People travelling abroad for cosmetic, eye or weight-loss surgery could be costing the NHS up to £20,000 per patient after botched procedures, concerning new data reveals.
An audit published in the British Medical Journal warns that the growing trend for so-called medical tourism is placing a significant and largely avoidable burden on NHS services – with complications often emerging days or weeks after patients return to the UK.
Researchers found 655 patients were treated by the NHS between 2011 and 2024 after undergoing bariatric, cosmetic or eye surgery overseas, most commonly in Turkey.
Emergency and urgent procedures, cancer care, fertility treatment, dentistry and transplants were excluded from the analysis.
Turkey remains one of the most popular destinations for cut-price cosmetic and weight-loss surgery, but clinics across multiple continents were implicated in what researchers described as an expanding catalogue of serious complications.
The authors said the true cost to the NHS is likely to be much higher than current estimates, due to gaps in reporting and the absence of national data on how many UK residents seek elective surgery abroad.
They warned: ‘Those seeking medical treatment abroad should be made aware of which complications the NHS is responsible for treating, and costs for which the patient may be potentially personally liable, including non-emergency treatment.’
Patients travelled abroad for elective surgery for several reasons – including long NHS waiting lists, ineligibility for NHS procedures, availability, and lower upfront costs.
Patients seeking elective surgeries abroad could be costing the NHS in excess of £20,000 each following complications
But researchers said many were not adequately informed about the risks or the lack of NHS aftercare – despite the fact that complications can require prolonged and expensive treatment on return.
Surgeons reported patients being lured by what appeared to be ‘bargain’ procedures, including breast enlargements, tummy tucks and bariatric operations such as gastric sleeves and bands – with women most likely to seek treatment abroad.
Instead, many returned with debilitating abdominal pain, bowel obstructions, hernias, weight regain, and in some cases flesh-eating bacterial infections.
Others developed life-threatening blood clots that required urgent NHS intervention, sometimes within days of arriving back in the UK.
While bariatric surgery can cost as little as £2,000 in Turkey, private procedures in the UK typically start at around £10,000.
On the NHS, patients are only eligible for weight-loss surgery if they have tried and failed to lose weight through other clinically supervised methods.
The audit found at least 196 patients experienced moderate to severe complications following overseas gastric sleeve surgery, breast enlargement or abdominoplasty.
Clinics in Turkey advertise a wide range of controversial procedures, including liposuction claiming to remove up to 15 litres of fat, Brazilian butt lifts, eye-colour-changing laser treatments and hymenoplasty.
Liposuction that offers to remove up to 15 litres of fat, BBL’s, eye colour changing laser treatments and hymenoplasties are all offered in clinics across Turkey
Researchers estimated the cost to the NHS of treating each patient ranged from £1,058 for minor complications to £19,549 for severe cases in 2024, though they stressed this was likely a significant underestimate.
They said: ‘Evidence suggests that outward medical tourism for metabolic and bariatric surgery, cosmetic surgery and ophthalmic surgery can result in serious complications that are treated at NHS specialist units in the UK.
‘We still do not know how many people resident in the UK go abroad for elective surgery, or how many subsequently experience complications.
‘Without these data, we cannot fully understand the levels of risk that people seeking surgery abroad are taking.’
The researchers called for public awareness campaigns to ensure patients understand the potential consequences before travelling overseas for surgery.
The estimated costs include staff wages, medications, specialist equipment and ongoing follow-up care.
The NHS currently advises patients considering bariatric surgery abroad to ‘weigh up any potential savings against the potential risks’, warning that standards may be lower than in the UK and that aftercare is ‘not always straightforward’.