Hair Transplant in Istanbul
For us, hair transplant is an art of cosmetic surgery. It requires not only medical expertise but also a good aesthetic depth and talent.
Designing of your future hair is one of the most important phases. You will need a professional, trained medical team and timely and accurate information and follow-up. You can access all of these with us in the most economical way.
Would you like to regain your lost hair? Or would you like to have a lower hairline, better-shaped eyebrows or thicker beard?
We are ready to answer all the questions in your mind and offer you our customised services based on your exact needs and expectations, strictly complying with the highest international standards.
For more information, please navigate through the below titles.
What is hair transplantation?
A hair transplantation, or a hair replacement surgery, is a cosmetic plastic procedure to restore hair to the bald or balding/thinning parts of the scalp (in some cases, eyebrow or beard areas).
There are several types and methods of hair transplantation, which can be used alone or in combination for the best possible results. In a typical hair transplant procedure,
- each follicular unit is extracted separately from the donor area (typically back of the head), with pre-decided harvesting density for each part of the donor area, and
- implanted onto the pre-designed implantation areas (typically the frontal scalp, mid scalp and/or crown area) with pre-defined density and techniques.
Who are ideal candidates for a hair transplant surgery?
Donor availability: People with healthy donor hair (mainly on the back and sides of the head) can be candidates for a hair transplant surgery. Donor availability should be good enough to provide the number of grafts needed to cover the implantation area(s). Therefore, even if you have a healthy donor, you may be advised that your donor is insufficient to cover the bald areas to an aesthetically-acceptable extent. This can be the case especially with male patients with an advanced level of hair loss and thus a restricted donor area.
Reasons for a hair transplant: While the most typical reason for a hair transplant is patterned alopecia (patterned male or female hair loss), the surgery can be also recommended for other cases in certain circumstances. For example, males or females with a larger forehead from birth (and with no hair loss) may be also eligible candidates for a hair transplantation to lower their frontal hair line. In any case, each candidate needs to be individually assessed for identification of reasons and analysis of his/her eligibility in medical and aesthetic terms.
Complete information: It is important to get fully informed and understand what a hair transplant operation can and cannot offer you, before making your decision. Your hair transplant specialists should provide you detailed information especially about the expected result, and you should make an informed decision.
Medical conditions: It is also important that you inform your doctor if you have any medical conditions or get any medications that may affect your eligibility or require precautions. Most diseases and conditions can be controlled sufficiently to conduct the surgery under safe conditions.
Examples of conditions that would prevent the surgery or require further medical examination include (but are not limited to): Diabetes that cannot be controlled well, severe hypothyroidism, chronic liver or kidney diseases, tumors, receiving chemotherapy, metabolic disorders, dermatological diseases, etc.
Why Turkey?
Turkey is a popular destination for hair transplantation, not only because of the significantly favourable prices but also due to the long years of intensive experience the medical teams have gained with patients from all around the world!
There are 3 main reasons why you should have your hair transplant operation in Turkey:
1. Experienced medical teams: It is estimated that around 60% of all hair transplants around the world are performed in Turkey every year. This indicates the level of experience Turkish medical teams have gained, and continued trust of the world in their professionalism and experience.
2. Significantly lower prices: Prices are up to 6 times cheaper than in most countries. After a quick online research, you can easily see the huge difference between the prices in Turkey and in other countries. This is mainly related to the lower prices in general in Türkiye, which has a huge and professional medical infrastructure and human resources. This lets you save a considerable amount of money, even when you include the costs of travel and accommodation.
3. See the city of tales… Having your hair transplant operation in Turkey also gives you a great opportunity to visit one of the most amazing cities in world, Istanbul, connecting the West and the East not only geographically but also culturally!
If you are interested in getting the most out of your visit, our professional consultants will create the best tailored program for you to discover the most essential attractions of the city. You will enjoy the Turkish hospitality to the fullest! Go to our cosYstanbul or useful links page for more information about Istanbul.
How is a hair transplant operation planned?
Preliminary assessment and consultation
The planning of a hair transplant procedure typically starts before your arrival in Turkey.
Medical: Before making any assessment, you should make sure you do not have any medical conditions that might affect the procedure or your health during/after surgery. You should consult your doctor about this, or you can consult us by filling our medical form. While few medical conditions can make you ineligible for a hair transplant, certain dermatologic and medical conditions may need to be controlled with ongoing treatment.
Aesthetics: Based on your images, medical and cosmetic assessments and estimations are made by hair transplant experts before your arrival. Estimations are usually related to your donor availability (i.e. how many grafts can be extracted). Planning of implantation areas is also done before your arrival. Once we know your priorities and have your photos, we present you a report including images indicating suggested implantation and donor areas and a simulation of your hair transplant result.
Pre-operative examination and consultation
Once you are in our clinic, you will need to go through quick medical tests, get examined by the doctor and let us know your exact expectations. Then your donor area is examined and decided, and extraction is planned. Next step is your implantation areas (i.e. where the extracted grafts will be implanted one by one). In a typical hair transplant, implantation areas are frontal scalp, mid scalp, crown area and/or beard/eyebrow area). Exact implantation areas and densities are decided based on targeted number of grafts and their coverage capacity. The planning will be made in close consultation with you, and all your questions and concerns will be addressed before the operation starts.
Design: The designing of your hair transplant will take into consideration:
- Your hair loss stage and current hair loss activity: It should be analysed whether you are expected to lose more hair in coming years. For example, if you are actively losing your hair and may move from Norwood III to V in 3-5 years, then your donor might need to be harvested more economically to keep more grafts for a potential second session.
- Suitability for older ages: You should keep in mind that the implanted grafts typically last longer than your pre-existing hair. Therefore, especially if you are at your 20s or 30s, you should be aware that you will most probably continue having the same restored hairline when you are at your 50s-60s as well. A very low hairline may not be preferred at older ages especially if balding continues on crown area, etc. This is why your hair transplant specialist may recommend a more “conservative” hair line.
- Facial anatomy and aesthetics: It is usually preferred to get the most natural results possible. And hair naturality largely depends on the shape of forehead and general facial proportions (as well as hair line transition and implantation density). One of the criteria used while setting the frontal hair line is the “rule of thirds”, as described by Da Vinci (see the image). The rule of thirds mean that the length of your forehead should be equal to (or not smaller than) 1/3 of the length of your face.
Rule of thirds and other factors mentioned above are not the only criteria. Among other factors, your original (old) hairline is also very important. Your anatomical hair line can be usually identified very easily by examining your frontalis muscles. It is not recommended to implant hair on the forehead muscles. In other words, your hair line should be high enough not to transcend onto the wrinkles that appear on your forehead when you raise your forehead.
How many grafts can be implanted?
The exact number of grafts to be extracted & implanted in a hair transplant procedure always depends on several factors including, among others:
- Availability of hair on your donor area(s) and sufficient density. In a typical hair transplant, donor area would be the back of the head (and parts of the sides). It is also possible to extract donor hair from beard under the chin, etc.
- The number of grafts needed to cover the implantation area(s) with ideal density: While 1,500 grafts might be enough for someone that just wants to lower his/her hairline by around 1 cm, a male patient assessed as Norwood VII (see below scale) would need to get the maximum number of grafts that can be extracted without overharvesting the donor area.
During a typical hair transplant surgery, a total of 2,500-5,000 grafts are extracted (evenly from all parts of the donor site, without any damage to existing hair and without creating any visible imbalance in the amount of hair across the donor site).
For patients that require over 5,000 grafts, it is usually recommended to have 2 sessions. A second operation can be conducted at least 12 months after the operation, unless the doctor advises earlier. Most typical patients for 2nd sessions are males with advanced hair loss level (e.g. Norwood V, VI, or VII).
In our hair transplant operations, we guarantee extracting maximum number of grafts (as long as needed), without overharvesting your donor area.
Would one session be enough?
While one session is sufficient for most patients, a second session might be needed after a year to get the most ideal results, especially for patients with less hair in donor site or larger bald areas (e.g. Norwood VI or VII). Need and eligibility for a second session is initially assessed during preliminary examination (before your arrival). Then preliminary assessment for second session is made 6 months after first session (by examining first session’s final results and remaining donor density).
What are the techniques?
Our medical teams in Turkey employ the most up-to-date and quality-proven techniques according to your exact situation and needs, in accordance with the relevant national legislation in Turkey and international standards and trends. Currently, two main techniques are used by our teams depending on the specific needs of the person:
Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) technique originally refers to the excision technique (rather than the implantation) which involves circular incisions around each graft, as opposed to the follicular unit transplantation (FUT) technique which involves removal of a strip of skin from the donor area. FUE technique is generally accepted to be less invasive, as it does not include the removal of skin (except tiny tissue around each extracted grafst). Over time, the FUE technique has come to be interpreted as an implantation technique where tiny incisions are made before the implantation, and then the grafts are inserted into each incision. This is what differentiates it from the Direct Hair Implantation (DHI) technique.
FUE, as an implantation technique, is mostly used for the (almost) completely bald parts of your scalp. Rather than the standard FUE method (where a scalpel is used), our teams use the sapphire FUE method, using sapphire blades (or pens) to make very small and precise incisions on the bald area and ensuring quicker healing. Then the team uses special tweezers to implant the hair follicles into the evenly-distributed incisions within the pre-determined implantation areas, giving the grafts the best and most natural direction/angle.
Direct Hair Implantation (DHI) technique is mostly preferred for the parts of the scalp which still has some hair but needs more density (although it can be also conveniently used for completely bald scalp). The technique is implemented through a tool called Choi Implanter Pen, which pushes the graft into an exact spot without any prior incisions. Thanks to the different diameter options of the pen’s tip, the surgeon can adjust the implantation according to the hair thickness of the specific patient, thus minimising the level of invasiveness.
In many cases, our medical teams use a combination of both techniques to fully meet your needs and achieve the best results possible.
Will it hurt?
Before the operation, we use advanced local anesthesia techniques. Local anesthesia process usually takes around 5-10 minutes, after which there will be no pain throughout the operation (which typically lasts around 6 hours) and afterwards.
What you will need to do is just lie down for this duration and imagine your new appearance that our team will be building in the meanwhile! In addition to the medical team, our experienced non-medical guides will be always assisting you and interpreting throughout the whole process.
After the operation
Right after the operation, you can easily stand up, walk, eat, etc. We recommend our patients to have a rest for at least 3 days and take very good care of their operation areas especially in the first 10 days. After day 3, patients can typically get back to their normal life just by taking few precautions such as sleeping on your back and keeping your head high for 10 days, avoiding heavy exercise and sauna etc. for around a month, avoiding excessive exposure to direct sunlight, not wearing a hat for 1-2 weeks, etc. Itchiness and swelling are normal and expected especially in the first days after the operation. They can be minimised by followign the instructions. Our team will provide you tailored and essential information before and after your procedure.
Medications: Medications that are recommended by the doctor will be provided to you right after the procedure. The medications typically include painkillers, antibiotics, anti-oedema, and bloodthinner. However, exact set of medications and usage instructions will be decided by the doctor based on your medical condition, operative details, etc.
Washing: On the next day after the operation, we will again host you at our clinic for removing the bandage from your donor, checking the operation areas, and washing them for the first time (the first wash may be postponed to Day 2 as well). Washing is done with special products that are recommended by the doctor. You will be given written instructions on how to wash your head carefully once a day in the following 10 days. Typically after 10 days, you will get rid of the scabs and dead skin and will be just waiting for the full healing and hair growth.
Hair Growth: The implanted grafts will grow, shed and starts regrowing more strongly typically within 3 months. By 6 months we expect to see the final results. Results continue improving for 18 months. Exact duration depends on several conditions such as your life quality (in terms of health) and the quality of the aftercare. Based on our experience, all the patients start getting positive results within several months after the surgery, while the full results can be achieved in 6 to 18 months, as the hair continues to grow stronger and healthier.
Hair thickness, graft quality and scalp healing can be improved through supportive treatments that your doctor may recommend. You can get some of these treatments (e.g. hair PRP treatment) at our partner clinics in diverse countries, including the UK, Finland, Ireland, and the USA.
Post-operative guidance: We will give you a number of post-operation recommendations, most of them relating to the first month after the operation, including medications, avoidance of strenuous work or exercise, avoding alcohol and smoking, etc. In addition to a written and visual instructions sheet, we will also provide you a “guidance calendar”, indicating each recommendation and restriction before and after surgery. In any case, we will be remotely communicating and following up with you for at least 6 months.
Hair transplant prices in Istanbul
A hair transplant operation would cost, on average, 2,150 Eur. Beard and/or eyebrow transplants cost a similar amount (slightly smaller), but a combination of 2 or 3 areas can save you a lot of money.
Please note that these prices are provided for information purposes only, and your hair transplant operation can cost 1,500 Eur to 3,500 Eur depending on numerous factors, including the case type, expectations, preferred surgeon/medical team, etc.
Hair transplant – € 2,150
* Maximum number of grafts guaranteed (typically 3,000 to 4,500)
* The price includes:
- Pre-operation consultation (remote)
- The entire process of hair transplant by a specialist medical team of a doctor and 2-3 technicians, including: pre-operation consultations, medical tests, haircut, local anesthesia, extraction, incisions, implantation, and bandaging
- Fully-equipped HT operation rooms over 15 m2, and all the medical equipment and consumables needed during the operation
- Post-operation medications, including: gastroprotective, painkiller, antibiotic, anti-oedema, and blood thinner
- First wash and check on the following day
- Washing and care products
- Remote follow-up with an assigned specialist (regularly for the first 6 months)
Basic Package – € 3,100
Our Basic Package offers you the most economical way of having your hair transplant! With this package, you will have all the basic services needed, starting from your arrival at the Istanbul Airport until your departure from Istanbul! The package includes:
- The whole hair transplant procedure (above hair transplant services)
- VIP transfers: airport-hotel-airport & hotel-clinic-hotel (once for operation and once for the post-operation check-up and wash)
- 3 nights of accommodation at one of the best 4-star hotels in Istanbul
- Discount for upgrade to combination surgery (both FUE and DHI techniques)
Comfort Package – up to € 7,000
Comfort packages offer you to get more than the essential services and enjoy a fully comfortable process. Different packages can be created specially for you. Below is the ideal package (7,000 Eur) that we recommend to our patients that have the time and budget:
- The whole hair transplant procedure (above hair transplant services)
- Free upgrade to combination surgery for best possible results (both FUE and DHI techniques)
- 11 nights of accommodation at a 5-star hotel with a perfect location
- VIP transfers throughout 11 days (for airport transportation, for all the services covered, and for 1-day guided tour)
- 10 days of wash at the clinic after the operation
- 3 hyperbaric chamber treatments in Istanbul
- Aftercare and supportive treatment products for 12 months (including mesotherapy cocktails, hair vitamins, shampoos, and other products as relevant)
- Close follow-up for 12 months