A Glasgow man says his life has been devastated by a botched hair transplant that left him with permanent scarring and unable to work.
Mark Sweeney, 57, underwent the £3,500 procedure at Merchant City Medical Center in hopes of restoring his hair. Instead, he claims it left him with severe scarring on his forehead and a bald patch on the side of his head where grafts were removed.
“I’m bald where they took the hair and scarred at the front,” Sweeney told The Record. “They’ve ruined my life, absolutely ruined and destroyed it, and I can’t do anything about it.”
Sweeney said he left his job as a waiter at Glasgow’s Buttery restaurant because he could no longer face the public. He now suffers from anxiety and depression, and is on medication prescribed by his doctor.
The surgery, he says, left him with an uneven hairline—lower on one side—and painful ridges from overly deep grafts. He tries to conceal the damage by growing his hair long at the front and shaving the hairline. “What middle-aged man wants a low fringe?” he asked.
Sweeney says the procedure was carried out by a Romanian man assisted by technicians he believes were from Pakistan. He claims they struggled to communicate with each other and with him due to language barriers. “They told me they had to speak in their own language because they didn’t speak good English and had only been in the country a couple of weeks,” he said.
Merchant City Medical promotes its services online as offering hair transplants, scalp pigmentation, and other cosmetic treatments. However, Sweeney warned that problems can occur even when procedures are done in the UK. “It’s like a horror story from Turkey,” he said.
Since the operation, Sweeney says he wears a hat constantly and avoids social interaction. He is now saving money to seek corrective surgery at a specialist clinic in the United States. “Surgeons there said it’s the worst they’ve ever seen,” he added.
Paul Mulholland, CEO of Merchant City Medical, confirmed Sweeney had been a patient but said he was recently told to leave the clinic when he showed up unannounced.
