A young French man has killed himself after his beard transplant in Turkey was scuttled by an estate agent posing as a surgeon.
According to Mail Online, Mathieu Vigier Latour travelled to Istanbul in March for the transplant, which cost him €1,300. But the treatment saw him lose 1,000 grafts of hair, while having 4,000 transferred from his head to his face.
Following the operation, the business student’s beard was left irregularly shaped, growing at an unnatural angle and ‘hedgehog’ like, his heartbroken father said.
In addition, Latour, 24, suffered burns after the procedure and was having trouble sleeping due to the discomfort.
He later discovered that the man who performed his transplant was not in fact a qualified surgeon, but an estate agent, the Telegraph reported.
As a result of his botched operation, Latour fell into a ‘vicious cycle’ and suffered from dysmorphic disorder, a condition in which people obsess about defects in their appearance.
A Belgium specialist who was attempting to correct the procedure said his scalp would never recover in the patch where the grafts had been lost.
He ended up taking his own life three months after going to Turkey for the transplant.
Latour’s father is now campaigning to improve awareness about the risks of seemingly inexpensive health tourism.
He said it would be ‘a tribute to Mathieu’ if his son’s shocking experience could help prevent similar tragedies from happening again.
