The pain of surgery 'holidays'

Thousands of women are seriously endangering their health by going on ' plastic surgery holidays', experts warned yesterday.

They are being enticed by adverts in women's magazines offering procedures in Eastern Europe and South Africa at prices hundreds - if not thousands - of pounds cheaper than in the UK.

But they rarely know anything about their cosmetic surgeon's qualifications or standards of care in the country they are visiting until it is too late to back out.

They are given little if any care after the operation and, if something has gone wrong, will usually have to pay to have it put right once they arrive home, says the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons.

Norman Waterhouse, consultant plastic surgeon and president of the association, said: 'In these cases patients usually have no knowledge of the competence and experience of the surgeon, and there is very little prospect of follow-up care.

'Best practice is compromised by the fact that patients are only meeting their surgeon immediately before a procedure - at which point generally they are committed to and have paid for the surgery.

'Patients then return to the UK without adequate medical records, if any.'

Demand for cosmetic surgery in the UK is booming, especially among the image-conscious 25 to 35-year-old age group, with 75,000 individuals having plastic surgery annually - 90 per cent of them women.

Celebrities who have splashed out on face lifts or breast enlargements and a series of TV makeover programmes featuring cosmetic surgery have fuelled demand.

But with the costs of many of the most popular procedures running into thousands of pounds, women are going abroad in an attempt to save money.

Patients responding to adverts are usually asked to meet an agent, typically in a London hotel room, and will then be escorted on their trip.

Destinations include South Africa, Poland, Greece, Croatia and Thailand and some travel agents offer package deals of a holiday with a nose job, for example, thrown in.

The cost of the holiday and the surgery may be as little as £1,000 - less than the cost of many procedures in the UK, where liposuction, for example, can cost £3-4,000.

Adriaan Grobbelaar, a consultant plastic surgeon at Mount Vernon NHS hospital in Northwood, Middlesex, and at the private Wellington Hospital in London, warned: 'Cheap can be expensive - if patients need things put right, or are worried and need a follow-up consultation they have to fly back. That additional cost can wipe out the original saving.

'Alternatively they may have to pay a surgeon in the UK to review the procedure or the NHS gets burdened with it.

'It will also be difficult to hold the surgeon accountable long distance. People seem to forget that during the recovery period, nobody feels like a holiday.'

He added: 'I know a lot of doctors in South Africa and I would say more than 1,000 patients a year go to South Africa from the UK for cosmetic-surgery and Eastern Europe is probably still even more popular.

Douglas McGeorge, a consultant plastic surgeon at Chester's private Grosvenor Nuffield Hospital, said he has counselled two patients who went to Eastern Europe for abdominoplasty - tummy tucks - but returned with wounds that reopened.

'I am amazed that people go for these so-called deals,' he said. 'Complications do occur and are usually left to the British system to pick up.'