Instead, she was left with severe swelling, an open wound and a legal dispute with the surgeon who performed her botched procedure in Kyrgyzstan.With a swollen face and a gash under her breast where "the stitches came undone" three times, Tergenbayeva barely resembles herself in the pictures taken after the surgery that she showed to AFP."I couldn't open my eyes, my oxygen saturation and blood pressure had dropped," she said, after developing an angioedema -- a swelling in the under-skin tissue -- from the medication she received.Her case is just one of an increasing number of failed -- sometimes fatal -- procedures in Central Asia, where cosmetic surgery is experiencing a social media-propelled boom.Tergenbayeva's surgeon was detained in September for smuggling medications into the country.
Experts have attributed such cases to a lack of state regulation © Vyacheslav OSELEDKO / AFP
Around 40 patients had lodged complaints.But he has been released after his case was dismissed, and, to Tergenbayeva's horror, continues to practise. "He presents himself as the best surgeon in Kyrgyzstan, but he's just a kind of 'butcher' of Kyrgyzstan," she said.He "should have been imprisoned", she added.The surgeon did not respond to an AFP request for comment.'Too much freedom'Like many, Tergenbayeva, said she was "attracted by the beautiful photos on Instagram" of other cosmetic operations.Official statistics are lacking, but media in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have reported an increasing number of victims.The trend has empowered more women to speak up, especially after a Kazakh blogger with around a million Instagram followers died after undergoing liposuction in May.Experts have attributed the cases to a lack of state regulation, the use of expired medicines and unqualified practitioners working illegally.
