Mother-of-two dies during Turkey weight-loss op

A driving examiner who went to Turkey for a weight-loss operation bled to death after the surgery went wrong, an inquest has heard.

Mother-of-two Janet Lynne Savage, 54, from Bangor in Gwynedd suffered damage to one of her main arteries during the procedure, going into cardiac arrest.

Despite the efforts of emergency teams at the hospital in Antalya she died in the intensive care unit on 6 August, 2023.

The hearing in Caernarfon recorded a narrative conclusion, finding she died due to acute blood loss during gastric sleeve surgery.

The inquest was told Mrs Savage had contacted a health travel firm called Regenesis Health Travel at the start of July 2023, and within 24 hours had signed up for surgery a month later in Turkey.

She told the health tourism firm that she had already been taking the drug Ozempic to lose weight, but no longer had access to it, and was concerned she was rapidly gaining weight.

She said she wanted to lose three stone (19kg), and told Regenesis Health Travel that her body mass index (BMI) was 30.7.

According to the NHS, the index measures what is a healthy weight for your height, and would have put Mrs Savage at the very start of the obese range, which runs from 30 to 39.9.

Alison Ergun, a client service officer for Regenesis, said she was called on the day of the surgery.

"There was a complication and she had stopped breathing in the first few minutes of surgery," she said in a statement.

The senior coroner for North West Wales, Kate Robertson, said translated notes from the surgeon, Dr Ramazan Azar, described how there had been a 3-4mm "defect" in the aorta artery when the operation began, leading to bleeding.

He said that the aorta was repaired by the surgical team, and the gastric sleeve procedure cancelled due to the complications.

However, medics in the intensive care unit were then unable to find a pulse, and Mrs Savage was pronounced dead in the early hours of the morning.

The coroner said she ordered a post-mortem examination when the body of Mrs Savage was repatriated to Wales, which was carried out at Glan Clwyd Hospital.

Pathologist Muhammad Aslam reported that the cause of death was due to acute bleeding from the abdominal aorta, that had been repaired.

The coroner passed on her condolences to Mrs Savage's family.