FUE hair transplants in the UK — what's realistic

The FUE (Follicular Unit Extraction) hair transplant market is the most price-fragmented in UK aesthetic medicine. The same procedure, on the same patient, can cost anywhere from £2,800 (Turkey day-trip) to £14,000 (Harley Street, with general anaesthesia).

What you actually pay for

• Surgeon time. The actual harvesting and implantation. A 2,500-graft FUE takes 6-9 hours of one surgeon's time, or a similar duration of a multi-technician team led by a surgeon. The skill ceiling on the implantation phase (especially the hairline) is high.
• Surgeon experience. Senior FUE surgeons in the UK charge £4-6/graft. Mid-range £2.50-4. Below £2 you're either overseas or being treated by a technician with light supervision.
• Pre-op planning. Trichoscopy, photography, density mapping, donor-zone audit. The good clinics spend an hour on this; the bad ones spend ten minutes.
• Aftercare. Wound care kit, follow-up at 3, 6 and 12 months. Many overseas clinics don't include this — you're back home managing scabs alone.

Turkey vs UK — the honest comparison

A £3,000 Turkey trip can produce excellent results when the clinic is genuinely surgeon-led, when the donor management is conservative, and when the technician team is experienced. Many do all three. Many don't. The dispersion of outcomes from Turkey clinics is far wider than from senior UK surgeons. If you go, the things to verify are the surgeon's credentials (not just the marketing of "Dr X" — the actual ISHRS membership and clinical track record), the technician-to-patient ratio on the day, and the donor density planning.

Verifying a UK surgeon

• GMC Specialist Register entry — usually under Plastic Surgery, occasionally Dermatology.
• ISHRS membership is the international body and means real continuing education in hair surgery specifically.
• British Association of Hair Restoration Surgery (BAHRS) is the UK voluntary body.
• Before-and-after work that includes the donor zone at 12+ months. A clinic that only shows recipient-zone photos is hiding the part that goes wrong most often.

What we'd want a friend to know

FUE results take 9-12 months to mature. Anyone selling you on "final results" at 4 months is overstating it. And the limit on how many transplants a single patient can have over a lifetime is set by donor capacity, not budget — a clinic that pushes you toward megasession FUE without first auditing your donor zone is making a decision you can't easily un-make later.