A third of people who undergo plastic surgery choose to have the procedure abroad, lured by cheaper prices.
But as with most cut-price offers, it's essential to do your research thoroughly, and even if you do so, surgery overseas comes with a risk of little to no patient aftercare.
In fact, reported The Mirror earlier this year, a survey by Confused.com found that nearly half of patients aren’t happy with the results of their operations, with one in five needing corrective treatment when they get back home.
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Nicole Burnett, 30, a call centre worker, falls in the latter category after a long-awaited breast augmentation surgery in Turkey went awry.
Nicole was initially ecstatic at the results until she developed a tear and then an infection. It was necessary for surgeons in Britain to remove the implants immediately, which left her with lopsided, sagging breasts.
Featured in the show Botched Up Bodies: Abroad On Channel 5, Nicole explained her initial reasons for undergoing surgery. She had lost of lot of weight, which in turn, impacted her breasts. She worked two jobs to save up the money for the surgery.
"I used to go to the gym in padded bras and put sports bras on top of them so people wouldn't notice the sagging in my breasts. 'The relationship I was in at the time suffered because I wouldn't remove my bra, even when going to bed at night and when I took my bra off, it didn't feel right because my breasts were sagging like an old woman's."
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When Cosmetic Surgery Goes Wrong
She was impressed by a company in Turkey who promised to look after her in a luxury hotel and that she could relax, and have a bit of a holiday. "I thought I could get the breasts I want in less time and at a lower cost."
Only three weeks after returning from Turkey, she says: "The right breast really started to grow in size, and the left breast developed a scar and looked yellow. The swelling in the right breast was so big I thought it was going to burst."
The NHS doctors told her there was a pocket of fluid in the right breast and an infection in the left breast, and that the implants would have to come out immediately. "I couldn't stop crying. Everything I had worked so hard to get was taken away from me."
After the NHS surgery, her breasts "looked worse than they looked before." On the programme, we see her visit a reconstructive surgeon Patrick Mallucci who tells her she can have a lift to reshape what is already there or to have implants.
However, a discovery is made which is that the surgeon finds that some of Nicole's breast fat is rotting, so rather than implants, she has a procedure to firm up the breast.
Botched Up Bodies: Abroad On Channel 5 Thursday at 10pm.