Medical tourism, hair restoration edition

While I would not want to be a bald woman, I’m pretty darned fond of bald men.

Not only am I married to one, I am also the daughter of a bald man. And the sister of two more.

I like bald guys.

I think they’re pretty darned cute.

But I understand that there are men for whom bald is not beautiful. And plenty of women who feel the same way.

And given how gruesome comb-overs are, especially if they get caught in a windstorm and go spiraling out of control, and how dead-muskrat so many male hairpieces are, I can understand why some men might get drawn into the pursuit of the hirsute.

Certainly, all the ads for baldness treatment on TV (which are second only in persistence to those for male, ah, enhancements, including the newer one I’ve been seeing for the underarm roll-on testosterone booster) indicate that there’s plenty of interest in mo’ better hair out there. (For all the hair restoration ads that there are out there, I will say that I miss the Hair Club for Men ads of yore, especially given that, years ago, I actually sat in the table next to the one where Sy Sperling – “I’m not just the president, I’m also a client” of Hair Club for men was dining. Sy, by the way, was a  model of restraint, He resisted the urge to lean over and hand my husband one of his cards.)

Still, I hadn’t thought of hair restoration as part of the medical tourism industry.

Apparently in Turkey it is.

In 2012, roughly 270,000 of the 31.7 million tourists who visited Turkey came for medical treatment, pumping $1 billion into the economy. Many come for cosmetic therapies, including rhinoplasty, liposuction, and thermal spas, but according to those in the medical tourism industry, the real money is in hair…

The Istanbul Hair Center reports they treat 70 to 80 medical tourists every month—nearly twice as many patients as they saw last summer. (Source: Business Week.)

Admittedly, 270,000 medical out of 31.7 million overall tourists does not set off big flashing GET YOUR TREATMENT HERE signs in my mind’s eye. And I wouldn’t lump thermal spas in to the medical tourism mix, either. (Mud baths? Seriously, folks.) Still, I wouldn’t have imagined that Turkey would be a medical tourism destination at all. (Personally, I can’t imagine any country, other than the good old U.S. of A. as a mecca for medical tourists, but that’s just my inner jingoist USA! USA! chanter coming out.)  Customers are drawn to Turkey  from Europe and the Middle East, and tourism is largely boosted by word of mouth – one satisfied customers/patient at a time.

Hair restoration, by the way, is quite a big deal: a lot more complex, painful, and dangerous than any comb-over, hair weave, or scalp-painting job.

Typically, men come for four days to one week. The first day their scalp is analyzed and a graft spot is chosen, usually from the back of the head, where many balding men retain hair. Other options include chest and shoulder hair. The next day they head to the operating room—the procedure can last eight to 10 hours, with about 7,500 root implants. After that comes postoperative care. The following day, patients can fly home. Full results are expected six months after the operation.

And it’s not just the hair on your head that they’ll do for you. They’ll also give a man hair on his chinny-chin-chin.

The Istanbul Hair Center was one of the outfits mentioned in the BW article.

Fortunately, their website (partially)  translates into English (and Arabic, if you’re a bit more adventurous). Thus we learn that they are an “expert institution,” providing “treatment in fully equipped hospitals with expert staff under sterilized and safe conditions” using “scientific methods.”

Somehow, this doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in me, but maybe something is lost in translation.

They use something called the “FUE method” which, again, would not raise my comfort level to that which be achieved by a method that didn’t start with the letters “FU”.

FUE method which can not be fully applied in many countries around the world, is applied by us perfectly through our own experience.

FUE stands for “Follicular Unit Extraction,” and, despite that “can not be fully applied” warning, has been around for a while and is the “industry standard.”

So, unless you’ve always wanted to see the Blue Mosque, there’s no reason to trek to Turkey for it.

Anyway, hair restoration tourism in Turkey: it’s amazing what you find in the news when you’re just grazing around.