The cosmetic surgery industry in the UK is booming.
100,000 nips and tucks were carried out last year
with patients shelling out an estimated £2.3 billion
in a bid to achieve perfection.
The operations, refinement, retouching,
tearing and re-draping in order to achieve the end goal.
At least 5% going under the knife
will end up with botched-up bodies.
It looks awful.
It's horrible.
Now I am disfigured.
I was talking about having a designer vagina.
He ended up giving me a dustbin.
I've got one nipple, and the other nipple, it looks like a piece of pepperoni.
It's just ruined my life.
In this series, we follow Britain's top plastic surgeons
as they work to sort out the problems.
It's a very seductive solution,
but, people need to realise that this is not a game,
it's something that can seriously damage them.
It could be absolutely devastating.
Managing expectation is a very important element.
It's always about compromise, they're not gonna have the perfect body.
Can these surgical disasters be repaired?
will they ever get the boobs, faces,
teeth and tongues they want?
Boob jobs have been Britain's most popular cosmetic op
for the past 25 years.
Last year alone, over 10,000 women inflated
and 4,500 deflated their busts.
But the pursuit of better boobs can be a risky business,
as Clare Bird,
a 39-year-old voluntary worker from Southend discovered.
Her good boob job went bad
when she developed tissue necrosis,
a rare and devastating complication.
It was horrendous,
it was like a crater of just open flesh.
The nipple was just standing on its own.
I was really scared at one point
that I would lose the breast.
For 17 years, Clare was desperate
to reduce the size of her bust.
I have always had a problem
with big breasts
from a very young age,
and I was always very, very self-conscious about them.
It's not quite such an attractive look to be bulging out of bras
and tops and it just didn't look nice.
Her surgery was a 40th birthday present from her family.
I wasn't particularly nervous.
I was very, very excited,
and really over the moon.
For me it was gonna be the start of a whole new life,
it was gonna be a complete change.
But luck was not on her side.
It was two days after the operation
that I noticed
the right nipple was very, very dark,
and the surrounding area of the nipple
was like a bluey, purply colour.
Clare's skin cells were dying, she had necrosis.
It occurs when the oxygen supplied to the breast is reduced or damaged.
It's untreatable
and there's a 0.8% chance of developing it.
It's been two months since her breast surgery,
and Clare is still unsure what the future holds.
Her wounds are still open and show little signs of improvement.
In search of some answers, she's come to London
to see leading plastic surgeon Nick Percival
in the hope that he can help.
- This side is not too bad, is it? - No.
There is a little area where the wound has opened at the bottom.
That will heal itself
and new skin will grow from the edges of the wound.
Obviously, you've got a big problem with this side.
There's been necrosis or death of the nipple and areola.
The problem with death of fatty tissue is,
it is a very slow process,
it takes a long time for these sort of things to heal.
It's the diagnosis Clare feared.
There's no quick fix for this devastating complication.
There is effectively no way of avoiding
ever having any complications.
If there were, I can assure you,
that we would all do it.
It is never 100% safe.
You feel like you've been mutilated at times,
and that's quite a difficult thing to cope with,
and especially when,
you have to sort of think to yourself, this was my decision.
Unfortunately for Clare, the only way forward in the future
will be more surgery, and more surgery
could result in more complications.
Will she decide to take the risk?
We'll find out later.
Plastic surgery has always been about boobs, bums and tums,
but today, a new craze is booming,
the designer vagina.
The procedure is labiaplasty,
it alters the labia minora and labia majora.
In the last year, more than 2,000 were carried out on the NHS,
300 labiaplastys being performed on girls
aged 14 or younger,
with girls as young as 11 requesting surgery.
The cost of having the procedure
is upwards of £3,000 if done privately.
Little is known about the long-term effects,
and lack of regulation means many practitioners
are operating without proper qualifications.
Sherri Lee-Mason,
a 36-year-old adult entertainer from Gloucestershire,
wanted a perfect vagina.
She ended up with a botch job.
instead of trimming her labia, the surgeon removed it.
I was talking about having a designer vagina.
He ended up giving me a dustbin really.
She then had filler injected in, in a bid to correct the damage.
It left her even more disfigured.
It was bulging. This just looks awful.
Sherri was always unhappy with the look of her vagina.
She grew up believing it was abnormal.
I've always thought that there was something wrong with me down there.
One bit of skin was hanging longer than the other.
Sexually, I've always been embarrassed.
You know, it's like, I've always got to cover
and I've always been conscious about it
and just... shy really.
Sherri has been left mutilated and devastated.
And I just wanted to look neat and pretty.
When I realised there was something wrong,
I cried and I cried and I cried and I cried.
It hasn't been easy.
It really hasn't.
After eight years, Sherri is finally ready to fix her vagina
for a third time and, hopefully, last time.
If I could find the right person that can do it,
I'll just be over the moon.
I'd be ecstatic really, you know?
She's travelled to Glasgow to see specialist surgeon John Telfer.
Will he be able to repair the damage
and finally give her the vagina she wants?
Are you happy to pop your knees up for me?
The first stage would be to try and remove the swelling in your labia majora,
and that could be very, very straight forward.
Also, the problems that you have with your labia minora,
which have been trimmed in the past,
and what we need to do is, in some way, try and lengthen them for you.
But the other problems are scarring that you've got
at the lower end on both sides, which we might be able to improve.
It depends really how much they bother you.
But I wouldn't want to do anything until the swelling from the operation
on the left side is all settled down.
It will take several operations to repair the damage,
but even then there are no guarantees
that Sherri will have the vagina she wants.
Coming up - Sherri's operation.
Ooh.
The mum with the bulging groin.
It just doesn't look right, and it's horrible.
And face invaders, the real cost of facial fillers.
It's a bit like trying to squeeze
the last bit out of a toothpaste tube really.
Designer vagina surgery is the new cosmetic trend,
with more and more women deciding to have a nip and tuck down below.
Women like Sherri. She wanted a designer vagina,
but she's ended up with a disaster vagina.
For years she's lived with her botched body.
It's bulgy, it just looks awful.
At long last, there's light at the end of the tunnel.
She's at the Nuffield Hospital in Glasgow,
a centre of excellence in vaginal reconstruction,
to start on a course of corrective surgery.
Specialist surgeon John Telfer is tasked with repairing the damage.
In this operation,
John plans to remove the lump on the left side of Sherri's vagina,
and then, if possible, start reconstruction.
I could perhaps be criticised for erring on the side of caution today,
but at the end of the day you get no prizes for stuffing it up.
Got very little labia to play with, that I really don't want to
throw away something that might be useful.
That's the lump there, but it's just awkward to get at.
That's perfect, that's better.
I don't want to take away too much because
she's a bit worried about the labia not being very full at the best of times.
So, I don't want to take away anything that's normal.
John uses an electronic scalpel.
It cauterizes as it cuts, minimising blood loss.
The other thing I don't want to do is what we call button-hole the skin,
which means going right through.
In Sherri's previous operation,
skin and fat was harvested from her thigh to rebuild her vagina.
And if there's any, erm,
glands or anything like that left,
then that can continue to produce
the stuff that glands produce.
But because it can't escape anywhere
it just collects up in a big cyst.
Once drained, John removes the gland
and starts to suture the wound closed.
I'm just slightly worried
if we have a problem with this wound which,
you know, hopefully we won't have, but it is a possibility to get a haematoma
or an infection, that it will just damage the reconstruction that I've done.
And as you can see, we really haven't got very much to work with.
And if we ended up losing some of that, then that would be a disaster.
John decides not to proceed with the reconstruction,
as there is a significant risk it would fail.
We just need to be very careful.
Sherri will have to return for further surgery once she has healed.
Only then can John start work on giving her the vagina she wants.
If we can just give her something that comes down to about here
then it should look better. Something like that.
The next operation, probably somewhere in the region
of the next three to six months,
but we want to make sure that the scar tissue had settled down,
that everything was nice and soft,
so that we've got the best chance of success at the next operation as well.
Early indications are good.
Sherri's vagina is minus the lump that caused her so much distress.
There is still a significant amount of work to be done.
But Sherri has moved one step closer to her designer vagina.
One out of four UK adults are overweight,
and the health fallout from fat doesn't come cheap.
The battle of the bulge sets the NHS back 5.1 billion a year.
And the NHS has to prioritise, which is difficult.
Dawn Tweedle, a 40-year-old support worker from County Durham,
tackled her expanding waistline by having a gastric band fitted.
But instead of the svelte figure she was hoping for,
Dawn ended up with a shelf of unsightly skin
and a swollen and bulging groin.
I hate my body,
because it just doesn't look right, and it's horrible.
It's just so uneven, and I've got, like, ridges where ridges shouldn't be.
It's all lumps and bumps,
and it's not as smooth as I expected it to be
after me initial surgery.
Dawn is the first to admit that she was responsible
for becoming supersized.
I couldn't stick to diets, I tried,
but I just loved me food, I really did.
At her peak of 28 stone,
her weight began to affect her health.
I wasn't able to breathe properly, wasn't able to walk around
and do things that I wanted to do.
My daughter had my grandson and I wanted to be able to play with him,
so I decided to have a gastric bypass.
Two years after my gastric bypass,
I'd lost roughly about 14 stone
and I was referred to my local hospital
to have the excess skin removed,
cos it was uncomfortable with it resting on me legs,
and obviously I used to get sores under the excess skin as well.
Dawn thought that following the operation
she would have the body she'd been striving for.
It couldn't be further from the truth.
Me body is just not right, and I'm not happy at all.
Desperate to find a solution,
Dawn has booked in to see Patrick Mallucci,
a specialist in aesthetic surgery.
She hopes that he, at long last,
will be able to give her the body she wants.
Right,
now, let's just have a little look.
Your tummy tuck,
that's quite an extensive scar all the way across.
And then further down, my...
My... I think it's called a pubis?
Yeah, that's the mons pubis, which is the sort of swelling
just above the genital area there.
Erm, that's...
- That's sort of fallen a little bit. - Yeah.
I think in terms of improving what you've had done,
there is scope for
trying to lessen this cleft here,
and probably what I would do is,
along the existing scar that you've got,
I would take another slice
along the bottom of your tummy and the top of the mons here,
and to try and get this as flat as possible.
- Hopefully, hook this up a little bit. - Right.
So, it will probably be a combination of a wee bit more liposuction
and a little bit more excision to get you as flat as possible.
This is very typical of weight loss surgery,
it will affect some people more than others.
I think this will make a very dramatic change to her life.
We'll be there as Dawn goes under the knife for a third time
in a bid to have the body she's always wanted.
Essex voluntary worker Clare is one of the unlucky 5%
who suffered devastating complications
following breast reduction surgery.
Clare developed necrosis,
a condition that resulted in her breast tissue dying.
As there is no treatment for this devastating condition,
she has had to wait for nature to run its course.
You never think for one minute
that you will be in that 5% of people that have a problem.
It's been four months since Clare's last check-up,
and she's back in London to see plastic surgeon Nick Percival
for a follow-up consultation.
Let's have a look at this side.
And that has obviously made a significant change since I last saw it,
where it was slow in healing in the middle at the bottom there.
It has left quite a red scar.
Let's have a look underneath this one.
OK,
remarkable difference since when I last saw it.
It's grown a lot hasn't it, and new skin.
Yep, and we've got a little sort of island of tissue
obviously which has survived there, which is good news.
Considering how shocking it was, I think it's grown quite well.
One of the issues, obviously, is that the healing process
has drawn the nipple down, so it's not in the right position.
Obviously, there will need to be something done there.
And I think those scars are going to be so florid and indented
that probably they will benefit
from something being done to tidy them up.
It's been an emotional few months,
but Clare still faces further challenges.
There are options there,
some surgery, obviously, to place the nipple in the right position,
and then to reconstruct the areola and so on,
and maybe to tidy up some of the scars.
It may not be completely smooth,
and there may be difficulties further along the way,
but it is possible to get to the end result.
Good.
You're probably, truthfully, looking at a couple of years or so
before, you know, it's over.
Yep, that's lovely, thank you very much for seeing me again.
With risks and complications, even if you tell patients,
"Well, there's only a 5% chance it's gonna happen."
Most people will be optimistic,
they will think, "Well, I'm gonna be in the 95% that it doesn't."
But the only people who never have any problems
are the people who never do any surgery.
I regret it wholeheartedly,
because I think to myself,
although I wasn't happy with my breasts
and they were droopy and they were too big,
I wasn't disfigured, whereas now I am disfigured.
And I don't know quite
what the end result will ever be.
The PIP breast implant scandal shocked the world.
The implants, manufactured by French company
Poly Implant Prothèse
were filled with non-medical grade silicone
intended for use in mattresses.
But that may well be eclipsed by a new crisis
hitting the cosmetic surgery industry
that's seeing more and more patients being severely disfigured.
Dermal fillers.
It's really a big problem.
We're seeing a range of fillers
that can give patients a lot of complications.
37-year-old Sarah Amoli,
a student living in London, had hers injected seven years ago.
I said, "Just a little bit,
I don't like too much."
But they flooded her face with permanent filler,
with catastrophic results.
Just 18 months after having it injected,
things started to go horribly wrong.
Step by step
this filler moved
and is not balanced.
And everything changed,
my cheek is changed.
Every day when I look at it in the mirror,
I can see my filler.
But I'm thinking about my old face.
Everybody said to me,
"You don't need, your face is very nice,"
but I didn't care.
I decide,
I decide to
put injection in my face.
I wish I never had filler.
I need surgery,
but I'm very worried, I'm afraid.
Especially about the scar.
In the last year she's had three major infections in her face.
- How are you doing? - Thank you very much.
She's now turned to the NHS and surgeon
Niall Kirkpatrick for help.
All the time I have pain.
Right, where are you feeling the pain at the moment?
-This part. - OK.
We've got now the results of the MRI scan,
and you can see all of this white material,
it's a huge amount of filler here,
and it seems to be in, like,
lakes of filler material.
This is not a filler that dissolves away,
it's a permanent filler, so it will always stay there.
In order to try and minimise problems in the future,
which I'm sure you will have, we need to try to get the filler out.
Sarah is booked in for surgery
where Niall will attempt to remove as much of the filler as possible.
Filler that costs £300 to have injected
is going to cost the NHS
an estimated £4,500 to remove.
A figure that will be much higher if they don't act now.
I've seen a number of patients
who've had infections from filler material,
and as a consequence their facial features have been completely distorted,
so it's really important for Sarah that we get this filler material out
to prevent those complications occurring.
Coming up...
I'm really, really right in it.
The removal of Sarah's facial filler runs into problems.
OK, I'm not getting anything out through that needle at the minute.
The boob job that's pushed a mother to breaking point.
It's just ruined my life.
And Dawn prepares herself for surgery.
This is like, it's nearly there now, isn't it?
At the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London,
student Sarah is about to undergo surgery
to have permanent filler removed from her face.
She had it injected seven years ago,
she's now paying the price as it's become infected.
My face is swelling
and very painful. It's very bad.
And Sarah's not alone,
more and more women are presenting at casualty
with similar complications.
According to the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons
84% of patients who suffer problems with permanent filler
require corrective surgery or are untreatable.
Consultant surgeon Niall Kirkpatrick is set to operate
in the hopes of freeing Sarah from the filler
that's causing her so much pain.
In this operation, Niall plans to draw out the filler
using a large needle and syringe.
This will minimise the damage to Sarah's face
and help to avoid the scars she is so afraid of.
The risk for her is the material
being left behind getting infected again.
Well, the material that we're trying to remove
is this very, very bright stuff.
In a normal face there shouldn't be any bright signal at all,
so everything that we can see here is product.
A needle is inserted through Sarah's cheek.
The ultrasound is used to guide the needle into the correct position.
Yep, I'm really, really right in it.
The team hopes that they'll be able to draw out the filler using a syringe.
Can I just move to a 50ml syringe?
Niall is aware that Sarah is desperate to avoid scarring on her face.
OK, I'm not getting anything out through that needle at the moment.
If this technique fails, he will have no option
but to use a more invasive method.
It doesn't want to come out through the needle that we have.
Niall has no choice but to cut into Sarah's face.
A small scar is the price she'll pay for having the filler.
OK.
When this stuff goes in it's a sort of clear fluid,
and when it comes out it's often this very yellowy...
almost looks like pus, really.
Obviously, we want to keep the incision very small
and try and get as much out as we can, just through each incision.
You can see that actually I'm squeezing really quite firmly to get it out,
it's perhaps not so nice to experience
somebody doing this to you when you're awake.
It's a bit like trying to
squeeze the last bit out of a toothpaste tube really.
So, I think that's probably
what we can achieve here, isn't it?
Well, you can see there, enormous change in the shape of her face,
it's just so much more natural.
The process is then repeated on the right side of Sarah's face.
Because of the infection that she had before,
it's just so much more stiff to get out.
OK, I don't think I can get any more.
Contour-wise, she's really looking very, very symmetrical now.
After two hours, the team are confident
they've removed the majority of filler.
The small wounds on Sarah's face are sutured closed.
We're done.
Operation completed, Sarah's recovery begins.
Only when the swelling subsides
will the team know if the operation has been a success,
and there's still the small matter of the scars,
of which Sarah is still blissfully unaware.
Later, we find out if Sarah's face is finally filler free.
Plastic surgery is big business in the UK,
and, despite the recession, it's a growing one.
Breast augmentation is by far the most popular
cosmetic procedure for women.
There were over 10,000 boob jobs performed last year.
Of them, one in three will require
further surgery within ten years.
Louise Dean, a 36-year-old single mum from Manchester,
decided to have a boob job.
But instead of the perfect bust she wanted,
she ended up with hard, painful, lopsided breasts.
My right one's high up.
Like nearly touching my chin.
And the other one's just sagging.
They're like this.
After having five children
my body was not the same anymore,
and I had no confidence either.
And I just wanted to have 'em done and sorted out basically.
It was just a once in a lifetime thing for me,
and it just went wrong and I'm just not happy,
I'm gonna cry.
I'm sorry.
I can't do anything with my children
since I've had my breasts done.
I can't take 'em swimming.
I can't hug my children.
I get pain in my right breast all the way down my arm.
Under my armpit, it's like rock solid,
my right one, at the top.
It's like a shock if anyone
comes to hug me or anything,
and I wanna just hug my children and I can't.
Louise is in pain, £3,600 in debt,
and no closer to the bust she wanted.
It's just ruined my life, it's just ruined.
Louise has been struggling
with her disaster boob job for over three years.
Today she'll see Harley Street plastic surgeon
Richard Young to see if he can help.
- Are you OK? - Yeah, I'm alright.
Good, I'm just going to have a feel of this one now.
Tell me if it's too sore at all?
I think the implant on the right
hasn't behaved quite like the one on the left.
It's got hard, and we call that a capsule.
So, that's tissue growth around it which goes hard.
Louise has capsular contraction,
the most common complication associated with breast surgery,
and it can happen at any time.
It occurs when the capsule of scar tissue,
that forms naturally around all breast implants,
begins to harden and contract.
Louise has had the condition for three years.
now, at long last, she is taking steps towards having it treated.
If you do a breast uplift, so if you lift the droopy breast,
- the breast usually gets a bit smaller. - OK.
Not because we take any breast tissue away,
- but because the tissue gets folded. - Right.
So, we'll aim for a, sort of, a balanced viewpoint, as it were,
between lifting the breasts, replacing the implants,
OK?
- Thank you. - Alright?
- I can't believe it. - Is there anything else you'd like to ask?
No, I just want to say thank you, very much.
You're very welcome. Very welcome.
- It means a lot. - Yeah, you're welcome.
- Thank you. - OK.
So, more surgery is the answer,
but it's a price Louise is prepared to pay to be pain free.
We'll follow her as she's operated on
for a second time to repair her breasts.
At the Weymouth Hospital in London's Marylebone,
Dawn is set to have a 90 minute operation
to remove an unsightly area of saggy skin above her groin,
caused by gastric band surgery.
I hate my body because it just doesn't look right,
and it's horrible.
So, the area that we're concentrating, Dawn,
is the mons here.
Dawn is under the care
of aesthetic surgeon Patrick Mallucci.
In this operation, he will remove fat from Dawn's abdomen
and an area of skin above her pubis,
in a bid to smooth the ridge and remove the bulge
left by her last surgery.
Alright, we'll see you down there.
He is a very, very nice man.
And he's pleasant with it as well, he's not like, you know, some - horrible.
He's quite nice, he's quite nice to look at and all.
He's quite pleasing on the eye.
I'm just having a bit of a hot flush,
I think that's just my nerves kicking in now.
Because it's, like, it's nearly there now, isn't it?
How are you feeling, Dawn?
I'm fine. Yeah, I'm fine.
Well, I'm here now, so I'm not as nervous.
I was a bit panicky upstairs, I was like... But I'm alright now.
Right, nice, deep breaths in and out.
Happy thoughts.
Patrick starts with Dawn's abdomen.
So, the first thing we're gonna do
is the liposuction.
It will help to change Dawn's body shape by removing fat.
The fat cells are broken up with a saline solution.
We'll be able to see the fat
being sucked down the tubing.
That's the whitish coloured material that you can see.
Once the excess fat is removed,
Patrick carefully makes his first incision.
To begin with, I'm just taking the top layer of skin away,
and I'm leaving behind this white layer, which is the dermis,
that's the thicker layer of skin below the epidermis.
And this is the area that we're gonna use to our advantage.
So, now I'm cutting into this layer of dermis.
So, you can see that I'm picking up the edges of the dermis
and I'm effectively creating
what we call a tube,
and the effect of that tube
is to create a flatter surface.
There we go, nearly there.
90 minutes on the operating table and the procedure is finished.
And you can see how nice and level it is,
so I think that will improve the contour significantly,
a very positive change for her.
Dawn's once flabby groin area is now smooth,
and gone is the unsightly ridge that caused her so much distress.
Bit tired, but apart from that I feel fine.
Can't wait for a cup of tea though.
Will she be happy with the results?
We'll find out when her new body is revealed.
Two weeks have passed since Sarah's operation
to remove the painful, permanent cosmetic filler from her face.
She's back at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital
to see surgeon Niall Kirkpatrick.
Last week is bad for me.
Because?
-I see you cut my face. - Yep.
I'm crying.
But it's already settling very quickly, isn't it?
Yeah. You look great.
- You look much better. - Yes.
On this side it's quite firm at the moment,
and it's going to get even firmer for another couple of months,
so don't be alarmed by that,
and then it's going to start to soften and blend and smooth.
And these little, tiny nicks, they'll all settle down,
they'll be very, very hard to see.
Sarah still has several months of healing ahead,
but already her face looks better.
Gone are the infected lumps of filler
that caused her so much pain and distress.
Her face is now symmetrical
and her skin is becoming even again.
It really does behove patients
to find the right medical practitioners
with the right qualifications and the right experience to do this.
It's really not something that is injected by somebody
with no medical knowledge whatsoever.
I am happy with my face now,
and I think
natural face is the best.
Coming up -
bad boobs made good.
And Dawn's new body is revealed.
It's always easy to forget where we came from.
At the Weymouth Hospital, single mum Louise
is set to have her boob job that's gone bad corrected.
My right one's high up,
and the other one's just sagging.
Surgeon, Richard Young, is operating.
Richard is going to open up Louise's right breast,
take out the implant, and then insert a new implant
and give her the uplift she wants.
He'll then repeat the procedure on the left.
We've just opened up the breast, going through the skin first.
I'm just feeling around the implant now and around the capsule
just to free it from the breast tissue.
Louise's boob job went bad due to capsular contraction.
It occurs when the capsule of scar tissue that naturally forms around the implant
hardens and contracts.
So, the dark area in the middle is now the breast implant,
and this is the capsule from around it.
OK, so there it is.
You can see little creases where the tissue has grown
into the folds of the implant.
The implant, essentially, would normally sit flat on the breast like this,
and this one, with the capsule, has been folded up somewhat.
With the old implant out, Richard sets about removing the capsule.
So, this is the sac that the implant was sitting in,
the capsule that it's formed.
You can see there it's really quite firm, you know, I can't stretch it or break it.
And what are you doing?
We're just giving it a good rinse out now
with some disinfectant and some salt water.
Richard then performs the uplift.
We're just doing what we call placating,
which means pulling together with stitches, the breast tissue,
to try and improve the shape of the breast
and turn it from something that's relatively flat
to something that has a little bit more projection.
With the uplift complete, Richard inserts the new implant.
Then we're going to start closing the wound.
OK, we'll leave it there.
Right breast finished, he repeats the procedure on the left.
If we're able just to sit her up before we wake her up
just to make sure everything's OK.
I'm very happy, everything's gone fine.
Her breasts have been lifted, the implants exchanged,
the capsule taken away, and that was the aim.
The end result on the table looks very satisfactory.
Just relax, just relax.
Louise, you've done so well.
Well done, Louise.
With the operation finished, Louise is taken to recovery.
But almost immediately,
Richard and the team suspect that there's something wrong.
Put me back to sleep, it's killing me!
Over the next hour, her condition deteriorates.
She complains of excruciating pain in her leg.
Something's seriously wrong with it.
Let's just try and relax, try and relax.
- Can you feel me touching your toes? - Yes.
Louise has compartment syndrome in her leg,
an extremely rare complication.
She's rushed back into the operating theatre
for emergency surgery.
After 60 minutes,
Louise leaves the operating theatre for a second time.
She developed a very rare and unusual complication
of having an operation,
which is an increase in pressure in the leg
which causes pain and discomfort,
and most importantly, the pressure can build up to such an extent
that it can actually affect the muscles,
and if not diagnosed or treated early,
potentially can cause the muscles in the lower leg to die.
It was bad. Really bad.
I wouldn't wish that on my worst nightmare.
It was pain.
Finally, Louise can start her recovery.
We'll return to see how she gets on.
It's five weeks since Dawn had surgery
to remove a ridge of unsightly skin and a bulge in her groin
left following excess skin removal.
She's back to see aesthetic surgeon Patrick Mallucci
for her final consultation.
Now, let's have a little look. What I'm going to do,
I need to have a look all the way down there, Dawn.
Let's just have a wee look. Let's have a look.
Wow, that's great, isn't it?
- The scar's lovely. - It's healed beautifully.
That looks really good.
And that scar's... I mean, the whole contour there is much nicer.
It's a lot smoother, it's lovely.
And the scar's healed really well,
and I think, you know, you've been sort of hitched up
- just how we wanted to as well. - Yeah.
That's great.
It's not fat and horrible.
And again, just massage and moisturise the scar there.
It looks good. I mean, that whole contour looks really good.
It's a lot smoother and a lot flatter.
- Yeah. Good. OK. - Thank you very much.
So, these are your original pictures,
and I think you can see here, that sort of big quantity
that was just, which has really gone now, which is great.
You can see how wide the scar was, where there's nothing now.
And again, the sort of the dip in, in there,
so that looks really good.
Yeah, I would say...
- Fantastic. - Well worth it, Dawn.
It certainly was, I'm over the moon, I'm really happy.
- Great. - Really, really happy.
So, Dawn's journey to a new body reaches its conclusion,
gone is the unsightly ridge and bulging groin,
and in its place, a smooth stomach.
I'm over the moon with the results of the surgery,
I now feel as though I've got the body that I always wanted,
and I'm really happy.
The procedure has left Dawn bursting with confidence,
ready to face the world and reclaim the life she lost to obesity.
It's been several days since Louise's boob job
at the Weymouth Hospital, where she developed compartment syndrome,
an extremely rare complication
that could have resulted in her losing her left leg.
It was bad.
Really bad.
Louise was transferred to the Charing Cross Hospital
where she continued her recovery
in the care of NHS consultant Navid Jillali.
- Tell me when you can feel it? - I can feel it.
I got called by Richard Young, and following that call
and listening to the history I felt that I needed
to come and see Louise and assess her at the Weymouth Hospital.
And just bring your ankle up for me, and then push down against my hand.
Compartment syndrome is an extremely serious condition.
Muscle cannot survive
without adequate blood supply for more than six hours.
So it was imperative that we acted quickly
in order to actually get the blood flow re-established again.
If you don't treat a compartment syndrome,
she will have been left with pretty much a useless leg,
and in some scenarios we've had to amputate a leg
because it's actually more troublesome having it there than not having it there.
That's all fine, Louise.
It's all healed and, you know,
there seems to be no evidence of any damage to any muscle,
so I think we can get you dressed up and let you go home today.
- OK, thank you. - Alright.
With her leg healing, it's nearly time
for Louise to return to her family in Manchester.
But not before one final visit to Richard Young
to check her new breasts.
OK, fantastic.
Well, the breasts themselves look absolutely fine,
you know, where we made the nipple smaller and perter boobs,
and moved them up.
- Thank you. Sorry. - Moved them out of your lap.
I promised myself wouldn't get upset, but that's just amazing.
- No pain. No. - No pain at all. Are you sure?
If you feel up to it we've got a mirror just behind us if you want to have a look?
- My God. - OK.
Look at me nipple, it's dead lickle.
Gone are her saggy, painful, uneven breasts,
and in their place, a pert bust.
Louise is pain free
and ready to face the future with renewed confidence,
now that she's got the breasts she always wanted.
I'm very happy. It doesn't hurt whatsoever.
I can't thank you enough. You've changed my life.
Next time, the man who's moob job
left him minus a nipple.
It does look like I've been attacked by a shark.
The woman whose face has been destroyed by cosmetic filler.
My cheek become very big, like balls.
And the permanent dental implants that were anything but.