My Medical Gateway Blog

In this personal account, MMG’s Medical Director Dr Paul Grant shares his own experience of medical travel after choosing to undergo multi-focal lens replacement surgery abroad. Faced with prohibitive UK prices, he found world-class care at a highly accredited ophthalmology clinic in Zagreb at less than half the cost. Following an excellent outcome and seamless experience, MMG is now in the process of accrediting the clinic so other British patients can access the same trusted, affordable treatment across Europe.

Last year the Office of National Statistics reported that over half a million Britons travelled abroad for medical treatment and I am pleased to report that I have now become one of them. 

Medical travel may seem daunting for many, but as a medical professional and the Medical Director at My Medical Gateway, I have spent a great deal of time visiting multiple high-quality hospitals and clinical establishments of various types across continental Europe, from Spain, to Malta, the Baltics and beyond, so I have developed extensive familiarity with what a good hospital does and does not look like.

I myself have had poor eyesight for many years, always having to wear glasses and needing to get a stronger prescription every time I visit the optician. In recent years, things have worsened so that I could not read the screen of my phone when I was in the gym and not wearing glasses. Finally, I thought that I needed to do something about this and started looking into having laser eye surgery to see if my deteriorating vision could be corrected.

Unfortunately, it turned out that my eyesight was too far gone to be fixed easily with lasers and I was told that such a treatment would not be successful in my situation. There was, however, the possibility of a type of specialist surgery that could be undertaken that would normalise my vision and mean that I would never have to wear glasses again. The treatment is called “multi-focal lens replacement surgery” and it is a relatively new procedure that involves the removal of the old dodgy lenses and the fitting of bespoke high-definition prescription lenses directly into the patient’s eyes. This sounded right up my alley, and I was very keen to proceed!  That is, until I found out the price. It was going to cost somewhere in the region of £8,500 to have this performed at London’s Harley Street, vividly illustrating to me the exorbitant costs of private medical care in Britain.

The treatment that I needed was so cutting-edge and new that it is sadly not on offer at any of the hospitals that we have already signed up to MMG’s roster of fully accredited EU-based healthcare providers.  But knowing what I know about some of the amazing modern hospitals and clinics in Europe, I saw this as an opportunity to identify a world class ophthalmology clinic where I could get the exact same treatment, at the same standard, but at a much more reasonable price. 

In this I turned out to be successful! I found a highly reputable and established clinic called the Optical Express Eye Centre in Zagreb, Croatia, a country that I had not been to before on my travels, but it ticked every box on my checklist of safety, quality and affordability. The stated price of my treatment was 3,500 euros – less than half of what I had been quoted in Britain and that is even after flights and accommodation were factored in. Communication with the clinic was clear and efficient and they were even able to schedule the surgery for a weekend date to make things easier for me. 

This meant I flew out from Heathrow to Zagreb on a beautiful autumn Friday morning, had a clinic appointment for final checks of my optics on the same Friday afternoon, and then underwent the surgery on a Saturday morning.  This took about 15 minutes per eye. The picture above shows me immediately post-operation looking like one of the sand-people from Star Wars, but these protectors only had to stay on for 24 hours. 

I then had the post-operative checks first thing on the Sunday and flew home the very same day, back in time for Sunday dinner. Overall, the experience was excellent from start to finish, with brilliant service from the Croatian Optical Express Eye Centre team, all of whom were highly competent and could speak embarrassingly good English.  Overall, I was really pleased with the care I received and can see clearly that I had managed to snag a bargain. We are now in the process of going through the accreditation process to sign the clinic up to the MMG platform so that other British patients like me can easily book this new, and almost miraculous, treatment from a source they can trust, at a price they can afford. The time and effort will be worth the wait.

As a postscript now that some time has passed, my eyesight recovery is doing well. It takes 2 to 4 weeks to fully adjust to the new internal lenses, but I am now happily glasses-free after forty odd years. “Trebate operaciju – idite u inozemstvo!” as they say in Croatia!