A significant part of my practice is corrective. Much of that work involves patients treated elsewhere, and a growing proportion of it involves patients treated abroad.
I want to be careful here, because the conversation about cosmetic tourism is often a proxy for something less respectable. There are excellent surgeons in Turkey, in Iran, in South Korea, and in several of those countries the standard of rhinoplasty in particular exceeds what is routinely available in the UK. Volume produces expertise. Pretending otherwise is provincial and untrue.
The problem is not where the surgery happens. It's what surrounds it.
Selection
The consultation is frequently conducted remotely, briefly, sometimes by someone who is not the operating surgeon, occasionally by someone who is not clinically qualified at all. The single most protective act in cosmetic surgery is declining to operate, and it is almost impossible to perform over a messaging app against a deposit already paid.
Aftercare
Complications do not respect travel dates. The period when a surgical result is most vulnerable — bleeding, infection, early asymmetry, the point at which an intervention might still salvage things — falls exactly when the patient is on a plane or newly home with no clinical relationship on this side. British clinicians then inherit a problem with no operative record, often no idea what was used or what plane it was placed in, and no route back to the person responsible.
Accountability
If a UK surgeon harms a patient, there is a regulator, an insurer and a legal route. Across borders there is generally none of that in any practical sense. The patient pays twice: once for the operation and again for its correction.
What I'd actually say to someone considering it
The Committee that reported this year identified cosmetic tourism as an area requiring action. I'd agree, though I'd be honest that I don't know what effective action looks like. You cannot regulate another country's clinics, and restricting UK advertising of overseas providers would be a partial measure at best.
So something narrower and more useful than a warning. Find out who is operating and speak to them directly before you pay anything. Establish, in writing, what happens if something goes wrong at day five and at week six. Arrange your follow-up care here before you travel, not after. And treat any clinic that won't engage with those three questions as having answered them.