CLINIC CONTROLS

Our team of expert doctors who specialize in facial plastic surgery have inspected numerous clinics with the HT Consultants Executive Board, to ensure our patients have a safe and successful hair transplant. Their opinion has a major impact on the choice of the clinics.
Acceptable clinics - no major mistakes
12%
TOP clinics - we recommend this clinic
6%
When inspecting clinics in Istanbul, the first thing that shocked us is only 10% of clinics operate at the expected European standard. And amongst these, the numbers of excellent clinics is even smaller.
To be acceptable, a clinic must fill the hygienic standards, the anaesthesia technique and the surgeon has to participate to the graft extraction and the channels opening. The level of English has to be average in writing and speaking.
To be considered an excellent clinic, the clinic has to be patient centred, take time for the consultation and the surgery to benefit the patient and have long-term excellent results. The level of English has to be advanced in writing and speaking.

The purpose of explaining this clinic review process is to prove how thorough our research is, and how dedicated we are to ensuring the highest quality hair transplant for you. 

This reviews were written by HT Consultancy London expert surgeon. 

The name of the clinics and the personal have been hided for confidentiality reasons.

PROFESSIONALISM

TOP CLINIC

Staff were on time, courteous, respectful and welcoming to the clients and HT Consultants. Operating area separate to the remainder of the clinic, partitioned by two doors.

Clinic controls

NOT ACCEPTED CLINIC

As a HT Consultancy surgeon, I felt like the staff have not been trained in the etiquette of treating an awake patient having a local anaesthetic (as opposed to general anaesthetic where you are unconscious). For example, they would be leaning on the patient head neck and body as if it was a table. They were chatting away in Turkish all the time and rarely asked if the patient was ok. The patient asked for a glass of water after a few hours, but they did not bring him one. Very poor care indeed.

The patient was given a break after a few hours of surgery. After going to the toilet, he sat down to eat lunch when someone came in saying “you’ve got 3 mins to eat then we start again”. He did not feet like a respected patient but more like a prisoner being given orders.

LANGUAGES SPOKEN BY ALL STAFF

TOP CLINIC

The doctor and his team spoke English to a high standard, and their documents were also in English and easy to understand (including consent form).

Clinic controls

NOT ACCEPTED CLINIC

Staff doing graft extraction and insertion don’t speak English. The patient was told an English speaker would be present all times but this is not true. This is a big deal as there were times when the patient wanted them to stop or slow down when injecting the local anaesthetic (due to pain from their poor technique – see below). And other times when the patient wanted a drink of water or go to the toilet. All of these requests were ignored and the nurses continued to inject anaesthetic to the patient in a barbaric fashion. This inhumane standard of practice not be acceptable in Europe.

STERILITY

TOP CLINIC

All staff and patients wear shoe coverings to prevent dirt entering clinical area.

Staff wear surgical gown, mask, sterile gloves.

Antiseptic used to clean donor and recipient area.

Clinic controls

NOT ACCEPTED CLINIC

Lack of sterility. The head of the patient was not properly cleaned at the beginning of the procedure. Usually an antiseptic should be used, but they just gave it a quick wipe with an alcohol wipe (which is not enough to clean the area and a poor standard of practice). The nurses would frequently touch non sterile objects and then touch the head of the patient and the grafts again which increased the risk of infection and graft failure. I didn’t see the nurses wash their hands once. They just used sterile gloves. This is an infection waiting to happen. And if your grafted hair gets infected it will not grow and will scar poorly.

 

PRE-OPERATIVE CONSULTATION

TOP CLINIC

Patient centred consultation with an honest conversation of what is realistically achievable in terms of quantity and the quality of the client’s donor hair versus what they wish to achieve. The concerns of the client are clearly addressed. Our surgeons are experienced and reassuring communicators.

Clinic controls

NOT ACCEPTED CLINIC

The patient only met the doctor for a few minutes before the operation. After the first greeting words, the first contact was to fill out a consent form which was not understandable at all. The doctor asked the patient to sign 5 minutes after receiving the consent form, which is not acceptable. The patient did not have choice in what he proposed. The doctor did not listen to the patient concerns or wishes. The patient said that the doctor did not stick to the plan agreed on over the phone.

OPERATION TECHNIQUE

TOP CLINIC

Modern operating equipment is used.

Use of motor hair extraction device.

0.7-0.9mm knife for hair extraction.

Use of magnifying glasses (loupes) to extract donor hair and insert into channels.

Doctors Role:

Consultation with patient before operation, extracts the hair, creates the channels in the direction of hair growth to give a natural result, local anaesthetic injection of recipient area

Role of technical assistants:

Local anaesthetic of donor area – this technique had to be revised to ensure only pain on first injection. After revision of the technique the clients were no longer in pain.

Insertion of hair into channels

Washing hair and bandages (1 day after surgery)

Clinic controls

NOT ACCEPTED CLINIC

Problem #1 – False marketing: the doctor did not do any of the procedure – completely done by technicians who do not have a medical degree despite being told beforehand that doctor would be present for the whole procedure and do it in with the assistance of his team. 

Problem #2 – Unnecessary painful due to poor technique: Poor technique for infiltration of local anaesthetic made the procedure unnecessarily extremely painful. Instead of inserting needle through already numb (anaesthetised) area they come from opposite direction. In addition, they go very fast and stab the patient as if throwing darts. This goes against all medical teaching, which explains in order to minimise pain, local anaesthetic should be injected through the smallest needle, slowly, and one should use already numb areas to insert the needle. Hence only the first injection hurts and the rest are painless.

Problem #3: No magnifying glasses to help graft placement: The clinic personal did not use magnifying glasses (Loupes) despite being told these would be used beforehand. Also on examining the hair of the patient afterwards, it was clear they had inserted grafts through already existing hair and previously implanted hair, instead they should have gone around these. This will result in damage and possible death of existing healthy hair.

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