NHS bill for botched cosmetic surgery now stands at £6miilion

Taxpayers last year spent a record £1.7million on fixing Brits botched by cosmetic surgery carried out abroad, analysis suggests.

Some shocking cases of Brits who ‘should never have gone under the knife’ cost a whopping £100,000 to treat, experts claim. 

Cheap flights to Turkey have made it one of the top destinations for Brits desperate for the body of their dreams. On top of that, clinics dotted across the country offer cut-price surgery and enticing holiday packages.

But huge questions are starting to be asked about the practices deployed in Turkey and beyond, following an ever-growing catalogue of horror stories from Brits who’ve flown out and the medics and campaigners helping them pick up the pieces.

British cosmetic surgeons have now accused their Turkish counterparts of using the NHS as a taxpayer-funded safety net for their poor aftercare. 

An audit by the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) — shared with MailOnline — shows 111 Brits needed emergency NHS care after returning from places like Turkey in 2022 to go under the knife. 

Surgeons reported their patients were lured in by what looked like ‘bargain’ tummy tucks and boob jobs. Others were deemed too unfit for surgery in the UK. 

However, instead they were left with flesh-eating bacterial infections and implants bursting through their skin. 

Others endured potentially deadly blood clots that required urgent NHS treatment, sometimes within just days of arriving back in the UK.

Some patients needed multiple ops to cut away dead skin from tummy tucks gone wrong.  

The 2022 tally is 35 per cent higher than the previous year, which experts believe is down to a post-Covid boom.

Pandemic restrictions on international travel struck a massive dent into the overseas cosmetic industry.

BAAPS estimates the cost to the NHS of treating each botched patient is upwards of £15,000, though this naturally varies on a case-per-case basis. 

This ballpark amount — which would fluctuate with every patient — accounts for the cost of staff wages, medications and equipment, as well as ongoing care. 

However, some of the more complex cases, which can require multiple operations to fix, can cost upwards of £100,000 to treat, surgeons told this website.

Last year’s £1.7m total adds to the £4.8m taxpayers have spent on fixing botched ops since 2017.

One horrifying case last December saw a 60-year old woman need around £100,000 of taxpayer-funded emergency care. 

Charles Durrant, a consultant plastic surgeon at the Ad Nova in Portsmouth, told how the obese, wheelchair-bound woman had a tummy tuck and lipo in Turkey.

By the time Mr Durrant saw her within his separate role in the NHS, the woman had a dangerous blood infection, rotting tissue on her abdomen, as well as a growing pool of infected fluid inside her belly.

But, ‘most worryingly’ of all, she had a potentially deadly blood clot in her lung — a dangerous post-surgical complication.

Mr Durrant told this website how the case had ‘made him angry’ as a surgeon, given the risks taken with her life considering her health conditions.   

‘Most, if not all, surgeons in this country would not have operated on her with all those comorbidities and increased risk factors,’ he said.  

They certainly wouldn’t do an abdominoplasty with added liposuction.

‘I would have put her risk of wound healing complications at 100 per cent.’

He added he was shocked to learn the woman, whose name is not being provided, wasn’t given any blood thinners post-surgery given her risks, a practise Mr Durrant said was ‘absolutely standard’ for this type of patient. 

The woman needed multiple NHS ops in the subsequent months to address the consequences of the surgery, including procedures to cut away or and drain infected skin and fluid, a host of antibiotics as well as blood thinners. 

Mr Durrant, who was worked as a surgeon for over a decade, said the woman could face long-term health complications requiring treatment for the rest of her life.  

‘She’s cosmetically going to have a poor result and the pulmonary embolism could end up giving her long-standing respiratory issues,’ he said. 

In the UK, such patients would need to lose weight before being operated on and go through a host of other health safety checks. Ops can be cancelled if certain criteria are not met.

‘We would do all those sensible things, the responsible things to do,’ he said. ‘That just doesn’t seem to happen [in Turkey].’

The 60-year-old is not the only Brit Mr Durrant has helped treat in the UK after they had cosmetic surgery in Turkey.

Another case involved a woman who originally went for a minor revision to a procedure she had done previously.

However, due to a patient mix-up at the Turkish clinic, she was mistakenly given full-body lipo instead.

The major procedure left the woman in question dangerously low on blood, and she needed an emergency transfusion upon returning to Britain.

‘It almost killed her because she lost so much blood from it,’ Mr Durrant said.  

He added that, although he had no way to prove it, it was his opinion that some Turkish surgeons were deliberately using the NHS as their surgical aftercare service, with a ‘scandalous’ cost to the health service. 

‘They’ll do multiple procedures in high-risk patients safe in the knowledge that they won’t have to deal with the complications,’ he said.  

‘When they know there’s back-up from the NHS, they’ll do whatever they want, to whomever they want, cash the cheque and forget about the outcome. It’s just a “fire and forget”.’ 

Experts have claimed the such eye-watering sums are likely just the tip of the iceberg, with many other cases believed to be missed by not being treated by a BAAPS surgeon.

BAAPS is a charity membership organisation for UK registered aesthetic plastic surgeons aiming to promote best practice in the profession, with members expected to uphold strict standards. 

Even the £6.5million from just the known cases since 2018 is enough to put £20 in the pocket of every cash-strapped NHS nurse in England, or pay for a brand new medical centre. 

In addition to tummy tucks and boob jobs, labiaplasties and face lifts were also procedures Brits needed fixing upon their return to the UK in 2022. 

BAAPS vice president Nora Nugent said surgeons are seeing a ‘continued rise’ in the number of Brits requiring corrective, and sometimes life-saving surgery, after going under the knife abroad. 

Ms Nugent said the cost of treating these problems could quickly add up to the NHS, and ultimately, the taxpayer. 

When asked why they went overseas for surgery in the first place, patients often told the British surgeon fixing their botched procedure that they had been lured in by the low costs.

‘Price seems to the primary motivator for a lot of these cases,’ Ms Nugent said. 

She urged Brits to think twice about going overseas for cosmetic surgery, warning that the price might not be the only cost they pay.

‘It’s not cheaper if something goes wrong,’ she said. 

‘These patients cannot access aftercare because it’s in a different country.’

She echoed calls from campaigners for more action from Government warning people of the dangers. 

Labour MP for North Durham Kevan Jones, who has written to health ministers to crackdown on surgeons in Turkey butchering Brits, described the cost as shocking. 

‘These shocking figures shed a light on the cost to our NHS of trying to repair the botched work of cowboy surgeons,’ he said.

‘Their blatant disregard for patient safety and the taxpayer is unacceptable.

‘These figures are likely to only be fraction of the actual cost. The Government needs to act to ensure proper records are kept so we can know the true scale of the issue.’

Tom Ryan, policy analyst of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Taxpayers will feel uncomfortable with the swelling costs of fixing botched surgeries.’

Dawn Knight, who has campaigned tirelessly against poor practise cosmetic surgery since she was left unable to close her eyes in 2012 following a botched eyelift, said the nation should be concerned about the rising bill.   

‘We cant continue in this way with a struggling NHS, no money to pay doctors, nurses what they deserve, yet our NHS picks up the bill for botched surgery abroad,’ she said.