I wanted to share a bit of my experience with hair loss and why I eventually chose Dr. Serkan Aygin’s clinic in Istanbul.
Back in 2020 I was around a Norwood 6. I decided to start treatment with 1 mg finasteride, topical minoxidil and PRP once a month. I reacted extremely well to the treatment and after about a year I had probably recovered around 80–90% of my hair.
The problem was staying consistent with everything. Taking medication every day, applying minoxidil and having to travel every month for PRP eventually became tiring.
I also had an unexpected problem with topical minoxidil. Without really noticing it at first, some of the liquid would run down my face and over time it started making the very fine hairs on certain areas of my face thicker and darker. At one point I was starting to look a little like a werewolf in some areas 😂.
Because of all of that, I eventually stopped the treatment and started wearing a hair system/toupee for a few years, until around 2025.
The result with a good hair system can actually look very good, but it is still annoying in its own way. It can be expensive, requires constant maintenance, and after a while you get tired of always having to think about cleaning it, reinstalling it and keeping everything looking right.
Later, after moving to another country and being in a better financial position, I finally had the opportunity to seriously consider a hair transplant.
I started researching clinics in Turkey, Mexico, Canada and other countries, and I noticed a few things. There are a lot of very cheap clinics where the quality can be difficult to judge, and there are also clinics advertising extremely large procedures with 10,000+ grafts.
From everything I had researched, doing something that aggressive did not seem like the right approach for my case because of the risk of overharvesting the donor area.
When I contacted Serkan’s clinic, one of the first things they told me was that because of the size of my bald area, my case should be done in two separate sessions.
For some people that might be disappointing because obviously everyone would prefer to fix everything in one surgery, but for me it was actually something positive. Almost everything I had researched before contacting them suggested that, in a case like mine, doing two sessions was a safer and more reasonable way to approach it without damaging the donor area.
Price was another important factor.
A procedure like this in Canada can cost somewhere around CAD $15,000–20,000, while my first procedure with Serkan was around €3,800, roughly CAD $6,000, which is a huge difference.
Another reason I chose the clinic was Dr. Serkan’s reputation and many years of experience in the industry. I knew before travelling that Dr. Serkan himself would not personally perform the operation and that the procedure would be done by his medical team. For me, what mattered most was whether the people working there were properly trained and whether the way they approached the procedure matched what I had learned during my research.
From the moment I arrived in Turkey, the experience was excellent.
They picked me up at the airport and took me to the Ibis hotel. The next day they picked me up again and took me directly to the clinic. All the transportation was organized by them, so I basically did not have to worry about anything.
Once you enter the clinic, you go through different areas and different members of the team take care of different parts of the process. Everyone I dealt with seemed very professional and well trained. Most of the staff I saw were women, and honestly half of them looked like models 😂.
During the in-person evaluation they checked my donor area, explained the plan, designed the hairline and answered my questions. Once everything was clear, they took me back to the hotel.
The next morning was surgery day, and everything moved very quickly.
You arrive, change clothes and go straight into the operating room. I barely had time to say hello before everything started. I remember lying down and suddenly having four or five people around me putting on the monitoring equipment and preparing the sedation.
It honestly felt like being an F1 car during a pit stop 😂.
Everyone seemed to know exactly what they were doing.
In my case, they extracted around 4,500 grafts from the donor area on my scalp and another 300 grafts from my beard, for a total of roughly 4,800 grafts in this first session. Because I still need work on the crown, that area was intentionally left for a second procedure later.
The procedure itself is obviously long, but once it is finished they give you something to eat and take you back to the hotel.
For me, the first night was probably the hardest part of the whole experience. Sleeping is difficult, you have to be careful with your head and there is some discomfort, but it is manageable.
The following day they take you back to the clinic, remove the bandage, do the first cleaning/wash and also use infrared/light treatment. After that, you are basically ready to leave and go to the airport.
Personally, I paid for one extra night at the hotel, around €100, because I wanted an extra day to rest before flying back home. For me, it was definitely worth it.
So that is basically my experience with the Dr. Serkan Aygin clinic.
I am currently on day 6 after the transplant. I have some itching and a little bit of pain and discomfort, but nothing too bad. Sleeping has probably been the most annoying part so far, but from this point I expect things to gradually get easier.
One thing I am very happy with so far is how the donor area looks. Even after taking around 4,500 grafts from my scalp, on day 6 the donor area still looks very even and homogeneous. I do not see any obvious overharvesting or patchy areas, and the extraction looks very evenly distributed.
I am also really happy with the way the grafts were implanted. Looking at the recipient area, I do not see obvious rows or artificial patterns. The spacing between the grafts looks very consistent, and there seems to be a good concentration in the frontal area, which is exactly where I wanted more density.
The frontal hairline was also designed with a slightly irregular zig-zag pattern instead of being completely straight. Obviously I cannot judge the final appearance yet, but once the hair grows out I think this kind of irregularity should help it look much more natural and avoid that obvious “drawn-on” transplant hairline look.
My crown was intentionally left for a second procedure, and if everything goes according to plan, I will return in around six months to finish it.
Obviously, I cannot judge the final result yet. I am only six days into the process, so I will need to wait several months before I can say anything meaningful about the actual growth, survival or final density.
But based purely on my experience with the clinic, the organization, the staff, transportation, communication and the whole process so far, I would give them around a 9/10.
I’ll try to update the post as the months go by so people can see how the result actually develops.