Hair Transplant

A hair transplant moves your own healthy, permanent follicles from the back and sides of the scalp to the areas where hair has thinned or gone. It is the only treatment that adds new, lasting hair to a bald area. Medicines and injections can slow loss or strengthen existing hair, but they cannot regrow follicles that are already gone.

Most of the patients I operate on fly in from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, and almost all of them arrive with the same questions. This page answers them the way I do in consultation: who the procedure is right for, how I plan and perform it, what recovery really looks like, and where each technique and cost guide on this site fits in.

What Is a Hair Transplant?

A hair transplant is a minor surgical procedure in which I remove individual follicular units from a donor area, usually the back and sides of the head, and implant them into thinning or bald areas such as the hairline, temples, mid-scalp or crown. The follicles in that donor zone are genetically resistant to the hormone DHT, which drives male and female pattern hair loss. They keep that resistance after they are moved, which is why transplanted hair is considered permanent.

Because the grafts come from your own body, there is no rejection. What a transplant does not do is create new hair. It redistributes what you already have. That is the single most important thing to understand before surgery: your donor area is a finite reserve, and every plan I make is built around spending it wisely.

Grafts vs. hairs: why the difference matters

A graft is a follicular unit, a natural group of one to four hairs. On average a graft carries just over two hairs, so a 3,000-graft procedure moves roughly 6,000–7,000 hairs. When you compare quotes, always ask whether a number refers to grafts or hairs. I explain how graft numbers translate into price on my hair transplant cost per graft page.

Which conditions a hair transplant treats

• Male pattern baldness (androgenetic alopecia): receding hairline, temple loss, thinning crown.
• Female pattern hair loss in selected cases with a stable donor area. See female hair transplant.
• Scars from injury, surgery or burns. These small reconstructive cases are where my own hair transplant career began.
• Facial hair: beard, moustache, eyebrows and sideburns (covered further down).

Am I a Good Candidate for a Hair Transplant?

Most people with pattern hair loss can be helped, but not everyone should have surgery now. When I assess a patient, I look at four things:

1. Donor density and size. How many grafts can be taken safely without visibly thinning the back of the head.
2. Stage and pattern of loss. Where you are on the Norwood scale, and how much more loss is likely in the coming decades.
3. Age and stability. Hair loss that is still moving quickly makes the future pattern hard to predict.
4. Expectations. The goal is a fuller head of hair, not the density you had at 18.

This matches what hair restoration surgeons report worldwide. In the ISHRS 2025 Practice Census, most members said they set a minimum age for surgery, and over half of both male and female surgical patients were between 30 and 49.

When I recommend waiting or a non-surgical option first

• Early or rapidly progressing loss, especially in patients under their mid-twenties.
• Diffuse thinning across the whole scalp, including the donor area.
• Hair loss with an untreated medical cause (thyroid problems, iron deficiency, active scalp disease).
• A donor area too weak to deliver the coverage the patient expects.

In these cases my hair loss treatments page explains the medical and non-surgical options, including hair mesotherapy. Patients with tightly curled hair need a modified approach, which I cover on the afro hair transplant page.

How I Plan Your Hair Transplant

The quality of a result is decided before the first graft is taken. Planning has three parts.

1. Hair and donor analysis

I examine the scalp, measure donor density and look at hair calibre, colour contrast and curl. Thick, wavy hair with low contrast against the skin covers far better than fine, straight hair on pale skin, even with the same graft count.

2. Hairline design

I do not draw a hairline where the patient wants it. I draw it where the donor supply, the proportions of the face and the patient’s age allow it to sit for the next thirty years. A natural hairline is never a straight line. It has soft irregularities and a transition zone of single-hair grafts. In this video I explain how I make that decision.

Video: how I decide where a new hairline should sit.

3. Graft count and distribution

Once the design is fixed, I estimate how many grafts are needed and where density should be concentrated. Usually more goes to the front, because that is what frames the face. A higher graft count on its own is not a better result. Patients with bigger donor areas usually have bigger bald areas too, so final density ends up comparable. That is why comparing clinics on graft numbers alone is misleading.

Hair Transplant Techniques I Use

Almost all of my work is based on FUE (follicular unit excision): grafts are taken one by one with a micro punch, so there is no linear scar. The techniques below differ in how grafts are extracted, how the recipient channels are opened, or how much shaving is needed. I compare them side by side on my hair transplant techniques page.

FUT, the older strip method, removes a band of skin from the back of the head and leaves a linear scar. Today it is used much less often, and I do not offer it as a standard option.

One honest note: the name of a technique matters far less than who performs the critical steps. A well-designed Sapphire FUE and a well-designed DHI can look identical at 12 months. A poorly angled graft looks wrong whatever the device was called. In this short video I walk through the four stages of FUE.

Video: preparation, extraction, incision and implantation, explained.

What Happens on Operation Day

A standard session with my team takes about six and a half hours. I keep the same team every day and trained most of them myself. That matters because grafts survive best when they spend as little time outside the body as possible. Much longer operations leave them out for too long.

Hair Transplant Recovery and Results Timeline

Recovery from the surgery itself is quick. Most patients return to desk work within a few days. Growth is slow, and the hardest part for most patients is the wait. This is the timeline I give patients:

Why your hair falls out after a transplant

Almost every patient panics around week four, when the hair they paid for starts to fall out. It is the hair shaft that sheds, not the graft. The follicle rests and then starts a new growth cycle. Natural hair around the transplanted area can shed temporarily too. I explain what is happening, and what you should and should not do, in this video.

Video: what shock loss is, when it starts and when regrowth begins.

Protecting the hair you already have

Transplanted hair is permanent, but the native hair around it can keep thinning. In my experience, when a result looks weaker years later, it is usually because surrounding hair continued to fall, not because the grafts failed. For many patients I recommend medical treatment alongside surgery. The day-to-day washing, sleeping and activity rules are in my patient guide.

A real result, month by month

In this case study I review the photos of a patient who received 4,400 grafts, from before surgery to nine months.

Video: 4,400-graft case study. Individual results vary.

Hair Transplant Risks and How They Are Reduced

A hair transplant is surgery, but under local anaesthesia and in a well-run clinic serious complications are uncommon. The side effects patients usually notice are temporary:

• Swelling of the forehead for two to four days
• Scabbing and redness in the recipient area
• Temporary numbness or tingling in the donor or recipient area
• Small pimple-like bumps (folliculitis) as new hairs push through
• Shock loss of transplanted and nearby native hair

Infection, poor growth and donor overharvesting are the risks that really matter, and they depend mostly on who is operating. When graft survival is measured in published studies under good conditions, most report roughly 85–95% of grafts surviving. Treat any clinic quoting a guaranteed figure above that with caution.

Hair Transplant in Turkey: Cost and Packages

Istanbul has become a world centre for hair restoration because surgeons here see a very high volume of international patients, and that experience builds quickly. Most of my patients travel from abroad, so each part of the decision has its own guide:

I operate at Smile Hair Clinic, which in 2025 became the first hair transplant clinic in the world to receive a TEMOS A-Rating for quality in outpatient care.

Beyond the Scalp: Facial Hair Transplants

The same FUE principles restore hair outside the scalp, with finer single-hair grafts and different angles. I perform beard transplants, moustache transplants, eyebrow transplants and sideburn transplantation.

Frequently Asked Questions About Hair Transplants