Medical tourism is a very hot—and controversial—topic, and one country has emerged as a popular destination for plastic surgery: Turkey. But is undergoing plastic surgery in Turkey safe? Vice investigates.
Turkey has become a hotspot for medical tourism in recent years, attracting nearly 600,000 people for health services in the first half of 2022, according to the website of USHAŞ, a Turkish state owned healthcare company. The International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery ranks Turkey among the top 10 countries performing the most popular aesthetic surgeries, including breast augmentation, eyelid surgery, tummy tuck procedures, liposuction and rhinoplasty. Turkey also ranks fifth for the total number of aesthetic procedures carried out in 2020, at just short of 950,000.
Earlier this year, the British government updated its travel advice to say they were aware of 20 British nationals who had died following medical visits to Turkey since January 2019. The medical tourism industry is not internationally regulated, so there is little comparative data available on the rates of post-procedure complications in different countries.
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