Guido, from Dour, pushed the orange Alert Us button to warn against low-cost operations abroad. In 2020, complexed by baldness, he decided to have hair implant surgery in Turkey, 4 times cheaper than here. This did not work, and since then he has suffered from Ménière’s disease: neck pain, hearing loss and tinnitus. Guido is certain: it inevitably comes from the intervention. He advises today not to play with his health for “small complexes”.
“I can tell you about my experience of hair implants in Turkey, a real nightmare. I paid 1,400 euros with hotel and driver”, writes Guido via the orange Alert us button. This resident of Dour, in the Boraine region, wishes today to warn against these operations abroad that we pay 3 to 4 times less than at home, but whose results and conditions are not always the best. .
It was in January 2020 that Guido decided to take the leap: he suffered from baldness on the top of his head and being still young, this made him a bit complex. He gets information on the Internet, finds a clinic in Istanbul and flies to Turkey. Arriving there, he quickly realizes that something is wrong. “Already the building, for me, it was like a primary school. It made me think of primary classes”he recalls.
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For a few seconds, he hesitates to back out, but he goes anyway. “On the ground floor, it was like a mutual. And then upstairs, it was there that we did the implants. The operating tables, it was a wooden table with a thin rubber , like physio beds. The mattress was very thin”explains Guido.
He is placed on his stomach for several hours, in very uncomfortable conditions. His neck is under tension, there is blood everywhere. Guido is really not feeling well, he even almost lost consciousness. “The operation would normally last 7 hours, mine lasted 11:30 a.m.he said. For the first 4 hours they removed the bulbs from the hair on the back of my head. Blood was flowing everywhere, I had blood on my face and no one was cleaning me. I had to ask myself to have the blood removed from my face. And then, for 7:30, they put the bulbs back where I had my baldness. They were stapling, they were stapling… I was in terrible pain. They redid injections and the anesthesia made my head swell. They butchered me.”
I wanted to stop everything
The Dourois quickly understands that he was probably the victim of a scam. “I realize in the first hours that I was tricked. There is a lack of hygiene, I am poorly anesthetized… There are a lot of things that were wrong during the operation. I wanted to stop everything, I was so badly installed”, he confides. But the worst thing for him, he tells us, is not so much the hair implants that didn’t work, it’s “health problems” which he subsequently had. “Three months after the operation, I started having vertigo, hearing loss in my right ear, and permanent tinnitus in my right ear.”
Guido affirms it: he has always been in very good health. These problems, which occurred a few months after the operation, are therefore, for him, inevitably linked to the operation. But hard to prove that. “I went to the doctor, he told me that it was after a big shock to the neck that I caught it. I can tell you that I am 300% sure that it comes from there.”
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His message today is very clear: “I advise people to think carefully before going there, because we are in good health… We only have one health and it would be unfortunate, for a small complex, to have other health problems even more serious.” He is obviously referring to Meniere’s Disease from which he now suffers. “It’s a permanent disease that I will have for life. I’m trying to survive and live with it.”
Sometimes dangerous “low cost” operations
This operation cost him 1,400 euros, with hotel and driver. In Belgium, to have hair implants, you have to pay at least 4,000 euros. But it wasn’t about the money, Guido claims. “It’s a question of technique, he slips. It is different in Turkey compared to Belgium. In Belgium, I would have had a scar on the back that would remain for life. Whereas in Turkey, they use a technique where there is no scar. They remove the bulb and reinject it. And obviously, it was 3 times cheaper.”
There, advertisements for this type of intervention abound in the capital. According to Jean Devroye, a doctor specializing in hair transplants for more than 20 years, Turkey is “very strong” to promote hair transplants. “They are present on social networks, they go so far as to take photos with our heads to give credibility. A lot of before and after photos are also taken from us”warns this specialist.
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The problem with these operations “low cost” ? “Often the work is worth what they pay”emphasizes Jean Devroye. “To pay 1,400 euros is absolutely incredible, insofar as it is 3 to 4 times less than what it costs us here. It is impossible to fight against these prices”he wonders.
The Turkish Lira is worth less than the Euro
If surgery of this type costs much less in Turkey, it is also because, very often, patients have to pay for it in cash and in Euros or Dollars. “There is no question of paying with the Turkish Lira, which has been devalued 3 to 5 times. So inevitably, 1 dollar or 1 euro is worth 5 times more than what it was worth 5 or 10 years ago. allows you to pay for everything, notes the doctor. And Guido confirms it to us: he paid the 1,400 euros in cash and did not have a receipt or invoice.
It is a dangerous system because a hair transplant is not a trivial act. It is a surgical act, which must be reserved for a doctor or a surgeon. “It requires training”insists Jean Devroye. “The part where the bulb is reinjected can be done by a non-doctor. On the other hand, the extraction part must be reserved exclusively for a doctor because it is a surgical act. And the surgery, from the moment he there is intrusion of a blunt, cutting instrument into the skin, it is medical work”he continues.
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But in Turkey, the “big companies” carry out this assembly line work with a view to profitability. “They do a lot of operations and numbers a day. And in the vast majority of cases, it’s not the doctor who works. He’s an assistant who often doesn’t even have a medical qualification. whatever it is. It’s quite worrying.” However, generalizations should not be made: “There are also doctors who work very well there, but they will be more at our European rates.”
This specialist reminds us and insists: “Patients need to realize that their hair is more valuable than any diamond. No one else can give them their hair back. Only your hair can give you help to fill baldness.”