Cosmetic surgery tourism is on the rise.
More and more Brits are taking up foreign offers of the body beautiful
at a fraction of the UK price.
The main attraction for UK patients to go abroad is cost.
And, of course, that's probably the worst reason around which to make a decision.
When people combine a tuck with a tan,
there's a high risk of ending up botched-up abroad.
Nobody thinks the problems are going to happen to them.
Surgery is not a holiday. There are serious risks to be taken and understood.
Tonight, a mangled mouth on a holiday to Prague.
I don't have my smile any more.
Destroyed dentures.
They never gave me an injection.
The two nurses were actually pinning me down
because I was trying to get out of the chair.
And botched breasts on the Turkish Riviera.
It's just overgrown in size.
It was absolutely huge and then the scar was burst open.
Last year, 25,000 Brits travelled abroad for cosmetic surgery.
32-year-old actress Barbara Naughton was one of them,
although she didn't get the result she wanted.
Barbara banged her nose as a child,
leaving her with a deviated septum and a nose she loathed.
Every time I saw a photograph of myself, I just hated it.
That I used to slash a knife through my photograph.
I used to say, "That's not the way I came into this world."
After exploring options in her native Ireland,
she started to look further afield.
I felt that it's better going abroad because it was cheaper
and I thought it would be the same quality of surgery.
Well, the laws abroad may be very different from the laws in the UK.
It's a sad fact that aesthetic surgery
is not well regulated, even in this country,
and possibly even less well-regulated abroad.
Barbara handed over £7,500
and headed to a clinic in the Czech capital, Prague,
where after some hard selling by her surgeon,
she made a last-minute addition to her cosmetic surgery shopping list.
You see your lip, he said, I could, um..
enhance the top layer
and it matches your bottom lip, which has great volume in it.
So I thought, I'll try that surgery.
Right after the surgery, I didn't understand why the whole face was covered.
And when the bandages came off, she was shocked by the results.
She had huge pulsating lips and she could barely breathe through her nose,
but the Czech surgeons told her it would be fine eventually.
I waited patiently for several months,
isolated myself from going out, waiting for the big change to happen.
My smile was gone.
My nostrils were as wide as a pig's nose.
I thought to myself, "What on God's earth happened to me?"
Barbara returned to Prague to confront the doctor with his creation.
They offered her a second, cut-price operation to try and fix her face,
but the results are equally as bad.
I don't have my smile any more.
I put my trust and faith in the clinic
and they've... betrayed my trust.
After paying a total close to £9,000,
Barbara is left horrified with the results,
so she's travelled to London
to see if her botched lips and nose can be repaired.
Thinking about the amount of time that I had spent in the last few years of...
Sorry.
..running around in circles,
getting injections and looking at my lip bleeding.
I'm just hoping that I could just live a normal life again.
She has an appointment with Dr Niall Kirkpatrick,
a specialist in facial reconstruction.
My feeling is that by doing an operation
where we would make some cuts on the inside of the lip here,
we could just debulk that so that
your lip would just be smaller in comparison.
If I can just get you to tilt your head back.
Niall also examines her nose to see why she's having difficulty breathing.
The main problem in terms of the breathing
seems to be that you've got very large what are called inferior turbinates
and it may be that just by shrinking those down a little bit
we might be able to improve the breathing rather than having any major surgery.
Barbara will return in three weeks' time for an operation to fix her face.
Coming up - botched breasts.
Turkish boobs gone bad.
He advised me that I'd be staying in a luxury hotel and be taken care of.
Belgian tummy tuck terror.
They made a massive cavity just above my pubic bone.
It was like that, that big you could put your fist inside it.
And Barbara goes under the knife.
What I'm going to do is just mark out what I think is safe.
We can always come back and take more if we have to.
Cosmetic surgery tourism is on the rise
as more and more people fall for cheap deals, special offers
and the chance to combine surgery with sunbathing.
The number of Brits going abroad for cosmetic surgery tourism
is going up by 20% annually.
But going abroad is full of risks and the number needing help
on their return to the UK is also on the increase.
For 50-year-old mother of two Marion Dawkins
surgery back in the UK was lifesaving.
After losing weight, Marion was left with an apron of excess belly fat.
The first time I considered having cosmetic surgery
was after a physical encounter with my partner,
who pointed out that I had an apron and asked me, "Well, what's that?"
I lifted it up and he was really quite repulsed by it.
With her confidence shattered by her partner's remarks,
Marion started to look into surgery options
and found a clinic she thought she could trust.
I was made aware that the surgery in the UK is going to cost me double
what it could cost me in Belgium, so I decided to go for my surgery in Belgium.
In search of a flat stomach,
Marion handed over £3,700 cash and headed to Belgium.
I thought cosmetic, snip-snip, and over and done with,
but it actually did not turn out that way at all.
While she was under the knife, surgeons removed seven pounds of skin,
tightened her stomach and inserted drains to remove excess fluid.
Woke up in the hotel. I had two drains coming out of the wound
and I heard one drain collapsing because it just went, "Pssh!"
And the blood went everywhere.
Marion immediately contacted her Belgian clinic and the surgeon rushed over.
When he arrived, he didn't even look at it.
He goes, "It's nothing to worry about."
Three days later, Marion returned to the clinic to have her drains removed.
But on her return to the UK, things soon took a turn for the worse.
I stood in the kitchen and made myself a cup of coffee and next thing I know
is all this stuff is just coming out of my stomach.
And a brown, horrible-smelling fluid that went down my legs on the floor.
I just screamed.
Marion headed straight for her local A&E, who told her she'd had a huge haematoma,
a build-up of fluid that was now escaping through her scar.
The area around the wound was now rotting
and poisoning Marion's blood, leading to a severe kidney infection.
I literally underwent surgery almost every day for a week,
but the infection had spread itself behind the tummy tuck.
They had to create a massive cavity just above my pubic bone
and it was like that, it was that big you could put your fist inside it.
Five weeks after she went into hospital,
Marion was discharged but her trip to Belgium gave her scars
that run deeper than those left by the hospital.
All my hopes I put into that, my money I put into it, my dream,
everything was just shattered.
I didn't think that I ever physically would be attractive to a man again
let alone looking at myself, looking in the mirror.
It was just...
I'll never forget it.
Marion regrets her decision to go abroad for surgery and she's not alone.
With Britain becoming a nation of dieters,
we now spend two billion a year on trying to shed the pounds.
But weight loss will create a problem in need of a surgical fix -
saggy left-over skin.
53-year-old grandmother Marcia used to weigh in at 16 stone,
but she managed to shed seven through diet and exercise.
I felt great for it. I felt I looked good as well.
My clothes looked great on me but...
the only downside of that was my arms.
The skin had stretched and lost its elasticity
leaving her with ugly saggy arms.
I'd always have to buy a size larger in a jacket, for instance,
just so that my arms could fit into it.
I wanted to feel feminine and I wanted to look feminine.
With her 50th birthday approaching,
Marcia decided she would treat herself to a special present -
cosmetic surgery.
So I spent hours on the internet
trying to find a surgeon.
It wasn't the price that mattered so much,
it was had he worked on women of colour,
only because you may be more prone to scarring.
Marcia's search led her to a supposedly experienced surgeon in this field
based in Belgium.
She shelled out £3,500 and was soon in Belgium, hoping for the perfect arms.
It was a very, very nice clinic.
The doctor told me what he was going to do
and he knows how to deal with working on women of colour, so I felt really calm.
Marcia hoped the two-hour operation would remove the excess skin,
but when the doctors took off the bandages, the results were a disaster.
She still had saggy arms and now had scars that ran from her armpit to her elbow.
I had the scarring to prove that I'd had the surgery,
but the actual size of my arms still looked the same.
I was told by the surgeon that that was normal.
It was still swollen so I wouldn't see any difference for at least a few weeks.
But four months later, Marcia is still waiting for results.
I'm really angry with this surgeon.
I can't even bear to look at my arms.
I do regret having the surgery because I do, I feel like a freak.
Hoping that something can be done,
she's in Sussex to meet plastic surgeon Peter Arnstein.
So this is a slightly kind of longer curve
and this is a bit more droopy, isn't it?
And the scars run right into the armpit.
- So is that quite tight for you as well? - It is very tight.
This is an operation which is, normally under tension.
I have to say this is not really under tension. So what I would suggest,
using this scar again, taking out much more fat and skin.
So if you had an arm like that, would that suit you better?
I would love an arm like that.
She has had no recourse to further opinion and back-up
following her trip to Belgium and...
to me, that is just unforgiveable.
For a patient to be left essentially adrift is not acceptable.
Marcia will return in two weeks for an operation
to repair her botched-up arms.
It's not just cosmetic surgery that is pushing people abroad.
Cosmetic dentistry is also expensive in the UK
and, as a result, more and more people are heading overseas for cheaper deals.
A fear of the dentist and a love of fizzy drinks
combined to give 53-year-old firefighter Stephen Carter
a mouth of fillings, caps and false teeth.
His weak teeth took a hit during a play fight at work.
And it actually broke a bridge which
covered two teeth and three false teeth so I was left with five teeth.
I didn't use to smile as much as I used to.
I used to have quite a nice smile in my younger days.
He almost became withdrawn with it. He didn't want to speak out loud with it.
He was very conscious of his teeth all the time.
Over the next two years, Stephen weighed up his options,
but the cost of sorting his mangled mouth held him back.
The prices in Britain were 16,000 to 21,000, which I thought was a lot of money
and then I was at my local dentist just having a check-up
and it was them that said, "Go abroad.
You can get it done for half the price."
Stephen found a surgery in Budapest, Hungary,
which offered cheap implants, free accommodation
and a package that seemed to surpass what was on offer in the UK.
It took me a long time to actually decide to go for it.
They offered me a discount of around £500 if I paid in cash.
Stephen opted for a fixed palette on the top of his mouth
with a lifetime guarantee, costing a total of £6,500 up front in cash.
The teeth were actually taken out in London and then I went to Budapest.
The actual surgery, again, it looked very professional, very clean, very hygienic.
All seemed to go well and Stephen was pleased when the results were revealed.
My teeth were good, strong and a nice smile.
Within three months, one of the teeth broke off completely.
I just bit into a Mars bar and I thought this is a bit crunchy, this Mars bar.
Pulled this bit out and there was a bit of tooth.
Stephen immediately contacted his company
and got a replacement tooth fitted at their London surgery
under his lifetime guarantee but three weeks later, another tooth fell out.
I had a lifetime guarantee which appeared to be totally useless to me.
They were just falling to bits.
The third time it happened, I insisted they pay my train fares,
which they did pay, but nothing else.
Soon it wasn't just teeth that were falling out.
The structure attached into Stephen's gums
snapped meaning he would have to return to Hungary at his own cost
for totally new implants.
Even the replacement over denture broke several times
and I just asked them for my money back.
With only a 25% refund and regular flights to Hungary to pay for,
Stephen is left having spent over £10,000
and a set of teeth in worse shape than when he began.
I'd like a nice set of teeth.
I'd like to be able to properly smile again with confidence.
I'd like to be able to properly eat again.
It would mean the world to me to have my teeth done properly.
Hoping that something can be done to fix his terrible teeth,
Stephen has come to London to see Adam Slade.
Can I pop this out?
It's not too tricky, is it?
So, OK, what I need to know about you is not immediately visible.
So what we'll do is we'll take a CT scan of your top teeth.
The CT scan will show Adam what bone density is like beneath the gums.
He will need to attach an implant to whatever bone is there.
From our point of view, it's not in the optimal position for us to work with,
because if we're going to move you into a fixed superstructure,
we're going to want, ideally, a little bit more space to play with
so we can make the superstructure more solid.
So we may have to think about removing that implant
and changing it for a different one.
Stephen will return to Adam's surgery to see if a new implant can save him
from a lifetime of pain and dropping dentures.
It's the day of Barbara's operation to try and fix her lips and nose.
Plastic surgeon Niall Kirkpatrick
is set to operate to remove the fat grafts put in by a surgeon in Prague.
The reduction of her lip and reshaping of her nostril will be far from easy.
The difficulties are that you're not dealing with tissues
that are unscarred and you don't know quite where the fat has all been placed.
Niall makes incisions on the top of the lip,
allowing him access to the fat grafts.
So you can see this big blob of yellow fat,
which is a graft.
And what I need to do now is to peel it away from all this normal muscle.
Forty-five minutes in and the grafts are removed.
The process of reshaping can begin.
Niall must now carefully decide how much of the inner lining to remove
by marking out the unnecessary skin.
What I don't want to do is roll the lip in too much,
that then makes a slightly unnatural shape to the lip.
I think I'd just like to take a couple of millimetres away more.
We know that when the swelling goes down,
the lip will be much, much less full
just because so much fat came out.
Once Niall is happy with the result, it's time to sew the lip back up.
We now know the only thing in Barbara's lips is what's meant to be there.
As the swelling goes, the shape will dramatically improve for her.
Niall must also fix her enlarged nostrils.
He burns the inside to shrivel them to a suitable size.
And it's very successfully shrunk it right back. Good.
Barbara, we're going to recovery, OK? All finished.
After almost two hours in theatre,
Barbara now has a smaller top lip
and nostrils that will help her breathe easily.
As she now waits for the swelling to go down,
she can't help but compare this experience with her Czech nightmare.
Here after a couple of hours, my face is alive.
I'm sitting up normally, no external bruises or nothing.
It's different.
And I realise what I've been through over there.
I now see the difference.
It's been four weeks since Barbara's operation
and she's back in London to check on the progress.
That's great because, you can see that the scar is really healing nicely
and it's clearly quite a lot less swollen and sticking out than it used to be.
The operation appears to be working.
Her breathing has improved and her lips have a more natural shape.
She just feels more confident in herself
and if surgery does anything, that's what you really want it to do,
is give somebody a sense of confidence in their appearance.
I'm ever so grateful for you for doing that.
Barbara will have to wait for the swelling to fully recede
before she sees the full results, but the signs are promising.
She is now able to approach life with a renewed optimism.
I didn't expect to be so lucky,
that someone would be able to reverse the surgery.
Well, I feel absolutely grateful because I feel more natural again...
and I can meet my friends now.
So I feel human again, I should say.
Still to come - botched breasts.
The left breast looks like it's smaller than the right one, it's more lifted.
Stephen's dodgy dental work is repaired.
Fairly still. That's just an air space
and you can't attach implants to air. They have to be in bone.
And Marcia heads to surgery.
You can see just how much fat there is,
which suggests the previous operation really hadn't done very much.
In the past two years, there's been a huge increase in patients seeking medical help
after cosmetic surgery holidays.
Over the last ten years, we're seeing
more and more the results and the disasters
which are emanating from cosmetic surgery tourism.
Today, grandmother Marcia is undergoing an operation in a bid
to remove the saggy arm skin
that was left scarred in a botched procedure in Belgium.
I'm really angry with this surgeon because...
I do, I feel like a freak.
Surgeon Peter Arnstein will be leading the operating team.
First, Peter marks Marcia up.
Let's see if we can't move them back a bit.
These lines act as a guide and help Peter keep the scarring lines straight.
This is the extra skin we can take out, that width and the...
Peter and his team will remove the excess fat from her arms
and then tighten up the skin so it's no longer baggy.
Surgeons in general are kind of salvage experts, so where surgery goes wrong,
they tend to be called in to try and put things right,
make the best of a bad job sometimes and I would say this classifies as one of those.
Marcia is given multiple injections of adrenalin and local anaesthetic
to stop bleeding and reduce pain.
Once her arms are covered with an antiseptic solution,
Peter begins to work on her right arm.
So we're just cutting through the fat.
So you can see all the yellow fat.
So it's interesting to see how fat is not like toothpaste,
smooth and so on, but in fact it's quite large, almost like pebbles.
So you can see just how much surplus fat there is in Marcia's arm still,
which suggests that the previous operation really hadn't done very much.
After 30 minutes, Peter has removed 123 grams of fatty tissue.
Now he must close the wound to see what sort of shape it has given Marcia's arms.
There's still quite a lot of that skin here now we've taken the fat out.
I think there's enough fat gone to give her a nice shaped arm,
but I think certainly we can take more skin which is great.
The excess skin on Marcia's arms is removed.
Right, let's go with that.
Once Peter is happy that the wound is tight enough,
he begins to suture it closed.
I've taken some of the outer surface of the skin and the perimeter of the wound
which leaves quite a tough layer to stitch together
and by stitching it with long-lasting dissolving stitches,
it will support the wound well and hopefully it won't stretch.
That's Marcia's right arm done.
Peter now repeats the same process on Marcia's left arm.
One needs to go cautiously, not make it too tight.
After one and a half hours, Peter has removed a total of 250 grams of fat
and closed the wounds.
With the surgery over, the healing process can now begin.
Operation's all finished. Let's take you to recovery.
Big breaths for me.
Two weeks later, Marcia is back in Sussex to check on progress.
Yes, settling down quite nicely, isn't it? It's healing nicely.
Don't worry about these little folds. They'll sort themselves out.
OK.
At this stage the operation appears to have been a resounding success.
Marcia's arms are less flabby and have a more natural shape.
The scarring is beginning to heal but a full recovery is still months away.
It's a stark difference to her visit to Belgium.
She came wearing a sleeveless top,
which suggests that she has gained or regained her confidence,
and that's very important for her.
The operation has given Marcia a new lease of life and a new wardrobe.
The dress I'm wearing today
is the first time that I have ventured to wear feminine clothes, if you like.
I can show my arms with pride now.
I love my new arms.
They look fantastic and I feel really, really good.
It's the day of Stephen's operation
and he's in London to see if the dental surgeons
can remove his disastrous Hungarian implant
and replace it with a more stable set of teeth.
Adam Slade starts by giving Stephen an anaesthetic injection in his mouth
to eliminate pain during the operation.
It won't be pleasant but...
This is exactly the same as if you were having a filling or any of those things.
Adam must remove the five metal implants
that were holding the dental superstructure incorrectly
in Stephen's gums.
The key here is to get these off. Just open really wide for me.
The implants are attached into the bone,
meaning Adam must use force to remove them.
So you'll feel quite a lot of pressure.
OK.
That is one of your implants out. That is really, really good news,
Stephen, because we've literally managed to remove it without even moving the gum.
But the other implants are proving more resistant and Adam has to drill into them.
Pain.
- Pain up the top here? - Yeah.
With Stephen in pain, there is a need for more anaesthetic.
Got it. That's the second connector screw out.
For the remaining implants, Adam uses a dental torque wrench
which helps speed up the process.
OK, Stephen, so we've taken out all four implants.
After an hour, Stephen is now without the useless implants given to him in Hungary.
Adam must try to replace them with more effective implants
We need the implant to be stable, very stable,
But we've got to sort of run up what is basically the floor of the sinus.
That's just an air space and you can't attach implants to air.
They have to be in bone.
Adam places a guide denture in to make sure it fits properly onto Stephen's gums.
Once the positioning is correct, it's time to start putting in the new implants.
Hold still, Stephen, very still. Very still.
Yeah, we're not onto the slightly more tricky, little bit more challenging area.
I'm just looking to see where... where the bone is
so that we can make an adjustment for
getting the maximum height and the stability.
Just open wide for me there. Stephen, open really wide.
That is probably...
better than we maybe imagined.
With the bone structure better than he thought,
Adam is able to screw in the remaining implants,
which will hold the load of a permanent fixture properly.
So we've connected these two little metal cylinders on top of the implants,
abutments, and we've got to line these up now.
Well, not line them up but align them with the teeth.
That's good, well done.
Right, so this is acrylic or it's an acrylic.
It's a fast-setting acrylic and what it's going to do is allow me to locate...
Keep very still for me there, Stephen. That's brilliant, very still.
..the cylinders to the denture or what is at the moment a denture.
I'm pretty happy. When it's set, we'll have a look. Hold still, still.
So we get our first glimpse of what he might look like or will look like.
It's still getting stuck on this four here, propped open.
No, no, no... Yeah, thank you. Just open wide.
Stephen's bite is hitting the denture too much so it must be removed and remoulded.
Well done, really well done.
OK, so what we've done is we've just put the... what are called impression copings,
these are just negatives, if you like,
of the top of the abutments on top of each implant.
So they then stick out.
We then link those together with little rigid bars.
Then we take an impression right over the top of the whole lot
and we can then take that out of the mouth and give that to the lab.
Let's have a little look there.
OK, just open really wide for me.
This is... Yeah, indeed, it's one of our moments of truth.
What's good news is that
it slots straight into place first time, There's no adjustment there, for sure.
This is the curing light.
- You all right? - Yes, you?
- That looks better. - Yeah.
It's here that I can really see the difference.
It went really well, really, really well.
The final result looks fantastic. It's really good.
It really is pleasing to see somebody literally look and see a whole new them.
I think I've got an excellent smile now...
and my teeth fit. When I bite, all the teeth fit together.
There's no rocking or anything. I'm really, really, really impressed.
Got his smile back. It's made him look younger.
It's built up the whole of the side of his face.
- It's made me good-looking again. - Already he's looking more confident.
Breast augmentation is the most popular surgery for women in the UK,
but with the average price of going under the knife here coming in at £5,000,
it's out of reach for many women.
More and more are turning to cheaper options abroad,
like 30-year-old call centre worker Nicole Burnett.
After losing weight, she dropped three cup sizes
and was unhappy with the results.
I used to go to the gym wearing padded bras and put sports bras on top of them
so that people wouldn't notice the sagging in my breasts.
The relationship I was in at the time, it interfered as...
I wouldn't remove my bra, even going to bed at night,
because I felt that when I took my bra off, I didn't feel right.
It was the sagging of the breasts. It looked like an old woman
and thought the best thing for me to do was to have breast implants
to stop me having to wear padded bras every day of my life
and chicken fillets in my bras all the time.
I thought the best thing for me to do
was to look into having cosmetic surgery to make me feel better.
Nicole decided the only solution was to have discount surgery abroad
and she's not alone.
Our survey reveals 43% of you would consider going abroad for surgery
in an attempt to reduce the cost.
When I looked into things abroad, I noticed the difference and I thought,
I can get the perfect breasts that I'm looking for in less time and at less cost.
Nicole tracked down a clinic in Turkey
that offered her the breast implants she dreamed of at a fraction of the UK cost.
The company that I chose to go with responded to me really quick,
so I thought great customer service.
Staying in a luxury hotel and being taken care of.
Told me about the sights and how it was relaxing,
and at the same time I would have a bit of a holiday there.
They'd give me 100% guarantee that I'd be happy.
Nicole was soon on a plane to Turkey
and at first the results appeared to be successful.
You know, I was amazed with the results.
It looked exactly what I was looking for.
They looked great and I thought that was the start of a new, a new me.
But the happiness was short-lived.
Only three weeks after returning, Nicole began to experience complications.
The right breast had started to really grow in size
and then the left breast and the scar opened up,
and started to look a kind of a yellowy.
I was getting pains wherever the leakage was coming out.
Over the course of the next couple of days, things got a lot worse.
The swelling of the right breast was absolutely huge and then it was so sore,
I felt as if, you know, the breast was about to burst.
With her Turkish surgeon suddenly disappearing,
she turned to the NHS, who told her that she had an infection in her left breast
and a pocket of fluid swelling in her right.
The breast implants she'd worked two jobs for
were going to have to come out immediately.
I couldn't stop crying. It's everything I'd worked so hard to get was,
it was being taken away from me.
Once the implants came out...
Nicole was left with empty sagging breasts.
My breasts looked worse now than what they ever did.
The age I'm at should be a time where I'm looking to settle down
and be happy but it's taken away the happy side.
Nicole has paid out £3,000 and has worse breasts than she started with.
Desperate to see if anything can be done,
she is in London to meet plastic surgeon and breast specialist Patrick Mallucci.
Obviously, the left breast looks like it's...
slightly smaller than the right one, it's more lifted.
I'll just have a little look at the scar on the side here
where I presume those silicon lumps were.
I'll take a little measurement.
There's about a two-centimetre difference in height.
There's no way you could just have an implant in there.
That breast is just far too droopy
and that's going to mean re-arranging the breast tissue
so that we move it back up onto the chest wall.
And then the other way, of course, is going down the implant route again
to try and even you out as well, achieving a nice breast shape.
She's left to decide whether she wants to run the risk of further breast implants
or whether to have a lift to reshape what's already there.
Still ahead, Nicole's breasts are opened up for the third time.
It's a sinus track. You can see that that goes quite far in.
16% of cosmetic surgery tourists from the UK end up with complications.
30-year-old Nicole is one of the many who have suffered
when a trip to Turkey left her with botched breasts.
I couldn't stop crying. It's everything I'd worked so hard to get
was being taken away from me.
My breasts looked worse now than what they ever did.
She's now decided to have fresh implants back in the UK.
It's the day before her operation,
so she's come to see surgeon Patrick Mallucci for a pre-op check.
Good, good, good. Right.
Remember that, you know, you're quite uneven between the two sides
and the idea...
Um... Has that opened since we last met?
It tends to do that sometimes and then closes up but I hadn't noticed that.
There is an unexpected development. Nicole has new holes at the base of her breast.
That's going in quite far. There's something amiss inside.
Patrick thinks some of Nicole's breast fat has not survived surgery.
It's creating holes,
causing infection to ooze out and is threatening to rot away what remains.
Yeah, that's a tricky one. It does... it does change things.
What about the procedure you spoke about first time?
Is that something you'd revert to?
Yeah, I would be very, very resistant to putting in an implant.
It's shattering news for Nicole.
She won't be able to have her dream implants tomorrow.
The doctors will have to operate to rescue what remains of her rotting breasts.
As she waits, the reality of the situation is all too clear.
Really worried at the fact, you know, how I'm going to look after this.
Scared of how much more will be cut away and how much worse it'll make things look.
Patrick and his team will open her up, remove the fat
and then sew her up, closing the unsightly holes.
Nicole is covered in an antiseptic solution
to make sure the area is completely sterile before Patrick gets to work.
It's a sinus track. You can see that that goes quite far in,
so we're going to have a little look at that.
I'm just quite interested as well.
It's spanning across both sides.
I don't really know what I'm going to find,
but I'm just looking at a little bit of scar tissue,
um...
which is not surprising given...
the infective process.
Patrick evaluates how deep the damage goes
uses a length of gauze pushed into Nicole's sinal track.
It does go in quite a long way, yeah.
We knew there was a bit of a cavity there.
They will now remove the rotting fat caused by the infection.
It's what we call fat necrosis. It's unhealthy fat.
Understandably Nicole was concerned and worried
about losing more volume,
but you can't keep unhealthy tissue.
Nicole isn't the only one with concerns.
Her dad has come to support her and is waiting for news.
Been worrying about her quite a lot.
And it's.... In the first, I didn't really want her to go...
in the first place, to get it done but who am I to say, you know.
Taking some scarring out now as well.
Very hard, it's my daughter. You know...
it's pretty painful for the whole family.
Happy that they have removed the rotting fat,
Patrick cleans the wound with hydrogen peroxide.
It looks a lot cleaner, a lot healthier.
I think this is going to speed up the healing process.
The fact that it all looks a bit red is a healthy sign.
So I'm happy with that.
The team then sutures the opening closed.
There's nothing else sinister.
There's a good chance they have saved Nicole's infected breasts.
I'm very pleased we did that because there was a lot of sort of nasty mucky,
you know, tissue deep into the cavity.
I think from Nicole's point of view,
she's going to have to be more patient in terms of her final reconstruction.
She might not have the breasts she hoped for,
but the experience has left her with a new outlook.
I think it would be for my best interests to be safe and healthy,
that I miss out having an implant put in
and just have an uplift to fix what went wrong.
Nicole's experience is just one more example
of the dangers of cosmetic surgery abroad.
Cheap deals, special offers
and the chance to show off a new beach body
might seem like a good idea, but like most holiday purchases,
delight often turns to despair the second you return home.