A 15-year-old girl who went behind her parents’ back to get a boob job in Turkey had to get it fixed on the NHS when she got home, a top surgeon has revealed, in just one of many overseas surgery horror stories.
Dr Marc Pacifico, president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS), said an NHS colleague told him about having to treat the teenager whose surgery had not gone to plan.
The plastic surgeon, who runs a private clinic, said doctors he speaks to in the public sector are constantly treating patients who have tried to get procedures done cheaply overseas, but have ended up botched.
‘Every time I speak to colleagues they have at least one patient on their wards with complications from surgery overseas,’ he said, adding that the issue has ‘massively’ worsened in recent years.
He said that many patients who come back from Turkey use the NHS as a ‘safety net’ and are ‘unfairly blocking beds’ – with the taxpayer forced to pick up the bill, which has run into millions of pounds over recent years.
Dr Marc Pacifico, president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS), told MailOnline that an NHS colleague told him about having to treat the teenager whose surgery had not gone to plan
There has been a ‘boom’ in surgical tourism in recent years, with the British Medical Association saying that more and more Britons are dying or requiring emergency care in the UK after jetting abroad for cut-price obesity surgery.
The crisis is fuelling delays for routine care, such as hip and knee replacements, because these health tourists are increasingly occupying NHS beds, the union’s annual meeting heard last month.
An audit by BAAPS last year found 324 Brits have needed medical treatment or corrective surgery after having gone under the knife overseas since 2018, though the real figure is expected to be far higher.
This figure has surged 94 per cent in three years, the organisation claimed, despite doctors repeatedly warning of the dangers of getting surgery at often unregulated clinics overseas.
Doctors have shared stories of Turkish surgeries leaving patients with life-threatening infections, implants bursting through the skin and blood clots, among other issues.
BAAPS has put the average cost to the health service of treating a Brit with issues such as these at about £15,000, with the total bill since 2018 at about £4.8million.
This represents the cost of resources like medication and dressings, as well as the time surgeons and other NHS staff must spend on such cases.
While the £15,000 figure is an average, surgeons have previously told this website more serious cases can cost upwards of £100,000 to the taxpayer.
‘Because of the fact that it is so much cheaper to go abroad people are willing to play Russian roulette and take that chance,’ Dr Pacifico said.
‘That’s combined with the mindset that “it won’t happen to me, I’ll be alright” and unfortunately it does happen to some people and they are not alright
‘It’s a psychological insurance policy, a lot of people are going out having the NHS as a safety net in case things go wrong.’
‘I have heard many worrying and disturbing stories about how patients are being looked after in a way that is not acceptable.
‘Patients have had stitches put into them without anaesthetic in their hotel rooms.
‘People have been told to go back to to England to get the NHS to look after them.
An audit by BAAPS last year found 324 Brits have needed medical treatment or corrective surgery after having gone under the knife overseas since 2018, though the real figure is expected to be far higher (stock image)
‘People who were never candidates for surgery in the UK and are being turned away from it are having operations abroad and coming back to the UK with complications.’
Unsuitable candidates include people with certain medical conditions, pregnant women, as well as young people under 18, who need to meet strict criteria to have aesthetic procedures under UK rules.
For under 16s, it is illegal to perform elective plastic surgery on in the UK without written consent from a parent or guardian.
Describing one case that stuck with him, Dr Pacifico said: ‘I was told by one colleague about a patient requesting amendments to their breast augmentation, a boob lift, that didn’t go as planned.
‘Now that doesn’t sound out of the ordinary, but when I tell you that the patient was 15-years-old and had gone out to Turkey without their parents knowing, now that is just shocking.’
In summary, he said, the ‘three big failures’ at Turkish clinics ‘are that inappropriate candidates are having surgery, the technical execution of surgeries, and huge concerns about the management and care given to people who have had surgery.’
‘The correct recourse, the moral and ethical responsibility are with the people that carried out the surgery, but people are unlikely to get back on a plane to Turkey.’
Dr Pacifico said that unlike patients who get elective surgeries done privately in the UK, who can then get support at private clinics, those coming back from Turkey with complications go straight to the NHS.
‘If a patient had a tummy tuck at a UK clinic and had problems with a wound infection, that would all be done in the private sector here,’ he said.
‘But if someone comes off the plane from Turkey with the same problem they will be treated on the NHS at taxpayers’ expense… They are unfairly blocking a bed in my opinion.’
Dr Pacifico said private clinics, like his own in Tunbridge Wells, are also having to pick up the pieces when patients’ surgery abroad goes wrong.
‘I had one patient who lost half of each breast, which I had to reconstruct, following a breast augmentation procedure,’ he said.
‘Another had to repeatedly come back to have drainage of fluid build up from areas of liposuction that had been done so aggressively drained that they also got burns and damage.
‘It was as if they were burned from the inside out.’
BAAPS has put the average cost to the health service of treating a Brit with issues such as these at about £15,000, with the total bill since 2018 at about £4.8million (stock image)
He caveated his warnings over foreign surgeries by pointing out that not every surgeon in Turkey, or any other health tourism hotspot is bad.
‘There are some fantastic surgeons in every country, there are bad and unscrupulous in the UK,’ he said.
‘But top surgeons in Turkey are not involved in cosmetic tourism at all,’ he said, adding that high-standard plastic surgeons there have comparable prices to UK doctors.
Social media also plays a big part in tempting Brits overseas, Dr Pacifico said, with young people in particular wanting to look like celebrities they follow online and watch on TV.
‘It’s the misleading claims that are the main issue – the undisclosed roles of influencers who are either given free surgery to promote a particular clinic,’ he said.
He added that he had heard worrying stories about patients ‘not being given their fit to fly certificates unless they write a five-star review’ for the clinic, as well as ‘threats being made to patients who give a one-star review.’
He warned that while people may be tempted by the lower prices they can get abroad for popular procedures like BBLs, boob jobs and tummy tucks, ‘it’s a false economy, because while the surgery is cheaper it ends up being a massive cost to them and to their health.’
The NHS is obliged to treat acute medical situations, with people coming back from abroad often requiring urgent care.
One way to tackle this and deter people from going in the first place, Dr Pacifico suggests, is to make cosmetic tourism insurance compulsory, in order to either reimburse the NHS or get private care funded.
Turkey was the largest source of botched ops, BAAPS figures suggested. Almost 80 per cent of Brits who needed corrective ops in 2022 were treated originally in surgical tourism hubs like Istanbul and Ankara.
Other big surgical destinations for Brits included the Czech Republic and Lithuania, according to BAAPS.
