Aftercare when you return to the UK

Every British surgeon writing about surgery in Turkey makes the same argument, and it is the strongest one they have: you fly home, and then you are on your own.

They are not inventing it. It is the part of surgery abroad that fails most often, and most clinics answer it with a sentence about “24/7 support” and nothing else.

My answer is short, and the rest of this page is the detail behind it:

I do not operate on you and let go. You are followed for a full year. You can reach me at any point in it, and the healing is something we track together — not something you are left at home to interpret on your own.

Here is what that means in practice, in the order it happens.

Your week in Istanbul

You stay six nights after the operation. Your final examination is done in person, by me, the day before you fly.

Those six nights are not padding. They cover the period in which the problems that matter — bleeding, infection, an early implant issue — actually present. You are in the same city as the surgeon who operated on you for all of it, and you are seen in person, not messaged.

Clinics that discharge patients on day three are not being efficient. They are sending you home during the window in which complications appear.

Follow-up after you fly home

Two things run in parallel.

An open channel. From the day you land back home you can make contact whenever something concerns you — a photograph, a question, a video call if the photograph does not settle it. There is no waiting period and no limit on how often. This is the part that matters in the first weeks, because worries do not arrive on a schedule.

Scheduled reviews, which I initiate:

When	What
Month 1	Photographs, reviewed and answered
Month 3	Photographs — swelling has settled by this point
Month 6	Photographs, scar assessment
Month 12	Video call, final result

I ask for those photographs even when everything is fine — especially when everything is fine. A breast at month one is swollen and tells me very little. The same breast at month six has settled, and at month twelve it shows the result that will actually last. Those are the images that tell me whether the plan I made for you was the right one, and they are how I get better at planning for the next patient.

It takes you two minutes. Please do not skip them because nothing is wrong.

Stitches

Every suture used is dissolvable. There is nothing to remove, and in breast surgery there never is.

This sounds like a small detail. It is not. “Who takes my stitches out when I’m back in Manchester?” is the most common practical worry patients have about operating abroad, and for this operation the answer is that nobody has to. You do not need to find a GP willing to deal with another surgeon’s work.

If something goes wrong

You call the numbers you were given. Not a form, not a ticket, not an agency inbox.

You will be assessed the same day — by photograph if that settles it, by video call if it does not. Most post-operative worries are answered in one conversation, and the ones that are not need to be identified quickly, which is the entire point of being able to reach someone directly.

If a complication requires further surgery:

If one of my patients needs a revision, the hospital and operating theatre costs are ours. Your flight and hotel are yours.

The reason for that split is practical rather than mean. We cannot control which airline you book, and we cannot control how long you decide to stay after the operation. What is inside our control, we cover; what is not, we do not pretend to.

That commitment is written here deliberately. Ask any clinic you are considering to put their equivalent in writing before you book. What they say to that question tells you more than anything on their website.

What we do not promise

We do not promise that nothing will go wrong. Breast surgery has a complication rate and no surgeon anywhere has abolished it. Capsular contracture, asymmetry, changes in nipple sensation and the need for revision years later are all real possibilities, and any site that does not mention them is selling to you rather than informing you.

We do not promise a result identical to a photograph. Your anatomy sets limits that no technique overrides.

What is being promised is narrower and more useful: that the surgeon who operates on you is the person you can reach afterwards, and that the plan above is written down before you travel rather than improvised after.

---

→ Is breast surgery in Turkey safe? · About Dr Kırtıllı · Request a consultation