Cosmetic Surgery in Turkey: What You Need to Know

In a House of Commons debate on 12 March 2024, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State confirmed that 28 British nationals have died in Turkey following elective medical procedures since 2019. The FCDO's Turkey travel advice page reports 7 British deaths in 2025 alone.

A joint statement by BAAPS and the Turkish Society of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery (TSPRAS) in December 2024 found that in a survey of BAAPS council members, 100% of complications they treated from overseas surgery originated in Turkey. Infection was the most prevalent complication, with bacterial infection present in 98% of cases.

These are official government figures and professional body audit data, not media estimates.

A BMJ Open rapid review published in January 2026 analysed 38 studies covering 655 patients treated by the NHS for complications from surgery abroad between 2011 and 2024. 61% of cases involved surgery performed in Turkey. 90% of patients were women. The cost to the NHS ranged from £1,058 to £19,549 per patient.

A study published in JPRAS (2025) found that at one London hospital, 96% of patients presenting with surgical complications had procedures performed abroad, 73% in Turkey. The total cost to that single unit was £110,690.

The Royal College of Surgeons Bulletin (2024) stated: “It should not be the role of the NHS to routinely mop up the mistakes of private providers overseas.”

In Scotland, NHS Scotland spent £755,560 over five years treating 81 patients with complications from cosmetic surgery abroad.

In February 2026, the Women and Equalities Committee called for a de facto ban on Brazilian butt lifts and recommended that UK-based outlets recruiting patients for overseas treatment should be brought into a regulatory regime.

Turkey has experienced surgeons. The lower cost of surgery there reflects lower operating costs and competitive pricing, not necessarily lower skill. However, the Royal College of Surgeons and the NHS identify systemic factors that increase risk:

• No UK-equivalent regulation. There is no equivalent of the GMC (General Medical Council) or CQC (Care Quality Commission) in Turkey. Patients cannot easily verify surgeon qualifications to UK standards.
• Language barriers. Informed consent and post-operative instructions may be lost in translation. The FCDO warns that private companies have a financial interest in booking your treatment.
• Compressed timelines. Package deals combining flights, hotels, and surgery often mean shorter consultation times, less pre-operative assessment, and early discharge.
• No follow-up care. Rhinoplasty requires 12 months of follow-up, and package pricing rarely includes any of it beyond the first week.
• Different legal jurisdiction. If something goes wrong, pursuing a claim under Turkish law is significantly harder and more expensive than under UK law.

In August 2025, the UK Government partnered with TikTok to warn about the risks of medical procedures abroad. Health Minister Karin Smyth said: “Too many people are being left with life-altering injuries after going abroad for medical procedures, without access to proper advice or safeguards, often drawn in by deals too good to be true and promoted by influencers.”

Surgery abroad does not always go wrong, and I am not going to pretend it does. What I can tell you is what I see repeatedly in the patients who come to me afterwards. Three things come up again and again, and all three are avoidable.

The operative notes are usually very brief, and sometimes there are none at all. That matters more than it sounds. If you ask me to revise a nose, I need to know what was removed, what was put back, whether cartilage was taken from the septum or the ear, and whether any grafts were placed. Without that record I am working from examination and imaging alone, and I will not know the true state of the framework until I open it. It makes the operation longer, the planning less precise, and the conversation about what is realistic much harder.

Patients often come home on medication that is not licensed in the UK, or that is being used here outside its licence. I have been asked several times to continue or re-prescribe it, and I have declined every time. This is not obstructiveness. Prescribing a medicine outside its UK licence transfers responsibility for it to me, and I am not prepared to accept that for a drug I did not start, given for an operation I did not perform, in a patient whose post-operative course I have not followed. If you are considering surgery abroad, ask before you go what you will be sent home taking, and check whether a UK doctor can lawfully continue it.

Follow-up is often not arranged at all. People fly home within a few days of major nasal surgery with no planned review, no named person to contact, and no clear account of what is normal and what is not. Rhinoplasty results take a full twelve months to settle, and problems tend to declare themselves after the second week, which is exactly when the surgeon who operated is several thousand miles away. By the time someone reaches me, they are looking for help from a surgeon who has never met them and has no record of what was done.

If you take one thing from this page, make it this: before you book anything, ask for the operative note in writing, ask what medication you will be discharged on, and ask who reviews you at three months, six months and a year, and where.