Seven UK patients die after Turkey weight loss surgery

As reported by the BBC, seven British patients who travelled to Turkey for weight loss surgery died after operations there, a BBC investigation into the trend has found

Others have returned home with serious health issues after having had gastric sleeve operations, during which more than 70% of the stomach is removed.

The operations, used to treat morbid obesity, are carried out in the UK but, because it can take years to get one through the NHS, some people are looking abroad for treatment.

Social media advertising has helped fuel interest in travelling overseas for weight loss surgery in recent years.

The BBC has spent months investigating the trend. British doctors say that they’re treating an increasing number of patients who have travelled to Turkey and returned with serious complications.

About once a week, a ‘very unwell’ patient arrives at Newcastle Airport from Turkey and is taken straight to hospital, according to Dr Sean Woodcock, a consultant at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.

Dr Ahmed Ahmed, a leading surgeon and member of council at the British Obesity and Metabolic Surgery Society, says he’s treated patients returning from Turkey who have had an entirely different operation to the one they understood they had paid for.

There are no records of the number of people who have travelled to Turkey for this kind of treatment, but the BBC has learned that seven Britons have died after having weight loss surgery there since 2019.

The government says it is trialling new treatments for obesity and recommends that those travelling to Turkey consider risks and after-care needs.

Dr Ahmed says the failure to provide this surgery has left the NHS with the twin costs of handling health complications caused by obesity and expensive after-care following botched surgery.

The BBC has learned that the number of weight loss surgeries performed in England has fallen by a third from 6,818 procedures three years ago, to just 4,409 in 2022.

But Dr Ahmed suspects that weight-loss tourism will continue while the long NHS waiting lists remain: “If you have to wait so long for a treatment to make you healthy, who’s going to do that? If you can afford it, you’re going to find other ways.”