Plastic Surgery Abroad: What They Don’t Tell You
According to an article featured on the National Institutes of Health website, 15 million Americans travel abroad for some kind of medical treatment annually. Many of those patients seek cosmetic surgery, and clinics around the globe lure them with a variety of promises, most notably, lower cost.
If you’re weighing whether you should have plastic surgery in New York or another city in the U.S. or travel abroad, it’s likely you have spent time thinking about costs and safety. There are obvious pros and cons you’ve no doubt discovered—but here are some you may not have thought about.
You probably won’t want to “play tourist.”
It’s tempting to imagine combining cosmetic surgery with a vacation, and many clinics play up this notion. One tropical destination lures patients with “some of the most amazing tourist attractions and sightseeing adventures” available to travelers. In reality, most people want to be home when they’re not feeling their best. Think about the last time you had the flu or needed to recuperate from a sprained ankle or pulled muscle. Would you have been comfortable in a hotel in a far corner of the world?
Furthermore, unless you plan an extended stay in another country, you won’t be getting out much. If you have facial plastic surgery you may not be in pain, but swelling, bruising, and bandages will have you indoors for several days. If you have a breast or body procedure, you will need to take it easy for up to a week or more to minimize post-op swelling and discomfort.
You may not have follow up care.
An article on the UT Southwestern Medical Center website points out that many foreign clinics do not offer much, if anything, in the way of follow up care. This can affect your experience in a couple of different ways. One is that it lowers the total cost of surgery outside the U.S. Just like the program at the University of Texas, plastic surgery with us in New York (as well with any reputable U.S. plastic surgeon) includes all follow up care. This accounts for some of the cost difference.
Thorough follow up is essential to good results and to your health. For an extreme example of what lack of post-op care can cause, read our blog post about the sad case of a patient who traveled from Australia to Malaysia for surgery and died shortly thereafter.
One thing many patients who travel don’t realize is that if they have a problem when they return home, it can be difficult to find treatment. This is because plastic surgeons are reluctant to take responsibility for someone’s safety and surgical results when another doctor performed the initial procedure under conditions that may not be up to par.
You may end up losing—money and more.
When all is said and done, some patients who travel for cosmetic surgery actually end up paying far more—in cash and in needless suffering—than they would have had they chosen a U.S. based, board certified plastic surgeon.
Last year, a research team investigated the cases of 42 people who presented with complications from cosmetic surgery abroad. These were patients of one U.S. medical center over a 3-year period of time. The complaints ranged from abscesses to poor wound healing, and the average cost of treating each patient was more than $18,000.
When you consider all the ins and outs of traveling abroad for cosmetic surgery, the most important factor is safety. Although there are undoubtedly many safe cosmetic surgery practices outside the U.S., you may discover that, generally speaking, the lower the price of surgery, the fewer precautions taken.
The cosmetic surgery industry in other developed countries warns their citizens about foreign travel as well. According to an article featured on a local ABC news website, an Australian coroner said this following the death of the man who traveled to Malaysia: “The Australian medical tourist will not necessarily be aware of the difference in standards of medical practice and management of patient care.” The head of the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons noted that in Melbourne, three or four people seek medical care after botched foreign surgery every month. In larger cities “down under,” the number is even higher.
When patients ask about the difference in the cost of plastic surgery in New York and abroad, the simplest answer we can give is that the highest standards of patient care—which lead to not only the utmost in safety but the best results as well—just cost more.
