A 24-year-old French student ended his life three months after discovering his failed $1,500 beard transplant in Istanbul, Turkey, was performed by a real estate agent posing as a surgeon.
Mathieu Vigier Latour traveled to Istanbul in March 2024 for the procedure, which cost approximately one-fifth of what he would have paid in France. During the operation, the practitioner lost 1,000 of the 4,000 hair grafts transferred from the back of Latour’s head to his face.
According to his father, the botched procedure left Mathieu with a beard resembling a hedgehog—irregular and completely unmanageable, with hair growing at unnatural angles. Additionally, parts of Mathieu’s scalp were permanently damaged from the poorly extracted grafts, making recovery impossible.
The business student experienced severe pain, burns, and difficulty sleeping due to the complications. After performing some research, Latour discovered the person who performed the procedure was not a medical professional but a real estate agent who had falsely presented himself as a qualified surgeon.
Medical experts note that beard hair transplantation typically has an 80-95% success rate when performed by qualified professionals. The procedure requires careful extraction of individual hair grafts from the scalp using a technique called Follicular Unit Excision (FUE).
Despite having the Turkish Health Ministry’s stamp of approval, the clinic’s procedure left Latour with permanent damage. The family sought help from a specialist in Belgium, but they were informed that his scalp would never recover in the areas where the grafts had been poorly extracted, leaving him with a permanent bald spot.
As a result of the botched procedure, Latour fell into a vicious cycle and suffered from body dysmorphic disorder.
Body dysmorphic disorder is a mental health condition where individuals become obsessed with perceived defects in their appearance. Research indicates that individuals with this condition often experience increased distress following cosmetic procedures, with only 2-25% showing long-term improvement in their appearance concerns.
The physical complications led Latour to develop severe post-traumatic shock. Three months after the initial operation, on June 9, 2024, he took his life in his student accommodation in Paris, France.
On October 27, 2024, Mathieu Vigier Latour’s father launched an awareness campaign to prevent similar tragedies by emphasizing the dangers of low-cost medical tourism. The campaign aims to warn potential patients about the risks of undergoing cosmetic procedures performed by unqualified practitioners.
Latour’s father hopes to shed light on the unsafe practices that led to his son’s death, advocating for stricter regulations and oversight in the medical tourism industry. This effort underscores the urgent need for increased safety measures and public awareness to ensure patients seek treatments from properly accredited professionals.