Woman from Wales died after gastric sleeve surgery in Turkey, inquest hears

A woman died during an operation after travelling to Turkey for slimming surgery, an inquest heard.

Janet Savage, 54, was undergoing a gastric “stomach sleeve” operation but never came around from the procedure.

Savage, from Penrhosgarnedd near Bangor, had travelled to the private Ozel Rich hospital in the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya and hoped to lose three stone, after earlier taking Ozempic.

A senior coroner at an inquest in Caernarfon found that Savage, a driving examiner, died from acute bleeding loss due to injury to her abdominal aorta, which had an attempted repair, after gastric sleeve surgery.

Savage had contacted a firm called Reginis Health Travel, based in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, the inquest heard. It organises flights, hotels, surgical and non-surgical procedures at Ozel Rich hospital.

Kate Robertson, senior coroner for north-west Wales, read out a statement by Alison Ergun, Reginis’s client service administrator.

Ergun said Savage had told her in an exchange of Facebook messages in July last year that she was taking Ozempic, a medicine designed to treat people with type 2 diabetes, and wanted to lose three stone.

The women switched to WhatsApp to take the booking and the operation was booked at the hospital in Antalya for 5 August last year.

The inquest heard Ergun was later informed by her operations manager that there had been “complications”; Savage had stopped breathing and had been taken to intensive care. She died the following day, at 7.45am on 6 August.

A doctor told how Savage had had a “major artery trauma” which was repaired and blood was replaced. But she then went into cardiac arrest during the surgery. She was taken to the intensive care unit but died despite medics’ interventions.

Dr Muhammad Aslam, a consultant histopathologist, carried out a postmortem at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd and proposed that the medical cause of death was acute blood loss due to an injured abdominal aorta, which had been repaired.

Robertson recorded a narrative conclusion that Savage had gone to Turkey to have a gastric sleeve operation on 5 August. She added: “During the procedure it appears a major artery trauma occurred. The aorta was repaired but she went into arrest.”