Turkish hair transplant business reaches $1 billion: Report

ISTANBUL

Photo Credit: Emanuele Satolli

The hair transplant business in Turkey has reached $1 billion, with Istanbul as the most popular destination for those want a new head of hair, Wired magazine has reported.

Photographer Emanuele Satolli has studied the large hair transplant business in four clinics around Istanbul, which houses a total of 350 clinics where 5,000 patients, mostly from the Gulf countries, arrive to get hair transplants each month.

“When I realized that Turkey was the top country in the world for hair transplants and most of the patients arrive from Arab countries, I wanted to go deeper and meet these people to understand why so many really care about their physical appearance and in particular their baldness,” Satolli said.

According to the report, the transplant process, officially called the follicular unit extraction method, costs between $1,700 and $2,000, almost 10 times cheaper than any U.S. counterparts, an alluring factor for patients. The operation includes inserting around 4,000 hair follicles, taken from the back of the head, on a bald or balding area.

In addition, the more patients are satisfied, the more frequently they return for multiple operations if their bald areas are too large for single session, the report said.