A driving examiner who went to Turkey for weight-loss surgery bled to death after the operation went wrong, an inquest was told.
Janet Lynne Savage, 54, a mother of two from Bangor in Gwynedd, suffered damage to a major artery during the procedure and went into cardiac arrest.
Despite the efforts of emergency teams at the hospital in Antalya, she died in the intensive care unit on August 6 last year.
The hearing in Caernarfon recorded a narrative conclusion, finding that she died due to acute blood loss during gastric sleeve surgery.
The inquest was told that Savage had contacted a health travel firm called Regenesis Health Travel at the start of July last year, and within 24 hours had signed up for surgery a month later in Turkey.
The flights, surgery and accommodation package cost £2,750.
Savage told the health tourism firm that she had already been taking the weight-loss drug Ozempic but no longer had access to it and was concerned she was rapidly gaining weight.
She said that she wanted to lose three stone (19kg), and told the travel company that her body mass index (BMI) was 30.7. According to the NHS, the index measures what is a healthy weight for your height, and would have put Savage at the very start of the obese range, which runs from 30 to 39.9.
The surgeon at the Turkish hospital said that he found a defect in Savage’s aorta during the procedure
WNS
Alison Ergun, a client service officer for Regenesis, said that Savage had declared in one message to her that she was a “little worried” about having the operation. She was sent a weblink to speak with other patients and the booking was made.
Ergun told the inquest that she was called on the day of the surgery.
“There was a complication and she had stopped breathing in the first few minutes of surgery,” she said in a statement.
Kate Robertson, senior coroner for North West Wales, said: “As with many deaths that occur abroad, the different judicial processes mean the evidence we are provided with isn’t perhaps to the extent we would have in this country.”
Robertson translated notes from the surgeon, Ramazan Azar, which described how there had been a 3-4mm “defect” in the aorta when the operation began, causing bleeding.
Azar said that the artery was repaired by the surgical team and the gastric sleeve procedure cancelled due to the complications.
However, medics in the intensive care unit were then unable to find a pulse and Savage was pronounced dead in the early hours of the morning.
The coroner said that she ordered a post-mortem examination when Savage’s body was repatriated to Wales, which was carried out at Glan Clwyd Hospital.
Muhammad Aslam, a consultant pathologist, reported that the cause of death was due to acute bleeding from the abdominal aorta that had been repaired.
Since 2019 at least 28 British medical tourists have died after travelling to Turkey for cosmetic treatments.
Last month an inquest heard that Emma Morrissey, 44, from Warrington, died after arranging a gastric sleeve operation in Turkey through Regenesis Health Travel, because she was not eligible to have the procedure on the NHS.
Emma Morrissey also died after complications during a weight-loss operation in Turkey caused internal bleeding
A coroner ruled Morrissey suffered internal bleeding that led to her death on July 8, the day after a Turkish surgeon punctured her abdomen during the procedure. The surgery, at Termessos Hospital, cost £2,800. A private operation in England costs about £12,000.
Jacqueline Devonish, senior coroner for Cheshire, said that Regenesis “relied upon patient self-declaration of health and made no independent inquiries to satisfy themselves that Emma was fit for the gastric sleeve procedure”.
In September an undercover Times investigation exposed Turkish clinics that were using unregulated meetings in England to sign people up.
The Care Quality Commission, the health watchdog, is investigating unregulated appointments to sign up patients for surgery in Turkey. The government is assessing whether regulations need to change to protect British patients.
There is no suggestion that Regenesis Health Travel held unregulated meetings.
