Women who went abroad for ‘bargain’ vanity ops – and paid a terrible price
From leaking breast implants to wrongly fitted gastric bands . . .
EVER since her teenage days, a single dream had dominated Claire Rigley’s thoughts — to have surgery on her breasts. ‘They were huge — 40FF — but shapeless,’ says Claire, an office manager who lives with husband Robert and their three children in Nottingham. ‘There was never any fullness, just fat, so they sagged. When I lost weight in 2008, they were even droopier.
‘I looked into surgery and I realised I needed two operations — not only an uplift, but implants for improved shape — but in the UK, the price was £5,000.’
So, like a growing number of Britons, Claire, 30, began to consider surgery abroad. ‘Looking online, I found a clinic in Prague which would do it within two weeks for £3,500, including flights and accommodation,’ she says. ‘When I got in touch and sent them some pictures, they said they could fit me in within two weeks.’
It was a decision Claire deeply regrets. Days after coming home, she was rushed to hospital after her implants became badly infected and began to leak.
Unable to get a response from the clinic in Prague, let alone corrective treatment, her breasts were left disfigured and her self-esteem in tatters.
And her tale is far from an isolated incident. As the market for ‘surgery holidays’ booms in the UK, so do the numbers suffering serious complications and needing corrective — even life-saving — treatment later, often on the NHS. According to figures from the International Passenger Survey, last year 70,000 people travelled from the UK for ‘medical tourism’. Nearly half those trips were for cosmetic surgery, 32 per cent were for dental surgery and 9 per cent for obesity surgery. With packages costing half the price of surgery at home — a tummy tuck is £3,000 in Poland, compared to £6,000 in the UK — these medical tourists are often people on modest incomes: nurses, administrators, hairdressers and teachers. The surgery may be cheap, but so, too, is the quality of the aftercare. Research also suggests one in six patients suffer complications and 9 per cent need further treatment.
In retrospect, Claire sees her mistake
was to rush into breast surgery y once she found the clinic that t offered her a huge saving. Within n ten days of making email contact, , she’d taken a loan to pay for the e treatment and was on a flight to the e Czech Republic with a friend.
‘We had a holiday booked and I had d some exams for work coming up, so I wanted my surgery done before that,’ t,’ she says. ‘The surgeon had lots of recommendations on the website, so I thought it seemed OK.’
In the UK, strict guidelines from m the General Medical Council il dictate that patients are given a 14- day ‘cooling- off ’ period after er their initial consultation.
CLAIRE had no face-too-face consultation until til she arrived at the clinic in Prague. But, reassured ed by the medical check on arrival, she endured a two-and-a-a-half-hour operation the next day, and after a five more days in hospital flew home.
At first, she was thrilled with her new shape. But a week after getting back, she noticed a bloody patch on her bandages. A few days after that, Claire lifted the dressing to see her nipple had gone black and fluid was leaking from her breasts.
‘I know now that I should have gone straight to hospital, but I was a bit ashamed and worried people would judge me, so I kidded myself it would clear up,’ she says.
She tried ringing the clinic, but couldn’t get through.
‘I kept emailing the surgeon. At first I got replies saying he was away, then my emails started bouncing back, like he’d blocked my email address.’
By now, her husband Robert was seriously concerned, but he did not want to panic Claire, so stayed silent.
It was only several days later, when Claire realised, to her horror, that her stitches had opened and blood and fluid was leaking from both breasts, that she went to her GP. He told her the implants were badly infected.
She was admitted to hospital to have them removed. However, she could not get them replaced on the NHS, as it was considered a cosmetic procedure.
Left in a worst state than before she had embarked on surgery, Claire was devastated. The damage made her so self- conscious that she resorted to wearing two bras simultaneously, along with temporary ‘chicken fillets’ stuffed in her bra, to give her more shape and make her feel normal. For some time, she would not let her husband touch her. It was a huge price to pay.
Later, she found out the surgeon in Prague had removed too much of her skin, as well as using implants that were too big, cutting off the blood circulation to her breasts. It would be five years before she was able to have reconstructive surgery.
After her ordeal, she is under no illusions about the methods used by companies offering cosmetic surgery holiday packages to Britons.
‘They prey on people who want something cheap and want it now,’ she says. ‘But once you’re on the plane home, you’re on your own.’
With 60 per cent of British plastic surgeons reporting a rise in the number of patients seeking help after cosmetic surgery abroad, lack of aftercare is clearly one of the biggest flaws with medical tourism, says Rajiv Grover, president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS).
‘The healing process can’t be confined to ten days or less,’ he explains. ‘All surgery can have complications, even if it goes well. Patients need to be followed up for at least six weeks. But on these surgery holidays you stay a few nights and after that your surgeon is thousands of miles away.’
While the NHS will obviously act if a patient’s health is at risk, it will not — as Claire discovered — fund cosmetic correction. And when things do go wrong, legal action is frequently impossible. When Victoria
Marion thought she was being examined by a surgeon – but it was the clinic’s receptionist
Osbourne went to Belgium to have a gastric band fitted in 2006, it would be a long time before she would suffer the harsh consequences.
At first she was pleased. ‘My weight ballooned after my third child was born in 1989,’ says Victoria, now 56, a school business manager who lives in North London with her husband Christopher, 59. ‘By my late-40s I was nearly 16st. I was only 5ft 4in and felt completely terrible.
‘Then I read about a Belgian clinic that could fit a gastric band for £3,500. I went ahead and all went well. By mid-2008 I had lost sixand-a-half stone, and everything seemed fine.’
But two-and-a-half years later, Victoria began suffering severe heartburn. ‘I was waking in the night feeling like I couldn’t breathe. Then I’d be very sick. It was so worrying,’ she says.
Her GP had no explanation. But a bariatric ( weight loss) surgeon discovered the gastric band had slipped, causing fluid from her stomach to rise into her lungs.
‘It was so long since the procedure that I didn’t even think of ringing the Belgian clinic to put it right,’ she says. ‘In the end, the band was repositioned by an NHS surgeon, because it was life-threatening.’ Mr Grover says cosmetic s urgery holiday companies are often far too casual in their consultation process. And, like Claire Rigley, they meet their surgeon only after they’ve paid and travelled to the clinic. ‘There should be a cooling off period so the patient can think about whether they want to go ahead,’ Mr Grover says. ‘But these companies don’t want you to change your mind.’
That was what Marion Dawkins learned after she went for a tummy tuck in Belgium as a 40th birthday treat. The clinic offered the operation for £3,750, excluding travel and accommodation costs — just over half the cost in the UK.
‘The consultation was on Harley Street,’ says Marion, now 49, a health and social care assessor who lives with husband Keith, an engineer, in Gloucester. ‘So I thought I was getting the best.’ But although Marion believed the woman examining her was a surgeon, she later discovered that she was just the receptionist.
‘I asked if she wanted my medical history as I have high blood pressure, but she said it wasn’t necessary because it was a “minor intervention”.
‘In fact, her words were: “You’ll have a stomach as flat as Britney Spears.”’
But on the night of the surgery, Marion woke to a hissing sound.
THE surgical drain in her stomach — which uses suction to collect fluid and blood around the wound to prevent infection — had started leaking and there was blood on the sheets. Marion was worried she was at risk of infection, but her surgeon insisted it was not a problem.
‘Two days after we got home, I smelt this horrible smell,’ says Marion. ‘So I lifted the dressing and my belly button was black and green.’
At A&E, doctors treated the wound and gave Marion antibiotics. But days later at her daughter’s birthday party, Marion started shaking and feeling faint, and had to be taken back to hospital by ambulance.
It transpired she had a kidney infection; t he beginnings of septicaemia, a life -threatening infection of the blood; and necrosis, where the skin cells start to die, around the scar on her stomach. She was at high risk of heart attack.
Marion needed five operations during five weeks in hospital, before a further nine months of recovery. She was forced to take so much time off work that she had to resign.
She was left with extensive scarring, and a belly button that was placed off-centre by the Belgian surgeon.
‘I resigned myself to looking like a freak,’ she says. Eventually, Marion had reconstructive surgery at the McIndoe Surgical Centre in East Grinstead, Sussex.
She has this stark warning for women who may be thinking of going abroad for cut-price surgery.
‘Ask yourself if it’s worth it. In the end, once I’d paid for accommodation and travel, I might as well have paid for a tummy tuck here in the UK — with a properly qualified surgeon, a proper guarantee and proper aftercare.’