Author, News Department
Place of work, BBC Russian Service
Published 2 minutes ago
Reading time: 8 min
This is a translation of a report by BBC correspondents Anna Collinson and Jo Adnitt from BBC News Investigations. The original in English can be read here.
“Everyone said it was so easy, but it felt like my face was on fire and there was a terrible smell of burning skin,” says Nikita Morgan, recalling the eyelid surgery.
She decided to have blepharoplasty, or “blepharoplasty,” surgery to remove skin above the eyes, after seeing a video of it on social media. Despite local anesthesia, Nikita experienced severe pain.
Oculoplastic surgeons - doctors who specialize in eye surgery - say an alarmingly high number of patients are presenting with complications from cheap blepharoplasties, which are usually performed overseas.
Warning: Content contains explicit images and descriptions of surgical procedures.
They told the BBC that demand for the procedure, which typically costs several thousand pounds in the UK, had risen amid the overall popularity of facelifts.
Surgeons say complications have occurred in patients following operations in clinics across continental Europe, as well as in Africa and Asia. At the same time, the lack of post-operative follow-up creates an additional burden on the British NHS healthcare system.
In addition to Nikita, we spoke with dozens of people who faced complications. One woman had to have her eyes taped overnight because too much eyelid skin was removed during surgery, while another feared she was losing her sight.
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British surgeons also told us that they were approached by patients who, after operations abroad, could not completely close their eyes.
Nikita, 31, from Dublin, wanted to make her eyes more expressive, but could not afford upper eyelid surgery in Ireland: she was told it would cost more than four thousand euros.
Then Nikita learned from TikTok that she could get blepharoplasty for 750 euros from the Dutch company Faceland.
She described the company’s clinic in Düsseldorf as a “conveyor belt”: “Some are constantly coming in, others are leaving.”
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The company says it has performed more than almost 3,000 blepharoplasty procedures on UK patients at its clinics in the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland since October 2024.
The company claims to offer "safe and high-quality" procedures and told the BBC that only "less than 1% of procedures resulted in complaints", although this statistic does not include all patients who required revision surgery.
Most of the patients who told the BBC about problems after blepharoplasty had the operation at the company's clinics, but we do not know the total number of complications after procedures at Faceland.
Nikita, who had blepharoplasty in November 2025, says that she did not realize how serious and irreversible this intervention would be. According to her, she thought it was about the same as “getting my lips done or Botox.”
She was given local anesthesia, but when the doctor began to cut the delicate skin of her eyelids, Nikita felt pain like she had never experienced before.
Faceland says that before the procedure, all patients undergo a consultation and sign a form confirming that they have been “well informed and prepared” and agree to the operation.
In Nikita's case, the company cites her direct doctor as saying that she was "very anxious and unsure" during the procedure, which "may affect her perception of pain."
Just a few hours after the operation, “traumatized” by the experience, Nikita was already boarding the plane home, being, according to her, in a state of trauma from the experience. Medical experts, like Faceland itself, do not recommend flying on the day of surgery, but Nikita saw on social networks that many people do this.
“It was difficult for me to see,” says Nikita. “If I looked up, the stitches would bleed and it would look like I was crying blood.”
She now regrets flying home on the same day as her surgery and advises others not to do so.
The growing popularity of blepharoplasty
Over the past three years, videos about blepharoplasty posted by British social media accounts on four major platforms have received almost 150 million views, a BBC analysis has found. This is five times more than in the previous three years.
Many users talk about positive results in their publications, and many of them had surgery in Faceland.
One woman told us that drooping eyelids limited her field of vision and caused headaches. She could not get such an operation on the NHS, and treatment in a private clinic in the UK was unaffordable for her. After surgery at Faceland, she said, these problems disappeared.
The company's website says it is disrupting the market by focusing on "affordable, quality care that more people can afford." The company says the procedures are performed by accredited doctors who receive additional training in surgical techniques within Faceland.
Surgeons in the UK told us that upper eyelid surgery usually takes around three hours, including preparation, surgery and post-operative care. However, Faceland patients we spoke with said they spent less than an hour in the clinics.
Faceland says the ability to perform more procedures allows doctors to significantly reduce their costs.
"They removed too much skin"
Eight days after her blepharoplasty at Faceland, Laura - not her real name - went to the emergency room for the first time because the wounds on her eyelids had broken apart. She will subsequently seek emergency care three more times.
The operation itself, which she underwent in June at the company's clinic in Amsterdam, seemed to go without problems. However, complications began after Laura had her stitches removed at home in the UK - this is what many patients who undergo surgery abroad do.
The crescent-shaped incisions above the eyes, the edges of which were held in place by stitches, split open, revealing red, unhealed wounds that then became infected. British surgeons told us that with a properly qualified doctor, this should practically not happen.
When it first happened, Laura, who is in her early 40s, said she called Faceland's emergency line several times but couldn't get through. In desperation, she went to the emergency room.
“If I kept my eyes closed too long, the tension would cause the wounds to come apart again,” she says. “I was afraid to fall asleep and was constantly in excruciating pain.”
In the days that followed, Laura spoke with her Faceland doctor and offered to fly back several times to be examined.
“I was crying, literally begging: ‘You can’t leave me like this,’” she says.
However, Faceland told her that it was best to seek medical help locally.
Laura was referred to an NHS ophthalmologist who said "too much skin" had been removed during the operation.
“I feel guilty. People will think: 'It's my own fault', but I would never have gone there if I had known how it would end up,” Laura says of the NHS now having to pay to clean up the consequences of her cheap surgery.
Faceland said it could not comment in detail on Laura's case because she has filed a lawsuit against the company.
As a gesture of goodwill, an independent complaints commission working with Faceland offered Laura €175, but she refused the amount.
Patients cannot close their eyes
British surgeons told us that of the patients who came to them in the last 12 months with complications from blepharoplasty, the majority had the operation abroad.
The most common problem after surgery abroad was the inability to close the eyes completely. This was revealed by a BBC survey of 63 members of the British Oculoplastic Surgery Society (Bopss) from the UK and Ireland.
“Removing too much skin from the eyelid is dangerous because it leaves the eye exposed to external influences,” explains consultant oculoplastic surgery Colin Wise, who sits on the Bopss executive committee. “It can be difficult and expensive to fix.”
He compares eyelids to “a pair of curtains.” When they are open, the skin should gather into a fold so that when closed there is enough to completely cover the eyeball.
Among other complications after operations abroad, Bopss survey participants named scars, eye asymmetry and dehiscence of post-operative wounds.
Surgeons also said that they were approached by patients with complications after operations by unregistered specialists in the UK. In some cases, blepharoplasty was performed directly in living quarters.
“I was afraid I was losing my sight”
On Christmas Day 2024, Karin Hart woke up to find she could barely see.
Several days have passed since blepharoplasty at the Faceland clinic in Amsterdam. Her left eye was severely swollen and bleeding, and the wounds above both eyes were beginning to separate.
“I was terrified that I might lose my vision because of a little extra skin,” she says.
Karin went straight to the emergency room. She saw no point in calling Faceland - the clinic was too far away.
Doctors later assured her that her vision could be preserved, but a serious infection had developed on her face. She was prescribed antibiotics and follow-up checks at the hospital.
The BBC has seen emails which show Karin contacted Faceland twice to report the incident and received a short response within 12 days. There were several more letters after that, but Karin says the company has not contacted her since then.
Faceland insists it "did not leave her without support and follow-up during the post-operative period."
The company says it regrets if some patients felt they did not receive enough support from its staff or experienced complications.
"A recipe for disaster"
“It’s unsettling—it feels like you’re pulling something out of your own skin,” she says.
Faceland says it advises patients to consult with company doctors about when to remove stitches and provides instructions on how to do so. Nikita says she did not receive an aftercare kit or any instructions.
The company also says patients can return to Faceland to have their stitches removed, but no one we spoke to did.
According to Wise, patients removing stitches themselves is “a recipe for disaster.” He says the sutures should be removed by a surgeon or nurse to reduce the risk of infection and wound dehiscence.
Nikita is overall happy with the result, aside from a small scar, but wants other people to take her experience into account and be fully aware of the possible risks.
“If I had the money or if I didn’t believe the way things were presented on TikTok, I probably would have chosen a clinic closer to home and not been in such a rush to have the operation,” she says.
Nearly two years later, Karin still has problems with her left eye, including blurred vision and scarring.
Laura fears she will have scars over both eyes for the rest of her life.
“I tried to fix a problem that really didn’t need to be fixed, and I ended up coming back with a much worse problem that I needed another surgery for and didn’t have the money for,” she says. “It’s just terrible.”
