Plastic surgery abroad: safety and risks

It’s 6:30 p.m. when I get a call from the emergency room doctor. A young patient came in to the emergency room with an open wound. She recently underwent surgery in Turkey. Arriving at the patient, I see a young, pale lady who had surgery 2 weeks ago. She had lost a lot of weight and underwent a tummy tuck and a thigh elevator in Turkey. They combined these procedures with liposuction. The wound of the left leg is completely open towards the upper leg. The patient still looks a little pale and also does not feel well. When we examine her blood, she has very low blood levels. She tells me that she lost a lot of blood during surgery and received five bags of blood. “She could have been dead,” shoots through my mind. I don’t tell her that. She is sad enough that the surgery did not go as she expected. We clean the wound neatly and after a few weeks we close the wound during a recovery surgery.

Increase in recovery operations in NL

She is not the only patient our team has treated for complications after surgery abroad. We see several patients with wound problems, in some cases so severe that the breast prostheses have to be removed. We also see broken tear ducts, rare infections, untreated bleeding, thrombosis and pulmonary embolism (which are more likely to occur when flying) and ruptured breast implants.

Then we never have complications from plastic surgery in the Netherlands? Yes, complications occur in the Netherlands as well, but the complications we see after procedures abroad are more serious than the regular complications of our procedures. We almost never give a blood transfusion during a tummy tuck, nor is this necessary if you operate correctly. If you have to give “5 bags of blood,” then something must have gone wrong during surgery. Moreover, it is not always wise to combine a tummy tuck and a thigh elevator.

Many complications and even mutilations

Inquiries with several colleagues in the Netherlands reveal that very many plastic surgeons treat complications from abroad. Plastic surgeons are seeing more and more patients with serious complications, disfigurements and sometimes permanent injuries as a result of cosmetic treatments abroad that were not properly performed. It also raises the question of who is responsible for paying for the treatments that follow these complications? Currently, insurance generally covers recovery surgery. But is this real? If you take the risk of going abroad for this operation shouldn’t you also pay for it yourself if it goes wrong?

Plastic surgery cheaper abroad

People’s motivation for going abroad for their surgery is generally financial. The cost is often lower than in the Netherlands and you get airfare and hotel accommodations with it, and many patients like that. But when you think about it, how much money is actually left for quality surgery and the operating room? Does this operating room meet the quality requirements in the Netherlands? What products do they work with?

No supervision = more risk

An air conditioner in an OK, you won’t see that in the Netherlands.

In the Netherlands, there are laws surrounding plastic surgery. Unlike the Netherlands, where the NVPC has for years had a strict quality policy for all member plastic surgeons, other countries often have lower quality requirements. Consider the training of the doctors, the materials used such as buttock and breast implants, hygiene protocols and certainly aftercare (which is often not there). In addition, abroad, surgery is more often “just” done despite the increased risk involved. For some procedures you are not eligible in the Netherlands due to obesity, for example, and in some countries you can just be operated on because different rules apply here.

The same goes for breast augmentations. There are major differences in quality between breast implants, and the size that is responsible to place can also vary by country.

So when I am asked the question: Would I go abroad for my aesthetic procedure? is my advice: NO! Definitely not. It’s your body and it’s worth too much to take this kind of risk. Of course, there are also good plastic surgeons abroad, but the quality is often difficult to determine in advance.

Always and everywhere be well informed about treatment, risks and complications.

Aesthetic surgery also involves proper aftercare and treatment if complications arise. That’s very difficult when your plastic surgeon is 3000km away….

Source: NVPC

Feel MOOI,

Michelle