Question – With foreign surgery so much cheaper than surgery in the USA, it’s tempting to go abroad for surgery, but is it safe? What are the risks?
Cheap surgery is more likely to be poor surgery, although not always.
Here are the problems with surgery abroad:
1. Catastrophic infections. People have returned with rare and incurable forms of tuberculosis from surgery done in dirty and contaminated foreign operating rooms.
2. Poor surgeons. This is less likely if the surgeon is US trained and US Board Certified in Plastic Surgery.
3. Poorly done surgery. Since the surgeons know their patients will be leaving and can’t sue them, they may become sloppy.
4. Complications. Significant complications affect 10% of major surgery. These complications usually appear 5 days after surgery or later. Most will have returned to the USA by then. If they have a complication, they find themselves sick and scared with no one to treat them. This leads to large bills for emergency care and later reconstructive care by a US Board Certified Plastic Surgeon. The result can be much much more expensive than if they had had the surgery in the USA.
After seeking many complications from people travelling abroad for surgery – and talked to many people who had had surgery abroad and had great experiences, here is our advice. Major surgery abroad can be reasonable if:
1. You speak the language fluently
2. You have friends or family in the area to help
3. You know the surgeon by local reputation or through friends and family
4. You can stay for at least 5 days
5. You have arranged a Board Certified Plastic Surgeon in your home town to care for you after surgery.
Most people travelling abroad don’t meet these criteria – they may get lucky and end up fine. If that does not end up being the case, they may come home with poor results, catastrophic infections, major complications and major expenses. It is therefore essential that you think things through before trying to save money with cheap surgery abroad.