“Travel to beautiful Thailand (or Costa Rica, Mexico, Morocco, Romania, India, Turkey, Panama, etc. etc.) and have plastic cosmetic surgery for a fraction of the U.S. cost.”

But remember our blog about costs of gynecomastia surgery? Going overseas for low cost rejuvenation surgery could be the most expensive trip you ever made. Why? It can cost anywhere from two to five times what you originally paid to repair damage from bad plastic surgery.

Here’s what you face:

• Foreign plastic surgeons rarely have the extra training of U.S. surgeons.
• There are, of course, many fine surgeons in distant lands. But do you know how to check on a doctor’s credentials and training written in a foreign tongue? (In the U.S., all you need do is bring up the website www.abms.org, register and type in your surgeon’s name.)  You could query the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (www.isaps.org) but they only list a few qualified surgeons in most nations.
• Will an anesthesiologist attend your operation? What are his or her credentials and training?
• You usually won’t know the laws of a foreign nation. In some nations, you can’t sue a surgeon if you have any problems during or after surgery.
• If you do return with a common complication, like an infection or something worse, your U.S. doctor will have a hard time knowing where to start without medical records from overseas.  And sometimes U.S. surgeons will not take on the care of another doctor’s problems.
• Many plastic surgery patients require additional medical testing if their medical histories reveal chronic health woes. U.S. plastic surgeons need to know if you are healthy enough for surgery. Does the foreign clinic do the same?
• Some overseas hospitals and clinics are not up to the high standards of U.S. hospitals.

In 2004, cut-rate plastic surgery clinics in the Dominican Republic created so many infection problems for patients returning to the United States, the situation was turned over to the Center for Disease Control (CDC).

Medical sleuths at the CDC traced the problem to infected liposuction wands at the offshore clinics. One plastic surgery clinic alone was responsible for half the U.S. cases. Note: first year U.S. medical students know appropriate sterilization procedures.

If you’re seriously considering overseas plastic surgery, we know of only one reasonable offer.

One plastic surgery tour organizer is so sure of its Thai hospital and U.S-trained surgeon, it puts the following offer in writing: if anything goes wrong with the procedure, they fly the patient back to Thailand, provide lodging and revision surgery and then fly him back home again.