People travel to Turkey for cheaper weight-loss surgery, but some practices used to reduce costs, including the reuse of equipment intended for single use, can increase the risk of complications.
Maria Bugeja
Turkey is a major destination for cheaper bariatric surgery, complications after surgery abroad are well documented, and reusing single-use devices without approved reprocessing raises the risk of infection and equipment failure. We found no reliable evidence on how common that practice is in Turkish clinics, or whether it explains their prices or complications.How we reached this verdict ↓
Analysis and evaluation
The general warning holds: Turkey draws patients with lower prices, complications after surgery abroad are documented, and improperly reused single-use equipment adds risk. Whether that practice is common in Turkish bariatric clinics could not be established.
Price draws patients to Turkey
Turkey has become a major destination for bariatric surgery, especially for patients from countries where private treatment costs much more. Clinics commonly sell packages combining surgery, accommodation and transfers at prices below those in much of Western Europe. Lower prices do not automatically mean lower safety: labour and running costs are lower too. What matters is where the savings come from.
Complications after surgery abroad are documented
UK hospitals have reported treating patients for infections, leaks, bleeding and other complications after bariatric surgery abroad, with Turkey prominent among the destinations. A 2026 rapid review of outward medical tourism set out the cost of these cases to the NHS. These reports count the patients who came back with problems, not everyone who was operated on, so they cannot show that surgery in Turkey has a higher complication rate overall.
Reusing single-use devices adds risk
Some devices are labelled single-use because they are hard to clean, may wear out, or may not work safely a second time. WHO guidance warns that reusing them without proper reprocessing risks infection, cross-contamination and equipment failure. Cost is one reason providers in some countries reuse them. Some regulators, including the US FDA, allow certain single-use devices to be reprocessed under approved, validated procedures.
No evidence on Turkish clinics specifically
We found no reliable evidence on how widespread equipment reuse is in Turkish bariatric clinics, whether it explains their lower prices, or whether it accounts for the complications seen in returning patients. We could neither confirm nor rule it out.
Evaluation
The warning behind the claim is sound: cost-cutting in the wrong places can raise risk, and reusing single-use equipment is one such place. The specific example could not be tied to Turkish bariatric surgery, so it should not be taken as representative of it.
Editorial note
How we assessed this claim
We split the argument into four questions: whether price drives bariatric surgery tourism to Turkey; whether complications after surgery abroad are documented; whether reusing single-use devices adds risk; and whether there is evidence that this happens widely in Turkish bariatric clinics.
The first three hold, which rules out anything below True but lacks context. It stops short of True because the specific example, equipment reuse in Turkish clinics, could not be confirmed or ruled out.
Limitations
- Little public information exists on how individual Turkish clinics buy or reprocess equipment. A lack of evidence that a practice is widespread does not show that it never happens.
- Reports of patients returning with complications cannot give an overall complication rate without knowing how many people had surgery abroad without problems.
- We found no reliable data on how many Maltese patients travel to Turkey for bariatric surgery.
Sources
- Complications and costs to the UK National Health Service due to outward medical tourism for elective surgery: a rapid review (2026)
- Decision-making about bariatric and cosmetic medical tourism from countries with universal healthcare: a rapid systematic review
- World Health Organization and Pan American Health Organization, Decontamination and reprocessing of medical devices for health-care facilities (2016)
- US Food and Drug Administration, Reprocessing of single-use devices