the surgery. It really damaged my confidence and I got quite depressed, because it was a long process to go through and also expensive, and I felt like I had wasted my time and money.”
When he arrived in Istanbul, Brett found the surgeon he had been speaking to beforehand was not going to actually be doing the procedure, and that instead his assistants would be doing it. The staff working on his hair did not speak English so he sat in silence for eight hours while they worked, listening to music through his headphones.
Afterwards he was given a bottle of lotion and told to apply it once a day, and to get in touch if he had any questions. When he realised something was wrong and emailed the clinic, he was told to wait longer for the transplant to fully heal.
To read the full article on the Irish Independent click here.
