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How I Fixed My Bad Turkey Beard Transplant In Belgium, thanks to Dr. Devroye

Dr Devroye

Dr Devroye

Valued member
Dear forum members,

On behalf of our patient, we are posting his beard transplant repair experience with Dr. Devroye after a failed beard transplant in Turkey.

Please find his message and images below.





Bad Beard Transplant At Medicana Hospital: A Warning To Those Considering Any Procedures In Turkey

The popular €œTurkish model € for hair transplant surgery has established Turkey as the premier destination for hair transplants. The surge of foreigners visiting Turkish clinics each year shows how enticing Turkey €™s low prices and supposed €œadvancement € in hair transplant technology can be.

In 2017, I traveled to the Medicana hospital in Istanbul for a beard transplant and it was disastrous. It has taken a lot of time, cost, and pain to fix the near irreparable damage that €“ for a time €“ I believed had permanently ruined my face. Now with more clarity a year later, I am finally in a much better place to share my experience. In sharing my story, I hope to properly forewarn anyone considering any kind of medical procedure in Turkey.

I booked my procedure through a travel medical agency called FlyMedi. Through them, they arranged for me to go to the Medicana Camlica Hospital.

MEDICANA ÇAMLICA HOSPITAL (X)
Kısıklı Mah. Alemdağ Cad. No: 113, 34692 Üsküdar/İstanbul, Turkey

+90 216 522 60 00

€¢ Consulted with Huseyin Cetinalp, the hospital manager, and Dr. Nilsu Gencylimaz, dermatologist

€¢ Cost less than 2,000 ‚¬ including 3 nights of hotel and transport around the city

€¢ FUE with 1,500 grafts (though from the pics below, I believe they
overharvested and took more)
€¢ Hairs extracted from my head, then transplanted onto my face
€¢ All done within 1 day


If you research this clinic, it is a relatively upscale private hospital and based on 70+ reviews, it is supposed to be an above average facility. At the time, I did my research and it seemed like a reliable place to go. As a young working professional, I thought I knew all the things to look out for. But the Internet is not always reliable and I turned out to be so wrong. Here is everything that went wrong.

1) HOW THE PROCEDURE WAS PERFORMED: No doctors performed the actual procedure itself. Such is the case for the majority of hair transplant surgeries in Turkey, which is illegal and breaks Turkish laws. If you €™re lucky, the most involvement you €™ll see from a Turkish doctor is that he will draw your hairline with a marker before leaving other unqualified staff to handle the rest of the transplant.

I knew this going in and I thought I had been smart to raise this as a concern beforehand. Going in, I had negotiated with FlyMedi and the hospital that a doctor would in fact perform my beard transplant. So you might wonder how I ended up in a situation where this didn €™t happen €¦ well, when the procedure started, all the doctors were in the room with me. But after receiving my anesthesia shots in my head, I relaxed and fell asleep. When I woke up later on, I realized that all the doctors had left the room and only two technician girls (for whom I know nothing of their qualification) were left to carry out the entire thing.

By then, it was too late. And not only that, you can never underestimate the overwhelming influence you succumb to when in front of a medical authority. No matter how well researched or intelligent you think you are, most people find it difficult to speak up for themselves in such a moment. Which is why developed countries have strict medical laws to protect patients from a miscarriage of power wielded by doctors.

You have to understand that what happened here is reflective of my whole experience. While there was no obvious bold-faced lie on the surface, I was lured into a situation through misrepresented facts. Because of this, I think anyone engaging in medical tourism in an under-regulated country such as Turkey should understand that the ethics practiced in the US or in developed European countries might not always be present. Not only do you have to be cautious of the doctor you consult, but should the surgery turn out negative or end result fails, no accountability or responsibility will be taken.

2) POOR TECHNIQUE RESULTING IN AN EXTREMELY FAKE APPEARANCE: If you ask any respectable hair transplant doctor in Europe or the US (which I later did while trying to fix this mess), they will tell you that there should be no more than 1-2 hairs per graft maximum. As I have extremely thick and coarse hair, most doctors would know to cut the hair extracted from my head into finer pieces before transplanting. But this was NOT done for me in Turkey. What resulted was an extremely fake looking beared with grafts that were too thick (some even had 6-7 hairs in a single graft, which is crazy for a beard transplant!).

In addition, the artistry and workmanship were horrible. As you can see in my pics, there are clear telltale signs that made my beard look fake.
€¢ Hairline across cheeks too straight
€¢ Two extremely bare circles on chin
€¢ Unsymmetrical, uneven moustache
€¢ Hair growing in wrong direction
€¢ Texture TOO THICK for facial hair

Not to mention, my anesthetic injections before starting the transplant were extremely painful. My pain threshold is quite high, but the injections into my scalp were another level of pain, to the point where I thought I would faint. But I am not one to complain and I thought it was normal at the time. Later, however, during my second and third revisional transplants, I realized that there are chemical combinations which doctors can mix up to ease the sting. And what I experienced in Turkey was not normal in fact.

3) OTHER PROBLEMS IN THE AFTERMATH: Any hair transplant procedure is highly labor-intensive, dependent on the artistry and workmanship of your doctor. After extraction from your head and then cutting those hairs into fine, single hair grafts, they have to be planted at a certain angle depending on the part of your face so they grow in a natural direction. They also can €™t be shoved too deep into your skin.

Unfortunately for me, I received none of this. What resulted was the worst skin problems I ever experienced in my life. I developed severe acne and folliculitis because the hair grafts had been shoved too deeply into my skin (see pic below). As well, I developed pitting, which is a condition where you can see the skin is raised on each hair graft. This was because the hair they transplanted was too thick and each piece was sticking out of the follicle, almost falling out. With constantly irritated skin, it only made my beard look more fake.

What was worst was when I realized they had damaged my donor area. What was initially only meant to be an extraction of 1,500 grafts turned out to be significantly more as you can see from my pics. This clinic (as with most others in Turkey) took far more grafts from my donor zone in one day than any reputable clinic would consider to be safe. Where I had no previous issues with hair thinness or balding, they overharvested and scarred the back of my head creating a new problem. The pics below really don €™t show how bad it looked in real life, but it was terrible. I became so insecure about it that I would always enter a room with my back against a wall so nobody would see it.

Before the surgery, I had asked specifically about this because I was worried about losing hair on my head. But the Medicana team lied about what I could expect for the final result. Not only did they say there would be zero visible scarring, but they even told me that all the hair extracted would grow back fully. This is not true as any hair extracted is permanently lost in the donor area.

As well, when I first saw how thick my beard was coming out of the surgery and how fake my hairline looked, I was immediately concerned. But another lie they told me was that the hair would all fall out and then grown back much softer with the hairline blending to look more natural. I realize now that they were falsely soothing my worries in an attempt to shut me up and get me out once the procedure was done.

Compared to the subsequent corrective hair transplants I received later, the recovery for this Turkey procedure was really bad and I had to stay inside for 10+ days because my appearance was horrible. I had bruising on my face (see pic €“ taken 2 months after the procedure), the transplanted hairs looked really bad, and the donor area on the back of my head was severely scarred. Thankfully, I was not working at this time because it would have been impossible to go to an office for the first 2 months without feeling embarrassed. Again, this is not normal! I had to use many, many tubes of antibiotic and steroid cream (fucidin and cortisone) in hopes of calming down the swelling during the following year after. In comparison, my corrective surgeries in Belgium only took a couple of days before it looked more or less healed (it was 4 full days exactly before everything was almost 100%).

After the procedure when I left Turkey, the Medicana team stopped responding to me and did not answer any of my questions whenever I had concerns. It was honestly the worst mistake of my life. I am a young guy and this has affected my face for the past year, which has implications to my professional life and livelihood. It was not worth it! People need to realize as long as the hair transplant industry continues to generate millions of dollars annually, the government of Turkey will continue to turn a blind eye to the lack of regulation.

Thankfully, Beard Revisions At The Hair Transplant Surgery Clinic, Belgium: Finding Dr. Jean Devroye, An Amazing Hair Doctor, One Year Later

HAIR TRANSPLANT SURGERY CLINIC
Avenue de Tervueren 36, 1040 Brussels, Belgium
+32 2 880 70 60

€¢ Found after consulting with many doctors in Europe

€¢ 2 FUE restorative surgeries

€¢ 1 test day + 2-day period with 2,700 grafts (with perhaps one more session still needed)


It has taken me a long time and significantly additional costs in order to find Dr. Devroye, so when I found him I was truly relieved as he is one of the best in the field of hair transplantation, which is why I came to Belgium for this. He is a true subject matter expert when it comes to all things hair-related and is even an active member of the International Hair Restorative Society. In working with him, I €™ve found him to be extremely passionate and dedicated, putting countless hours to work late and take care of his patients.

Early on, Dr. Devroye helped me realize that it is very difficult to €œundo € a hair transplant and the solution is never straightforward in such a situation. At best, you can only hope to fix as much as possible and then camouflage the existing issues. As well, it has been an extremely painful process for me because of the scarring created in Turkey (the scarring means that any injections or transplanting to the donor or recipient areas will hurt more). Had I known how much harder it is to fix the damage than if the procedure had just been done correctly from the start, I would have gone straight to Dr. Devroye and never made that trip to Turkey.

In my sessions so far, Dr. Devroye has essentially combed through my beard with a magnifying glass and removed all the problematic hairs (which was around 90% of them). He cut them and replanted my beard hairs at a correct angle with the correct depth (not too deep this time). All leftover hairs were put back into my donor area to fix the thinness, baldness, and scarring. In a 2-day period, he and his team worked with 2,700 grafts.

Amazingly, my skin cleared up right away and all the folliculitis, acne, and pitting problem went away almost instantly. Appearance-wise, my beard looks really natural now with finer hairs, more natural hairlines with synchronicity €“ see both pics below for the AFTER results. The results (fortunately!) have far exceeded both Dr. Devroye and my expectations. It has been nothing short of a miracle.

I probably have one more minor session left to fill in my chin and then I will finally be able to put this Turkey disaster behind me. However, this experience is not without consequence. Dr. Devroye warned me that I am now at some risk of losing hair on my head in the donor area when I get older and there is a risk of balding. Honestly, I never thought my decision to go to Turkey would have such heavy and longstanding repercussions.

I was so lost and confused after my first surgery in Turkey that even though I was not happy, I allowed myself to even go so far as to be pressured into writing a positive review for FlyMedi and Medicana Çamlica Hospital. After I finally was able to gain some clarity, I tried to contact both organizations in hopes of taking down my review and to get some form of help to rectify my issues but I was ignored. If anything, let this be an example to anyone that you cannot trust everything you read online.

We all have our own physical insecurities, which drive us to do some crazy things. And the way the Turkish cosmetics system is setup is meant to prey and take advantage of our insecurities. I hope my honest sharing will serve as a cautionary tale for anyone considering doing the same thing. And I sincerely hope no one will have to suffer the way I have.



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P

Peter

member
Great work Dr. Devroye. It is sad to see this low-end work but reassuring to see there are doctors around with the skill set to fix these situations. I should know because I found myself in a similar situation with a mustache transplant I had several years ago. Luckily I was able to source another surgeon with the ability to fix it.
 
bullitnut

bullitnut

4 awesome repairs with SMG
Superb work Dr Devroye. Great documentation too. Poor guy seems like he had it tough before getting it fixed. So glad he got things sorted ¬b`
 
D

Dazzster26

Valued member
Brilliant Work Dr Devroye what a turnaround for the Patient ¬b`
 
bullitnut

bullitnut

4 awesome repairs with SMG
Do you have any updates on this patient? Would love to see how the beard and donor looks now.
Best wishes BN;)
 
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