Letter from Dr Ilter
Letter from Dr. Demir Ilter
about Ilter Center and training in the FUE Ilter Method.
Dear colleagues,
Welcome to the Ilter Center!
My name is Dr Demir Ilter and I am the founder and chief surgeon at the Ilter Clinic. I consider myself lucky enough to work in an area of medicine that is both exciting, challenging and at the cutting edge of its field. I am thrilled to have found my medical calling in life, working with advanced microsurgery to dramatically improve the lives of hundreds of clients every year.
This letter aims to share how the idea for our new FUE training unit came about, explaining why we have begun to offer instruction in FUE, the kind of doctors and surgeons the center is looking for, the skills you will learn and the benefits of training with us.
I founded the Ilter Clinic in 2003 and spent the first few years building my practice while swimming against the flow, challenging industry norms and trying to convince my peers that FUE was the immediate future of hair transplant surgery. At the time, methods such as FUT/STRIP were practiced almost exclusively at other clinics, and the levels of service they offered patients were practically nonexistent compared to other areas of cosmetic surgery. Through hard work and my dedication towards advancing the method, we are now an authority in FUE and patient care, and the only practice in the world to offer clients FUE IM – the most advanced FUE procedure using the smallest microsurgical tools in the market.
Despite our success, we have come to a point where there are simply more patients in need of quality FUE hair transplantations than there are gifted surgeons available to help them. The number of men and women undergoing aesthetic surgery is increasing year-by-year, and the social taboos associated with hair transplant surgery are rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
As the Ilter Clinic proudly believes in its strong sense of social responsibility, we have taken the bold step to open our doors and teach doctors how to become the best FUE surgeons in the business. Instead of narrow-mindedly viewing peers as future competitors, I believe that shaping the next generation of FUE practitioners will help raise the overall level of quality in the industry. Indeed, by helping to create gifted, modern surgeons who push the boundaries of FUE forward, it is my hope that older, obsolete hair transplantation methods will finally be confined to the history books where they belong.
The road to the Ilter Clinic
As with everything in life, the path to your destiny is not always a straight line. I started my medical career as a plastic surgery resident at the world famous Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm. Here I learned about proportion and the rules of harmony that would serve me well throughout my career. However as I gained experience, I became more interested in the lives at the other end of the scalpel. One night I experienced a crash team saving a patient who was coding. The moment was so powerful that I knew I needed to have a greater impact on my patients’ lives, so I switched my specialty to cardiovascular surgery.
Ironically, it was this career change that set the next one in motion! At the end of the 1990s, a colleague in my new department had undergone a badly performed hair transplant, and as he was aware of my background in reconstructive surgery, he asked me for advice. As a favor to my friend, I began to research the area in detail. And the more I dug, the more I found what was needlessly wrong with reconstructive hair surgery.
At that time, the needs of the hair transplant clinic and the surgeon came first and the patient a distant second. Hidden among all the horror stories and medieval methods such as scalp reduction, I also found a little-known method called FUE that was relatively painless, required no downtime, left no visible scars and gave great, natural-looking results. It was as plain as day that this procedure was the future. Yet contemporary surgeons persisted with invasive methods that put the patient under extreme stress and risk for relatively mediocre results.
As I mentioned above, the main problem is that the industry has traditionally been a surgeon-driven field. Clinics chose not to practice FUE as it was far more complicated to perform, put a great deal of strain on surgeons and their surgical teams and demanded a much greater level of skill and dedication. Money was also a key issue, as clinics could perform three or four FUT/STRIP surgeries simultaneously in the time it took to perform a single FUE procedure. Plainly speaking, surgeons did not see the value in, or indeed, could not be bothered with the slow arduous workload that required good eye-hand coordination, familiarity with microsurgery and a great deal of patience.
But where these surgeons saw hardship, I saw opportunity. The deeper I looked into FUE, the more I saw the opportunity to create a market while helping patients receive the best possible care and results.
Seven years later the Ilter Clinic is a flourishing business. We have established a beautiful practice in a serene villa overlooking the Stockholm archipelago, and every week we welcome clients from all around the world and every walk of life. Aside from our impressive market share, the best return on our investment has been the dramatic effect we have on the individuals we help. While hair transplant surgery may not save lives in the classic sense of the term, we do help give our patients their lives back. When they first meet us for a consultation, many of the people we meet are socially withdrawn, hide under hats and baseball caps and have suffered a serious loss of confidence due to their hair loss.
FUE gives them a lifeline, a way to remedy the one thing they would change most about themselves if they had just one wish. Seeing this transformation over the course of a year is incredibly rewarding to everyone involved.
Shaping the next generation of FUE artists
So why FUE and why train at the Ilter Center? Firstly, we will give you the necessary tools to create an exciting career where you will make an enormous difference on your patients’ lives. Compared to other surgical areas, the work of a hair transplant surgeon is a modern medical career with tangible benefits such as not having to work nights, endure next to no administration, bureaucracy and paperwork, plus you will no longer be on call and a slave to your beeper!
The medical professionals we are looking to train fall into two groups: Young doctors or medical students who want to build a surgical practice a decade faster than if they were to follow traditional paths; And experienced and gifted doctors who are looking for a change or want to have more control over their careers. We offer stringent training as a way into a booming industry with few barriers to entry.
The Ilter Center in Stockholm is an international environment like many other prestigious medical training facilities. Where the Ilter Center differs from the rest is we teach future surgeons the necessary microsurgical skills together with the business know-how needed to get their clinics up and running. Only when these two different, yet interlinking skill sets are learned can you dramatically improve the chances of your practice becoming a success.
Over the years, we have accumulated a great deal of knowledge about running a successful business. The Ilter Center opens its doors to you, offering complete transparency to help you plan your own practice. After all, an estimated 80 percent of hair restoration clinics fail in the first year. Of the remaining 20 percent, only half of them survive the third year. With our help, you will avoid the classic pitfalls and greatly improve your chances of building a successful and highly profitable practice. (To read more about this assistance, please read Ilter Alliance and Support Structure)
Among other learning areas, the training curriculum will cover:
- Service master class: How to treat patients as a person, not just a body
- Attaining higher levels of efficiency
- The perfect hairline: Creative hair design
- Surgical team dynamics: Attracting and retaining top talent
- Medical ethics
- Business issues
In addition to training, you will also receive my ongoing personal support, professional advice and guidance. I will act as a mentor for you as long as you feel necessary.
For students with the ability and skills to push FUE learning to the most advanced level, we also offer courses in the FUE Ilter Method (IM). FUE IM focuses on collaboration and communication with the patient, and goes far beyond surgical skills. The method calls for close co-operation and harmonization between the surgeon, the surgical team and the patient, drawing on behavioral science, microsurgery, aesthetics and dexterity. Needless to say, it cannot be taught to surgeons before they have learned the basics, which is why we are thinking of offering it to a specially accomplished set of trainees in the future.
Now I have explained who we are and what we offer, the Ilter Clinic would love to hear from you. If you are looking for a medical career that is as challenging as it is rewarding, the Ilter Center is accepting applications for its first class of 2010. If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact me so we can discuss your move into FUE hair restoration in greater detail.
Kind regards,
Dr Demir Ilter
