A few days ago I had my second hair transplant, the first was with Mr Ball in London in July 2015. At that time I had 3394 grafts (6360 hairs) starting from a NW6.
This time I decided to go to Dr Karadeniz in Istanbul. Like last time I'll document updates over the next 12 months to help other people with their choices and give back to this useful community like I also benefited from.
Why Dr Karadeniz?
I spent time looking at reviews and photos of similar cases to mine. The recommendation from the respected Joe T helped me make my decision as well as speaking to a few former patients. Another factor in choosing Dr K was his prices can be up to half of the cost of other surgeons. I was impressed with Dr K's communication, he would reply personally to all emails usually within 24 hours. I also did a video consultation with him via Skype and spoke to him on the phone. Dr K is very passionate about hair transplants and comes across as being very genuine. After we spoke he recommended FUT initially but given I was keen to get as many grafts as possible we decided to go for a combined FUT and FUE procedure over 2 days. I was very keen for this to be my last transplant so I can just forget about my hair loss and move on with my life. I do recognise though that future hair loss is unpredictable so I may be open to having a further procedure after several years, but only if I desperately needed it.
The day before the procedure:
I was picked up by a driver in a very nice new BMW and taken to the Silence Hotel. This is a 5 star hotel and looks nice and is clean. Breakfast was decent and it's located a few minutes walk away from the clinic. There's also a shopping complex next door with high street shops and restaurants.
Day 1 - FUT
I was collected from the hotel at 0745 and taken to the clinic and met Dr K and his team. His team are very nice and you can see they work very well together by the relationship they have with one another. It's a small clinic but nice and clean with all the facilities required.
Dr K examined me and noted I have good laxity - the scalp exercises during the past few months must have paid off! Dr K then answered all my questions. I asked about lowering the hairline or temples which he advised against and felt we should focus on improving the overall density instead (this was similar to Mr Ball's advice one year earlier). We proceeded to the FUT and the local anaesthetic injections stung but weren't too uncomfortable. Whilst his technicians dissected the strip, Dr K made the recipient incisions for both days. Later the technicians implanted the grafts. The day finished around 6pm. Sleeping that night was uncomfortable but the neck pillow I brought helped.
The graft breakdown was:
FUT grafts = 3150
Total hairs = 7100
Average of 2.25 hairs per graft
330 singles
1690 doubles
1130 triples
Day 2 - FUE
This was a smaller session and I found it very comfortable. Dr K did all the extractions and the technician then implanted them. It took approximately 5 hours in total.
The graft breakdown was:
FUE grafts = 723
Total hairs = 1703
Average of 2.35 hairs per graft
123 singles
280 doubles
260 triples
60 quadruples
Punch size was mainly 0.8mm motorised.
At the end Dr K went through the post-op instructions and gave me a bottle of shampoo, a moisturising lotion and 1 years worth of Proscar 5mg. I returned briefly on day 3 for the hair wash performed by the technician. By day 2 the pain to the scar was very bearable and seemed a lot less than what I experienced from my first surgery. I haven't really noticed any pain to the FUE donor areas.
Overall I was very pleased with my experience and decision to choose Dr K. I was happy to hear that he feels I probably could get another 2000 grafts from a further FUT given my laxity, and another 1000 grafts FUE.
In total I've now had 7,267 grafts (15,163 hairs) so hopefully this will give me a good end result!
Any comments or questions feel free to ask.
 3,873 grafts combined FUT and FUE with Dr KaradenizPrintable View
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