From Harry Wallop
Bizarrely, Istanbul’s become a magnet for men tempted by cut-price clinics promising miraculous hair restoration for just £1,100 — including hotel. But we went undercover to expose the...
The waiting room of Cosmeticium at the Reyap hospital in Istanbul resembles that of any other private medical clinic. Magazines are on the table, a vase of fake flowers stands by the velvet sofas and 24-hour news plays on the television.
But the conversation I am having with Dr Batuhan Kurtoğlu is not so familiar. he is trying to persuade me to have a hair transplant, an eight or nine-hour operation, within minutes of meeting me.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says. ‘Totally, 99 per cent of every operation is a success.’ Really? I reply. ‘It will make you look younger,’ he promises. When I finally decide not to go ahead, the hospital insists I speak on the phone to Sinan Yildirim, my ‘patient co-ordinator’.
he gives me the hard sell: ‘You come to Turkey for your hair transplantation, we have arranged everything. We are ready. You can be nervous for the operation, but don’t worry. everything will be perfect and you will be happy.’
Welcome to Istanbul’s cut-throat hair-transplant industry: one that has grown substantially in recent years, promising thousands of men — including many Britons — that they can regain their lost hair.
Cosmeticium claims: ‘You get completely natural, growing hair that is permanent and has an aesthetic, youthful look.’
Like most clinics in Istanbul, it offers hair transplants as part of a package, with taxis to and from the airport and hotel accommodation included in its ‘best price guaranteed’ deal.
British doctors, however, are increasingly concerned about the promises made to lure patients: that the operation will be painless, that cutting-edge ‘sapphire’ or ‘gold’ techniques will be used, that men will be left with no scarring and that the procedure will be a guaranteed success.
Leading UK surgeons say this is all empty marketing at best, recklessly and dangerously misleading at worst.
Many Turkish clinics also make ambitious promises about how much hair they can transplant.
On inspecting me, the heavily tattooed Dr Kurtoğlu, who also wears chunky earrings, said he could move between 4,000 and 4,500 ‘grafts’ of hair from the back of my head to the top.
Yet this would be ‘clinically dangerous for you and any other patient’, according to Dr Roshan Vara, managing director of The Treatment Rooms in London and medical member of the British Association of hair Restoration Surgery.
It was at this point that I decided to make my excuses and back out of the operation.
I am balding and, like many men with the same problem, would prefer to have the thick thatch I enjoyed in my 20s. I had not come to Istanbul to have a hair transplant, though, but to investigate the industry.
If I’d had any thoughts of going under the knife on the cheap, they have now been removed.
HUNDREDS of Turkish clinics advertise to potential British customers online and via Instagram and Facebook. Google ‘hair transplant’ and chances are your first result will be a treatment package offered from Istanbul.
Most clinics ask you to contact them via the text- messaging service WhatsApp to receive a quote. Typically they ask to see a photograph of your head; they then estimate how much hair they can transfer and tell you the price of the package, nearly always including airport transfers and two nights in a hotel.
I flew to Istanbul after hearing from two men about their bad experiences of Turkish hair transplants, which left them feeling anxious and depressed. I travelled with a Daily Mail photographer, who took pictures on his phone — something the doctors seemed surprisingly relaxed about.
Oliver, 33, an accountant from Oxfordshire, claims he was ‘treated like a hunk of meat’, while Jay, 26, an engineer from London, says his treatment caused him to go into therapy and wear a hat in public for two years.
‘I was anxious about socialising.
There’s not one day I don’t regret going to Istanbul to have a hair transplant,’ he tells me.
Terrorism and political instability have deterred many holidaymakers from visiting Turkey. But the country is enjoying a boom in one area: medical tourism.
About 765,000 patients from 144 countries reportedly visited in 2017, contributing £5.6 billion to the economy.
And one of the main procedures on offer is clearly visible in the streets. In some areas of Istanbul, it is hard to miss seeing young men wearing the headbands given to patients after their operation to reduce swelling, often branded with the name of the clinic. The lobbies of both hotels I stayed in were full of men wearing bandages and discussing their transplants.
I received quotes from as low as £1,499 from MedAway, a medical tourism broker that uses Cosmeticium. This would include a hair transplant, two nights in a five-star hotel with breakfast, ‘VIP transfers’, follow-up wash and aftercare in Turkey.
The price was quoted before I was asked any questions and even before the company had ascertained that I was a suitable candidate for a transplant.
Other clinics were offering similar packages for £1,250; one said it would give me a ‘promo price’ of £1,100 if I booked before the end of the week. In nearly all cases, the money was to be paid in cash on arrival at the hospital.
These prices compare with the £8,000 to £9,000 I was quoted by British clinics.
Spencer Stevenson, 44, had a very bad hair- transplant experience in America and now runs a website and consultancy called Spex hair, which advises people of the risks. he describes the wave of clinics in Istanbul offering cheap but poor- quality procedures as an epidemic.
‘ I’ve dealt with really clever, successful people who have seen nothing more than an Instagram advert for a clinic in Turkey,’ he says. ‘And because they do a hotel package all-inclusive, and because it’s £1,000, they are jumping on the next flight to get it done.’
Transplants cannot make hair regrow. Instead, they move hair from the back of the head to the top or front. This is possible because hair at the back of men’s heads is resistant to a form of testosterone that causes follicles to shrink and eventually fall out.
There are two methods of moving this healthy hair. The first involves cutting a substantial strip of hair from the back, sealing up the cut (leaving a scar) and moving these follicles to the front.
What nearly all the Istanbul clinics specialise in is the second method, because it is less complex. here, individual grafts containing one to four hairs are taken from the back of the head using a tool that looks like a pen, then placed one by one into the top or front of the head.
It is a medical version of robbing Peter to pay Paul, but done skilfully it can give a man the appearance of having a full head of hair. Done badly, however, it can leave the donor area looking very thin and patchy.
This is exactly what happened to Jay when he visited an Istanbul clinic in 2016, he claims.
he had started to lose his hair a few years before, in his early 20s, and had read an article about how James nesbitt, the Cold Feet actor, had won more roles after his transplant. After friends recommended Turkey, Jay emailed a clinic in Istanbul.
‘ They said: “We can achieve maximum density and maximum coverage.” I remember them using those words; they sounded good.’ his procedure cost £1,400. he was surprised at how quick the initial consultation at the hospital was: ‘I saw the doctor, he took a few pictures. Then they shaved my hair down to a number one cut — he literally got a pen, drew a line. This took five minutes. no more.’
nonetheless, Jay was confident he was in good hands.
But a few weeks after the operation, he says it became apparent that the clinic had taken too many grafts from the back of his head.
‘Straight away, when my hair started to grow back, you could see they had over- harvested. They’ve left an obvious patch where I used to have nice, thick hair. It looks like I’m thinning and it’s all uneven and patchy. They have left me with a bigger problem than I had before.’
That was not the only issue. ‘I was promised maximum density and maximum growth,’ says Jay. ‘ It wasn’t there. I sent pictures to the doctor but he barely replied. And when he did, he didn’t seem bothered.’
JAY says the operation damaged him psychologically. ‘I wish I could go back in time to that moment when he was drawing the hairline on me, and just walk away.’
Greg Williams is president of the British Association of hair Restoration Surgery (BAhRS) and the UK’s most senior hair-transplant surgeon. he says many patients come to him after poor transplants carried out overseas.
‘There have been some horrendous results, particularly overharvesting from donor areas,’ he says. ‘ These men are ruined. Absolutely ruined. And they can’t be rescued.’
Cosmeticium initially told me it could move 5,500 grafts on my head. After seeing my photos, it
‘ They left a patch where I’d had thick hair. It’s all uneven’