Overview
- Specialist limb surgeons have reported a rise in patients coming back to UK hospitals after leg‑lengthening operations performed abroad with serious problems such as implant failure, poor bone healing, infection, nerve damage and joint stiffness.
- Researchers at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital reviewed seven recent cases and found all needed extensive follow‑up care, typically about ten hospital appointments and universal physiotherapy, with two patients requiring major corrective operations.
- The team calculated that treating the seven cases cost the NHS just over £36,000 and said the real national financial and staffing impact is likely larger but currently unmeasured because there is no routine data collection on complications from surgery done overseas.
- Patients in the study said cheaper prices, easy availability and persuasive online and social‑media marketing drove them to seek the procedure abroad, with five of the seven travelling to Turkey and one each to Russia and South Africa.
- The Royal College of Surgeons is calling for stronger public warnings and for the NHS to collect robust data on post‑treatment complications, and MPs are preparing to examine medical tourism and cosmetic‑procedure safety in upcoming committee hearings.