Satie Shottha of Vancouver booked a trip through Meditours to have a tummy tuck and breast surgery at a hospital in Trivandrum, a city in southern India, last summer. She claims the doctors did a “horrendous” job and she wants others to know the risks involved in getting cosmetic surgery overseas.

The Kelowna-based company has sent 30 patients abroad for hip or knee replacements, plastic surgery and other procedures, said Meditours owner Milind Pendharkar. Shottha's complaint is the only one he has received, he said.

Meditours arranges for the surgery at a foreign hospital but is not liable for its outcome. Clients must sign a waiver that absolves the company of liability once they're in the care of doctors.

Still, Shottha wants to warn other potential clients to beware of companies that offer surgery overseas without having to endure long wait lists. She claims her two Indian doctors had no training in plastic surgery and performed liposuction on her buttocks against her will.

“I told them both, ‘I do not want them to do liposuction' when they offered it. They ended up doing it anyway. I still can't wear anything body-hugging. There are dents and it looks pretty bad,” said Shottha, 42.

She made the trip intending to receive a tummy tuck and breast augmentation. On the day of surgery, doctors told her they hadn't received the saline implants from Bombay.

Once under anesthetic, the doctors removed the fat beneath Shottha's belly button but left the fat above it – the area she was most concerned about. Even though she refused the liposuction during her pre-surgery consultation, the doctors went ahead and left deep indentations in each buttock, she said.

Shottha considered suing the doctors and hospital, but concluded the legal costs would outweigh the benefits. The hospital offered to conduct a third-party review of her case, said Pendharker, but she refused to take part.

Pendharker, who started the business in November 2004, said he tells anyone getting surgery there's a risk, whether it's in Kelowna or abroad.

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