Hair transplant

Expect a patchy in-between phase from months 3 to 6 as the new hairs come through. Most of the visible result lands around month 8, with final density at 12–15 months.

For the first 10–14 days, yes — there are visible scabs and redness in both the donor and recipient areas, and they lift as you wash on schedule. After that, a short cap and slightly longer hair on top usually carry you through the awkward phase.

It depends on the area and your donor supply. Hairline work is often 1,500–2,500 grafts; full crown coverage or advanced loss can need 3,000–5,000 or more, sometimes split across two sessions. As a rough planning guide, around 10 follicular-unit grafts per square centimetre gives acceptable visual coverage, while 25 per square centimetre reads as dense. We agree a realistic number with the surgeon before you travel.

Yes. It is a day-case procedure, and most people plan about 3 days in Istanbul with 2-3 hotel nights — the surgery, a first hair-wash, and a post-op check before heading home.

The transplanted follicles are taken from genetically resistant donor zones, so they typically keep growing for life. Your non-transplanted hair can keep thinning, which is why many people stay on finasteride or minoxidil afterwards.

The procedure is done under local anaesthetic and is mostly uncomfortable rather than painful. Light sedation can be added if you are anxious about the injections. The first two nights are the most tender, and standard pain relief is usually enough — a short course of antibiotics is sometimes prescribed to lower infection risk.

Neither is universally better. FUE is the default for most people because it avoids a linear scar; FUT can suit cases that need very high graft numbers in a single session.

Male pattern loss is described with the Norwood scale, which runs from Class I (no real recession) through Class III (a distinct M-shaped hairline, or early thinning at the crown) to Classes VI and VII, where the front and crown have merged into one bald area and only a horseshoe of hair remains at the sides and back. The grade sets a realistic graft count and shows where donor supply will run short. A transplant redistributes hair you already have rather than creating new follicles, so it is the donor area, not the size of the bald area, that limits coverage.

No. It works best for androgenetic alopecia — pattern hair loss — where follicles from DHT-resistant donor zones keep growing after being moved. Hereditary hypotrichosis and stable scarring hair loss — after burns, injury, surgery or inflammation — can also be treated. If the loss is hormonal or driven by an underlying condition, transplanted hair can fall out too, so the cause needs to be diagnosed and the shedding brought under control, often with medication, before surgery makes sense.

Sometimes. Beard, chest or back hair can supplement scalp grafts when donor supply is limited. Because the texture and growth cycle differ from scalp hair, body-hair grafts are usually placed behind the hairline to add density rather than to build the hairline itself. The surgeon assesses whether this is worthwhile at the planning stage.

No — the grafts are your own tissue, so rejection does not happen. Between extraction and placement they are kept in a chilled holding solution, and the recipient sites are opened with fine blades or needles that set the angle and direction of growth. When a transplant fails, the usual causes are poor surgical handling or low graft survival, not rejection.

Yes. Once the scalp has healed, transplanted hair behaves like the rest of your hair — you can wash, cut, blow-dry and dye it normally. Hold off on dye and harsh chemical treatments until the surgeon confirms healing is complete, typically a few weeks after surgery.

Ideal candidates are men and women aged 18 to 65 with a stable pattern of hair loss and a healthy, dense donor area to take grafts from. The word doing the work there is stable: loss that is still moving fast is planned differently, because the hairline we build has to still make sense once the surrounding hair thins further. The harder limit is donor supply — a transplant redistributes hair you already have rather than creating new follicles, so very advanced loss with a thin donor area may not yield enough grafts for dense coverage across a large bald area. The surgeon measures your donor density and tells you what is realistic before you book anything.

Ours runs from €1,650 to €2,450, confirmed after your consultation rather than priced off a graft count alone. For comparison, the same procedure is typically £4,500–£8,500 in the UK, $6,000–$15,000 in the United States and €4,000–€10,000 in Western Europe. What moves the number is your donor density and the graft count your case actually needs — not the headline figure in an advert.

Mostly the cost of running a clinic — staff, premises and theatre time are a fraction of UK or US equivalents, and the sheer volume of this work here means a surgical team does far more of these per year. It is not a cheaper graft or a shorter operation. The things worth checking are the ones price does not tell you: whether a specialist rather than a coordinator plans your hairline, who actually performs the extraction, and what aftercare you get once you are home.

The procedure itself is low-risk in competent hands — it is a day case under local anaesthetic. The variation between clinics here is the real question. Since April 2025 any facility treating international patients must hold a health tourism authorisation certificate and carry complication insurance, and it must publish that certification; that is a floor, not a recommendation. Ask who performs the extraction and the implantation, ask to speak to the doctor before you pay a deposit, and ask what happens if the result is poor. We answer all three in writing before you book a flight.