Flesh-eating virus leaves mum without a nose after Turkey teeth horror

The mum of two, and professional DJ, has spent the last 18 months in crippling pain brought on by dental implants being drilled into her nose and sinus.

Her face is now at risk of collapsing due to a flesh-eating virus that has chewed its way through her nose and left her needing to wear a mask.

As a result, she has had to give up her job, her self-confidence is at rock-bottom, and to rub salt into her very visible and painful wounds, she has since found that, because she opted to have cut-price treatment done in Turkey, the NHS is under no obligation to fix the issues.

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She told LBC: “I went on the Monday, I flew straight out there, got to Antalya and in the chair, did X-rays, decided what we were going to do, then on the Tuesday I was there, I had my surgery done. They pulled out all of my teeth, and they said I'd have to have a bone graft and a sinus lift because my bones weren't strong enough to hold these implants.”

Leanne had decided to go to Turkey for treatment back in April 2024 after one of her veneers fell out during a day out at the races, leaving her needing to glue it back in with nail glue. The treatment was going to cost £3,000 in Turkey, or closer to £50,000 in the UK.

“They decided that I'd need seven implants in the top and six in the bottom”, she said, “which was a lot more than what we discussed in the first place. The pain… you can't imagine what this pain was. I was awake for all of it. I think I had 27 injections in total because I could feel everything. I felt when he was doing this sinus lift or the bone graft, he was getting some kind of hammer and it was smashing off into my face. It was horrendous.”

After surgery Leanne was initially left with what looked like a series of metal pegs in her gums, with the plan being to create a bespoke set of ‘arches’ for her new teeth.

She said: “You got some temporary dentures put over the top and you were sent on your way, and you'd have to come back five months afterwards to get the fixed arches put in. But, after a week of being back in the UK, I knew something wasn't right. My face was swelling up and my nose was streaming all the time.

“I'd go to our local doctors and the local hospital. They kept checking me, saying 'No, you're fine. No, you're fine. Nothing wrong'. This had gone on for months now and they kept saying I was fine. I eventually got admitted to hospital when I called 999 because I thought I'd had sepsis and I was going to die, and they still kept saying to me that there was nothing wrong with me, there's nothing wrong with these implants.”

After seeing an emergency dentist, Leanne learned the extent of the problems. She said: “He showed me the X-rays, and one implant had pierced straight into my nose, gone through all of my nerves, and he doesn't even think that I've had any kind of sinus lift at all. So now the next stage is just to find out what we can do with the top, because my body's just rejecting everything.”

The dental work led to Leanne developing an auto-immune virus, which was essentially eating away the flesh around her nose, leaving her with an open wound and severe facial disfigurement.

She said: “It attacked all inside of my nose, and it's eaten away everything inside my nose to the state where I've got no septum left in my nose at all. I had all dark necrosis at the bottom of my nose where the surgeon had to scrape it all out. We're hoping that the hole doesn't reach the back of my throat or it might go through to my palate.”

Aside from the extensive physical trauma Leanne has experienced from these complications, she has also suffered horrendous mental health battles as well.

She told LBC: “I can't go to work, I don't want to go outside. I'm not the person that I used to be at all. I used to be this fun, outgoing person, out every weekend, going DJing, going on holidays, and now I'm just stuck in, ike I'm in a prison.

“As soon as you see somebody online and they've got something over their nose, they'll be like, oh, this has been caused by drugs, instead of actually knowing what anything actually is. I’d probably look at them and think, oh, yeah, that's drug-related."

Because Leanne had the treatment in Turkey, the NHS is not under any obligation to fix her problems, and due to the severity of the damage, she says she has been left reliant on money raised through crowdfunding and the goodwill of private dentists who have seen her story on TikTok.

“What a lot of people don't know is whenever you go abroad, you cannot get help in the UK," she said. “They will not touch you. Say goodbye to any NHS, say goodbye to your dentist, any infection, you will not get help.

“I have been back and forth to the NHS, and I don't blame them, it was my fault for going abroad to get it done, but it wasn't my fault to get poorly afterwards.

“I kept going back to the hospital because I just knew something wasn't right with my face. And all I wanted them to do was the X-rays to check. They said just go home and use sinus rinse. I'd be back, forth, back, forth to the hospital and nothing.

"I went back to my dentist here and I said, 'Please just check these implants?' and they said, 'No, I told you not to go to Turkey,' and wrote me off. It was only when another dentist did a 4D scan of my face that we saw that the implants were piercing through the sinuses and through my nose.

"But, it was a bigger job than what they could do at the dentist, because if we took out all these implants, there's a possibility my face would collapse because there's nothing there holding the face together.”

Before anything can be done to fix her nose, Leanne has to resolve the issues with her teeth, but she has had a fitting for a prosthetic nose only to find out she was allergic to the silicone.

“My friends started a GoFundMe for me and that was literally to help try and pay for things because the NHS wasn't helping me, so I'd then have to go private. I think we're on quite a few thousand now, but it's nearly all gone. You know, people can look at it and think, oh, well, you've got 20-odd grand there, but it's cost money to go down to London, it's costing money to see all these surgeons.

“You know, my prosthetic nose cost money. Everything is costing money. Even going for private blood tests, nothing's free. So that money literally goes and goes and goes.

“I still have three implants in the top still and six in the bottom, and I keep getting a lot of pain there and excruciating pain. I’m in pain every single day, I'm on all different kinds of medication. I take about 30 tablets a day now.

“I was supposed to go back to Turkey in the September, but because I knew something wasn't right, I didn't want to go. They kept messaging me and messaging me to say, you need to come back, but I didn't want to go, only for the fact as well, that my face kept blowing out, and, I kept thinking with the pressure of the aeroplane, what if that explodes my face?”

Leanne’s stance on this now is that people should think twice about going to Turkey for dental work. She said: “It's really scary because I'm seeing it more and more online now and people are so scared to come out and say I had botched surgery done.

"The thing is, everyone wants to look perfect now. This is the whole thing with social media. You're going on social media, you will see a celebrity on there. Go get your teeth done in Turkey, £2,000, you come out with a brand-new smile in two days. Of course you're going to want to do that.”

Eddie Crouch, chair of the British Dental Association, told LBC: "Dentists are aware that many people are struggling to access care and may be tempted to go overseas for cut-price treatment.

"We advise people to think carefully before booking any treatment abroad and to do their research. Patients need to provide informed consent for any treatment they have and be wary of a hard-sell, as the reality is rarely as simple as it appears on Instagram.

“Sadly, many UK dentists are now picking up the pieces when things go wrong."

An NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin spokesperson said: “We are sorry to hear about the difficulties reported following treatment received abroad. While we cannot comment on individual cases, we want to be clear that the NHS is here to provide care when someone has a clinical need.

“If a person is in pain, has signs of infection, or has any urgent health concerns, they should contact NHS 111, their GP, or attend urgent care so they can be assessed and treated.

“However, the NHS cannot usually provide corrective treatment for complications arising from cosmetic or elective procedures carried out privately, either in the UK or overseas, unless there is a medical need.

“We encourage anyone considering treatment abroad to research providers carefully, understand the risks, and check what aftercare will be available.”