One senior doctor who specialises in corrective surgery has revealed how one British teen hopped on a plane without her parents knowing to get a botched boob job before getting it fixed back in the UK
A 15-year-old girl secretly got a boob job in Turkey and had to get the botched job fixed on the NHS when she returned to the UK, a top surgeon has claimed.
President of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) said an NHS colleague told him how a British teen was being treated after her secretive surgery hadn’t gone to plan. Dr Marc Pacifico, who runs his own private clinic, explained doctors he speaks to in the NHS are constantly having to treat patients who have had cheap procedures abroad botched.
He explained how many patients return from Turkey and use the NHS as a “safety net”, with the doc claiming they are “unfairly blocking beds”. The British Medical Association has also said that more and more Brits are either dying or needing emergency care back on home soil after heading abroad for cheap and cheerful surgery.
The growing numbers of people jetting to other countries for botched surgeries, such as hip and knee replacements, has led to a crisis fuelling delays, the union’s annual meeting heard last month. An audit from BAAPS in 2023 found 324 Britons needed medical treatment or corrective surgery after having surgery abroad since 2018, although it is expected the real figure is much higher.
The organisation has claimed the number has exponentially increased by a whopping 94 per cent in three years, despite docs warning people of the dangers that come with getting these foreign surgeries done. BAAPS has also estimated the average cost of treating a Brit returning from a botched job is around £15,000, costing the NHS around £4.8million in total since 2018.
Some of the people going under the knife abroad are doing so as they are not candidates for the surgery on home soil. Dr Pacifico told the Daily Mail: “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.”
Those classed as unsuitable candidates include people with certain medical conditions and pregnant women, as well as those under the age of 18. For those under 16 years old, it’s illegal to perform elective plastic surgery in the UK without consent from a parent or guardian.
Describing the case of the 15-year-old girl who went behind her parents’ back, 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.”
Dr Pacifico, who has his own private clinic in Tunbridge Wells, says clinics like his are having to pick up patients whose surgeries have gone wrong abroad.
BAAPS figures show that Turkey is the largest source of botched operations, although Dr Pacifico insisted not all surgeons abroad are cowboys of the trade. Just under 80 per cent of Brits who needed corrective surgery in 2022 were originally treated in foreign hotspots such as Istanbul and Ankara. BAAPS also says other hotspots include the Czech Republic and Lithuania.
