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The complication rate nobody publishes
People ask whether surgery abroad is safe and expect the answer to be a number. We went looking for that number. What exists is a small American dataset, a few counts of patients who turned up at British hospitals afterwards, and national statistics that record arrivals and revenue rather than outcomes.
The short answers
- The multi-institutional dataset
- 835 patientsIdentified in an American quality improvement database covering 2009 to 2019, and followed for 30 days.
- What the national statistics count
- Arrivals and revenueTurkiye published 1,398,580 arrivals for healthcare in 2025. The same source publishes no complication, revision or readmission figure.
- The NHS cohort
- 81 patients over five yearsAt one Scottish plastic surgery unit between 2019 and 2023, across cosmetic surgery of every kind rather than rhinoplasty alone. A count of people who presented, not a rate.
- What is missing from all of it
- A denominatorNobody publishes how many people travelled for this operation, so no count of complications anywhere can be turned into a risk.
This is the question the whole category is built on, and it has no published answer. That is worth stating plainly rather than filling with a number that sounds like one.
The number you will be quoted, and where it comes from
A multi-institutional study of rhinoplasty complications searched an American surgical quality database covering 2009 to 2019 and found 835 patients. Within 30 days, 19 of them needed a further operation, which is 2.3 per cent, and 9 had a superficial wound infection, which is 1.1 per cent.
Those are real figures and they are small. They are also American, limited to 30 days, and drawn from 835 people over eleven years in the hospitals that take part in that particular programme. They describe nothing about any individual surgeon, any individual clinic, or any country other than the one they were collected in.
Despite the popularity of rhinoplasty, outcome research has been mainly limited to single-surgeon or single-institution reports.
What Turkiye actually publishes
The Ministry of Health publishes health tourism data through its international health services company. It gives the number of people who came for healthcare each year, from 2019 to the first quarter of 2026, alongside the revenue, sourced to the national statistics institute. In 2025 that figure was 1,398,580 people.
There is no outcome column. No complication rate, no revision rate, no readmission, no mortality, no patient-reported score. That is not a criticism of the statistic, which is a trade measure and does not claim to be anything else. It is a statement about what the public record contains.
And the regulation does not close the gap
The health tourism regulation in force sets out who may be authorised to treat international patients. Authorisation is a permission to operate rather than a duty to publish results, and we found nothing in it requiring outcome reporting of the kind a patient would want to read.
What gets counted instead
What does exist is a record of people who came home and needed help, and it counts cosmetic surgery of every kind rather than rhinoplasty alone. One Scottish plastic surgery unit reported 81 patients over five years, which its authors describe as the largest single centre account of cosmetic surgery tourism complications in the NHS to date. Across all the operations those patients had, the commonest presenting problems were a wound that had opened, in 49.4 per cent, and a wound infection, in 24.7 per cent.
A London hospital reviewed 17 months of its own presentations, again across cosmetic surgery generally, and found that 96 per cent of the surgical patients arriving with complications had been operated on abroad, the majority in Turkiye, at 73 per cent.
Why that last figure is not a risk
It is a share of the people who turned up at one hospital over seventeen months. A count of arrivals home tells you nothing without a count of departures: wherever most people travel to, most people who come back with a problem will have been there, whatever the risk was. Nothing on this page says surgery is more or less safe in one country than another, because nothing we could open supports that comparison.
What you can do in the absence of a number
Ask for the only figures that exist at the scale of your decision, which are the surgeon's own. Ask how they are counted, over what period, and by whom. A surgeon who records their own outcomes can tell you; one who has never counted will change the subject, and that answer is informative too.
Then read what the professional bodies say about afterwards, because that is the part travel changes most. The Royal College of Surgeons advises finding out who to contact if there is a problem, and that this should be a named doctor who can deal with complications rather than a helpline. It also states that the NHS is unlikely to help you unless you have a serious complication needing emergency or life-saving treatment.
The NHS makes a narrower point, which is that an overseas clinic may not have a healthcare professional in the UK you can go to if you have problems. Both are worth reading in full, and both are linked below. The practical side of it, which is the part you can settle from home, is at before you travel.
Questions to ask a surgeon
Take these to a consultation. The consultation checklist is built to be printed and written on, and our doctors will answer questions sent through the site before you travel.
- How many of this operation did you perform last year, and how are you counting it?
- How many of your own patients have needed a further operation, over what period, and who recorded that?
- Does anyone outside your clinic ever see your complication record?
- If I develop a problem after I fly home, who is the named doctor I contact, and in which country are they?
- What does your aftercare include, and what does it specifically not include?
- If I need to return, who arranges it and who bears the cost of doing so?
Sources
Every source below was opened and checked. We link to health authorities, peer-reviewed journals and professional bodies, and to nothing else.
- Incidence and risk factors of postoperative complications after rhinoplasty: a multi-institutional ACS-NSQIP analysisThe Journal of Craniofacial Surgery, via PubMedLarge multi-institutional dataset on complication rates.
- The cost of cosmetic surgery tourism complications to the NHS: a retrospective analysisThe Surgeon, journal of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons of Edinburgh and Ireland, via PubMedThe largest single centre account of what came back: 81 patients over five years at one plastic surgery unit. A count of presentations, never a rate.
- The rising NHS burden from cosmetic surgery procedures performed abroad and non-surgical procedures performed in the United KingdomJournal of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery, via PubMedSeventeen months of presentations at one London hospital, and where those patients had been operated on.
- Health tourism dataUSHAS, International Health Services Inc., Ministry of Health of the Republic of TurkiyeThe state's own published health tourism figures. Linked here for what they contain, which is arrivals and revenue, and for what they do not, which is any clinical outcome.
- Cosmetic surgery abroadNHS, United KingdomNational health authority advice on the specific risks of travelling for surgery. Linked deliberately, because patients should read it.
- Thinking of having cosmetic surgery abroad?Royal College of Surgeons of EnglandIndependent professional guidance on questions to ask before travelling.
- Regulation on International Health Tourism and Tourist Health (26 April 2025)Resmi Gazete, Official Gazette of the Republic of TurkiyeThe regulation currently in force governing health tourism authorisation in Turkey. An earlier 2023 instrument was checked and found to be repealed.