The surgeon who performed a weight loss surgery on a young woman who later died has insisted he did nothing wrong.
Dr Serkan Bayil performed a gastric band surgery on Morgan Ribeiro, 20, after she paid £2,500 to fly to Turkey for a cut-price procedure to avoid NHS waiting lists.
But just days after the procedure was completed, Morgan became seriously ill on her return flight to the UK and had to be rushed to a hospital in Serbia.
Doctors told the girl’s family her small intestine had been cut which led to her suffering a heart attack- but Dr Bayil denied this and claimed she suffered an in-flight embolism instead.
The surgeon, who has reportedly been practicing for more than two decades, says he regularly performs the gastric procedure and has never encountered any problems.
‘She died due to an embolism on the flight, not due to complications from the surgery,’ Dr Bayil told the Mirror.
He added: ‘I am sad, so, so sad, she was so young I wish that this had never happened, it is the first time in my career.’
‘Her vital signs were good when she left us. The most fearful thing in these operations is leakage and she had zero leakage and because of this I think she had an embolism.’
But the doctor’s claims have infuriated Morgan’s mother Erin, who has called for a tourist ban on surgical procedures following her daughter’s death.
Based on what surgeons in the Serbian hospital told the family, she said she believed otherwise.
‘That is preposterous. It wasn’t an embolism. It was a laceration. It had been cut, we were told during the operation. I was told that she was showing signs of fever immediately because her body was already going into septic shock,’ the Mirror reported.
She added: ‘Can you imagine the pain that poor child was in? There needs to be some accountability. This isn’t just “she had an embolism”, she was cut in the small intestine, and I believe he didn’t pick it up. We were told this by the Serbian surgeons. This cosmetic tourism must stop.’
A profile of Dr Bayil online linked to Global Medical Care, a Swiss medical travel company, claims he has carried out more than 8,000 medical procedures.
Multiple online profiles state he graduated from Çukurova University Faculty of Medicine in Turkey in 1996, completing a general surgery specialisation there between 2003 and 2010.
He regularly posts videos of patients sharing their pride at being operated upon by the surgeon to Instagram; one video was captioned: ‘We carry out all our operations in a completely sterile and hospital environment.’
Ms Ribeiro paid £2,500 from a trust fund set up by her parents to go under the knife after being bullied for years about her weight.
She posted a final TikTok just before she flew abroad which was captioned: ‘My last post before WLS (weight loss surgery)…see you on the other side.’
Gastric sleeve surgery involves inserting a silicone band which pinches the stomach so people feel fuller sooner.
Investigations into Morgan’s death have been initiated by Serbian prosecutors and British authorities after they attempted to save Morgan’s life by performing an emergency surgical procedure in Belgrade.
The surgery involved removing a significant portion of her small intestine, measuring 3 inches, in an effort to contain a severe infection.
Turkey has become one of the top destinations for medical tourism in, with 1.3 million foreign patients flocking top the country’s clinics for bargain procedures in 2022 alone.
The cost for gastric surgery in the UK is between £8,000 to £10,000, but can be got for a fraction of the price in Turkey.
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