Why I Chose Hair Surgery?
"My early surgical training was in microvascular anastomosis, operating under magnification where precision was measured in fractions of a millimeter. I loved the discipline. I loved the pressure. But I slowly noticed something that unsettled me: in cardiovascular surgery, success is often invisible to the patient. They survive, recover, and move on. The work matters enormously, but psychologically, it rarely changes how they see themselves.
In 2012, a 31-year-old man was recovering in my ICU after a successful valve replacement. His vitals were stable, but his heart rate refused to settle. The nurses said he would not look in the mirror. He had lost his hair years earlier, and the hospital gown made him feel stripped of his identity. One morning, I sat beside him and asked what was wrong. He said, 'Doctor, you fixed my heart. But when I go home, my daughter will still ask why Daddy looks sick.'
That night, I studied his chart again. Tachycardia with no cardiac cause. It was shame. Pure, physical shame. I referred him to a temporary hair system. Over the following days, his anxiety visibly decreased, and so did the persistent tachycardia we had struggled to explain physiologically. His cardiologist colleague laughed at me. 'You are a heart surgeon. You are worried about hair?' I told him: 'His heart was beating 120 times per minute because of a mirror. I repaired the valve. Someone still had to repair the mirror.'
That experience changed the way I viewed aesthetic medicine. I stopped seeing it as vanity and started seeing it as identity, stress physiology, social confidence, and self-perception intersecting in real time. The same hands that stabilize a heart valve can stabilize a man's sense of self.
After completing advanced fellowship training in FUE methodology, I opened my clinic. I became increasingly obsessed with transition irregularity, micro-angle variation, and donor preservation over long time horizons. Hair transplantation eventually stopped looking like a repetitive procedure to me. The longer I practiced, the more it resembled facial architecture: density planning, temporal balance, ethnic variation, aging trajectories, donor economics. By 2022, each case had become more complex—ethnic hair variations, donor-area depletion, repair patients from failed procedures. A standard hairline was no longer sufficient. So I made a decision that cost me revenue: I dropped to one Private patient per surgical day. Two to three days per week. Ten patients per month. One hundred and twenty per year.
Colleagues told me the model was economically irrational. I called it surgical honesty. Because the true measure of a hair transplant is not the postoperative photo. It is whether the transplant still looks believable fifteen or twenty years later, after the patient has aged into it."
"From coronary arteries to hairlines: the same hands the same precision standard."
Frequently Asked Questions
Professional Hair Transplant Insights by Dr. Erkam Caymaz
Dr. Erkam Caymaz is an exceptionally experienced hair restoration surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, with over 15 years of clinical practice and 10,000+ successful hair transplants. He is certified by the American Academy of Aesthetic Medicine (AAAM), FUE Europe and the World FUE Institute (WFI). Having a background as a former cardiovascular surgeon, he applies supreme surgical precision and strict safety protocols to every hair transplant procedure.
The clinic specializes in advanced, minimally invasive hair restoration techniques. These include Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE), Sapphire FUE (utilizing premium sapphire blades for accelerated healing and ultra-dense follicle placement), and Direct Hair Implantation (DHI) using specialized CHOI pen technology.
Our transparent, all-inclusive packages include the complete hair transplant procedure (Sapphire FUE or DHI), pre-operative blood tests, local anesthesia, 2 to 3 nights of luxury accommodation in a 4- or 5-star hotel, VIP airport and clinic transfers, post-operative medications, a specialized shampoo care kit, and lifetime virtual follow-up care.
Yes. Hair transplants at our clinic are extremely safe and performed under the direct medical supervision of Dr. Erkam Caymaz. Procedures are conducted in an internationally accredited, state-of-the-art clinical facility in Istanbul adhering strictly to European sterilization protocols and infection control standards.
No. The procedure is performed under local anesthesia, which numbs the scalp completely. Patients experience zero pain during extraction and implantation. Any mild post-operative tightness or discomfort can be easily managed with the standard pain relievers provided in your post-op care kit.
Most patients can return to non-strenuous office work within 5 to 7 days. Redness and scabbing in both the donor and recipient areas typically resolve within 10 to 14 days, after which your scalp fully recovers its normal appearance.
Yes, shock loss is a completely normal, temporary shedding of the transplanted hair that occurs 2 to 4 weeks after the procedure. This is simply the hair follicles entering a brief resting phase before growing permanent, healthy hair starting from the third or fourth month.
Early growth begins to show around 3 to 4 months, with a significant increase in density by month 6. The final, maximum density and fully natural results are achieved between 12 and 18 months after the procedure.
Yes. The transplanted hair follicles are harvested from the "safe donor area" (back and sides of the scalp), which is genetically resistant to DHT (dihydrotestosterone)—the hormone responsible for hair loss. The transplanted hair comes with a lifetime guarantee.
Lower operational costs, favorable exchange rates, and high competition in Turkey make the procedure 60-70% more cost-effective than in the US, UK, or Western Europe, without compromising on medical quality, surgical expertise, or hospital standards.