Tuesday, March 26, 2024

The follow up care is limited because she needed to travel back to the UK, and home. Her surgeon is in Turkey and is not present to help with any problems that develop. The NHS can help once the patient returns to the UK - however this is only for emergency assistance. There is little NHS help for non-emergency issues such as small wound problems, asymmetrical appearance, poor scars, and many other non urgent issues that commonly arise after such surgery abroad. This leaves many patients in the difficult position of now having to find a private surgeon ( many are reluctant to assist with complications from a foreign surgeons work ). The costs can accumulate further. Patients may need to return to their surgeon abroad for further surgery too, which places even more of a financial burden , and stress on patient and family.

It is much safer to have such surgery close to home even if the initial procedure is more costly than so called cut price ‘cosmetic tourism’. The benefit of having your surgeon available and invested in a fast complication free recovery cannot be understated. Plus IF problems occur, the surgeon is close by to help resolve the problem.

Hannah Thompson has a sing word for what it took to get her size 10 physique: 'Hell'.  It was not the weight loss itself, though because Hannah, 31, a beautician from Liverpool, had bariatric surgery on the NHS which was rapidly effective.  However, her weight loss left her with large amounts of saggy, irritated, excess skin.

'I had lots of excess skin', she says.  'I tried to hide it by wearing tight clothes, but the minute I took my clothes off, my skin would hang in flaps around my body.  I felt awful.'

Excess skin is a common side-effect ofsubstantial weight loss, as the once-stretched skin becomes deflated.  A number of factors can contribute to this explains Mr Soldin, including genes, age (younger skin is more elastic) and speed of weight loss (the skin is more likely to cope if weight loss is more gradual).