Is Cosmetic Surgery in Thailand Safe? An Honest Answer From a Bangkok Surgeon

By Dr. Rushapol Sdawat, MD — Thai Board-certified Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon, Medical Licence No. 17689
Last reviewed: 28 AUG 2026

In August 2026, Australian television broadcast the stories of women who came to Bangkok for cosmetic surgery and went home disfigured. I am a plastic surgeon in Bangkok. I watched it, and I am not going to tell you those stories were unrepresentative or unfair.

The honest answer to the question in the title is: it depends entirely on who operates on you, where, and what happens afterwards — and the gap between the best and the worst in this city is wider than in almost any other medical market in the world. That is an uncomfortable thing for someone in my position to write, and it is also the only useful thing I can tell you.

What follows is an attempt to give you the tools to tell the difference, including the parts that do not flatter my own industry.

What the criticism gets right

Two days after the broadcast, the Australasian Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons issued a statement calling for government action. The line that should concern you most is this one:

"heavily curated patient stories, before-and-after content and positive recovery experiences can create an impression of safety that may not show complications, recovery difficulties or longer-term outcomes."

They are describing the standard marketing model of this entire category, and they are correct. If you have spent an evening reading Thailand surgery websites, you have seen hundreds of glowing testimonials and close to zero discussion of what happens when things go wrong. That asymmetry is not evidence that complications are rare. It is evidence that nobody publishes them.

The Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons is blunter still: cosmetic tourism is "a price-driven practice," surgical qualifications and facility standards overseas "may not consistently meet the high standards required in Australia," and — the criticism that lands hardest — "patients who have had surgery overseas often report only meeting their surgeon on the day of their operation."

I have met patients for whom that was true elsewhere. It is indefensible. You cannot consent properly to an operation you discussed for the first time an hour beforehand, through a coordinator, with a surgeon whose name you learned that morning.

ASAPS also estimates that around 15,000 Australians travel overseas for cosmetic surgery each year — adding that they "believe the true number may be considerably higher" — spending roughly $300 million, and that revision surgery may be needed in up to seven per cent of cases. Dr Mark Duncan-Smith, a Perth plastic surgeon, has publicly estimated that Australian plastic surgeons collectively treat two to three thousand patients a year for complications from overseas procedures.

Take those numbers seriously. I would add one caveat in the interests of accuracy rather than defence: as a professor quoted in an Australian health-fund article on this topic noted, medical tourism data should be "taken with a heavy grain of salt" because it is "rarely collected by impartial third parties." The bodies producing complication estimates also compete commercially with overseas providers. That does not make the numbers wrong. It means nobody — including me — is a neutral source here, and you should weight everything you read accordingly, including this.

What the criticism gets wrong

The weakest part of the case against Thai surgery is the implication that the country lacks surgical standards. It does not.

Thailand has a formal specialist certification system administered by the Royal College of Surgeons of Thailand under the Medical Council of Thailand. Thai Board certification in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery requires a completed medical degree followed by either a general surgery residency plus a further plastic surgery residency, or a direct-entry plastic surgery residency, at an accredited teaching hospital, with examination at each stage. My own path was the first of those: Siriraj Hospital for medicine, Phramongkutklao Hospital for the general surgery board, and Ramathibodi Hospital at Mahidol University for the plastic surgery board.

Every registered doctor in Thailand carries a Medical Council licence number. Mine is 17689. It is publicly verifiable — the Medical Council of Thailand runs a free English-language register at checkmd.tmc.or.th — and so is every other Thai doctor's. Go and check mine now.

The problem in Bangkok is not the absence of a standard. It is that the standard is not what most patients are actually buying. A great deal of cosmetic work in this city is performed by doctors who are not plastic surgeons at all — general practitioners, dermatologists, doctors with a weekend course certificate — in clinics rather than hospitals. Nothing about the phrase "Thailand" tells you which of those two worlds you have walked into. The word that matters is not the country. It is the credential.

The seven questions that actually separate safe from unsafe

If you do nothing else, ask these. Ask them of me, and ask them of everyone else you are considering — including surgeons in Australia and New Zealand.

1. What is your surgeon's name and licence number, and can I verify it myself?If a provider will not name the operating surgeon before you pay a deposit, stop. A named surgeon with a verifiable Medical Council number is the floor, not a feature. Be alert to the surgeon being changed after booking.

2. Is the surgeon certified by the Thai Board of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery?Not "board certified" unqualified — the specific board. Membership of international societies is not certification. ISAPS and ASPS are membership organisations; they do not certify or accredit anyone, and any provider describing a surgeon as "ISAPS-certified" either misunderstands this or is hoping you do.

3. Will I speak to the operating surgeon before I fly, on video, for long enough to disagree with him?This is the single strongest predictor of a good experience, and it is where ASAPS's criticism has the most force. The consultation should be with the surgeon, not a coordinator, and long enough that you could be told no.

4. In what facility will the operation take place, and what is its accreditation?A licensed hospital with an intensive care unit, a resident anaesthetist and blood banking is a materially different risk environment from a day clinic. Ask what the accreditation actually is and check that the accrediting body exists and accredits hospitals. Intrarat Hospital, where I operate, is certified to ISO 9001:2015. It is not JCI-accredited, and you should be sceptical of any provider implying otherwise — several sites quote Thailand-wide JCI statistics in a way that reads as a claim about their own hospital.

5. Who administers the anaesthetic and what monitoring is in place?The answer should be a qualified anaesthetist, in a hospital, with full monitoring and post-operative recovery capability. Anaesthesia is where the worst outcomes in cosmetic surgery originate.

6. What is the written policy on complications and revisions — who pays, and for what?Get it in writing before you pay. Include: who reviews you after you fly home, how you contact the operating surgeon directly, what a revision costs, and who pays for return flights and accommodation if one is needed. Vagueness here is the reddest flag in this industry.

7. What are you not telling me — what are the risks, and when would you refuse to operate?A surgeon who cannot readily describe the complications of your procedure, or who has never declined a case, is telling you something important. I decline operations regularly: patients whose expectations cannot be met by surgery, patients too young for what they are asking, patients whose risk profile makes the procedure unwise, and patients whose problem is not surgical. If that answer never comes, ask harder.

The things that go wrong

Because nobody in my industry writes this section, here it is.

• Haematoma — bleeding into the surgical space, typically within the first 24 to 48 hours. The most common early complication in facelift surgery. Usually requires a return to theatre. This is the primary clinical reason to remain near your surgeon in the first week.

• Seroma — a fluid collection, most common after abdominoplasty and extensive liposuction. Often managed with drainage in clinic, sometimes repeatedly.

• Infection — surgical site infection is a recognised risk in any procedure. Australian sources have raised specific concern about resistant organisms acquired abroad. Ask about antibiotic protocols.

• Wound breakdown and delayed healing — significantly more likely in smokers, in diabetics, and at tension points such as the vertical limb of a body lift.

• Skin or fat necrosis — tissue loss from compromised blood supply. Higher risk in smokers and in long-flap procedures.

• Nerve injury — temporary numbness is expected after most procedures. Permanent motor nerve injury in facelift surgery is uncommon but real, and must be disclosed.

• Capsular contracture — hardening of scar tissue around a breast implant, which can occur years later and may require further surgery.

• Venous thromboembolism — deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism. Rare but potentially fatal, and the reason risk scoring and prophylaxis matter.

• An outcome you do not like — asymmetry, scarring worse than hoped, or a result that is technically sound and emotionally disappointing. This is not a rare complication. It is the most common reason for regret, and it is prevented at the consultation, not in theatre.

If a provider has not walked you through this list, you have not consented.

The financial exposure nobody mentions

Understand the position before you book, not afterwards.

Medicare does not cover overseas medical treatment. Australia holds reciprocal health agreements with a small number of countries, mostly for emergency care — Thailand is not among them. Australian private health insurance generally does not cover procedures performed overseas, and may not cover follow-up treatment at home either — the Better Health Channel puts it as "unlikely" rather than impossible, so check your own policy in writing and do not assume either way. Standard travel insurance generally excludes medical tourism outright; Smartraveller advises obtaining a specialised policy and warns that medical evacuation home can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In New Zealand the position is conditional, and widely misunderstood. NZAPS states that ACC does not cover injuries sustained from surgery overseas. A 2020 peer-reviewed analysis of ACC treatment-injury claims by Jonathan Wheeler, covering 1 July 2014 to 30 June 2019, found 1,048 claims lodged and 738 accepted, valued at NZ$6.3 million; of all claims with breast reconstruction excluded, 76 patients had had their initial surgery overseas. Critically, Wheeler notes that ACC "will accept a treatment injury only if the surgery has been performed by an appropriately qualified doctor," and that it is "not well understood by health professionals in New Zealand that the ACC may cover some patients who have complications as a result of surgery undertaken overseas." Whether you are covered turns on your surgeon's qualifications, not simply on where you flew. Seek that in writing from ACC rather than from a clinic.

One more, specific to Australia and currently being enforced: in October 2025 the ATO and Ahpra issued a joint warning that some health practitioners and registered agents are "inappropriately supporting individuals to access their superannuation on compassionate grounds, particularly for cosmetic procedures that aren't aligned to compassionate release requirements." Penalties apply to anyone who helps prepare or submit an application "for health treatments that are not necessary," which the ATO treats as a false or misleading statement to the Commissioner. In April 2026 the WA State Administrative Tribunal found a Perth doctor had engaged in professional misconduct for helping a patient access $18,500 of superannuation to fund liposuction, and suspended his registration. If any provider offers to help you access your super for cosmetic surgery, treat that as a serious warning sign about the provider.

How to check a Thai surgeon yourself, in ten minutes

1. Get the surgeon's full name in Thai and English and their Medical Council licence number. Refusal to provide these ends the conversation.

2. Search the licence number alongside the surgeon's name. It should appear on the hospital's own website. A surgeon whose credentials exist only on agency sites is a problem.

3. Confirm the specific credential is Thai Board of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery — not "cosmetic surgery," not a society membership, not a fellowship certificate from a course.

4. Identify the hospital, not the agency. Confirm the operation happens in that hospital, that it has an ICU, and confirm what its accreditation actually is.

5. Search the surgeon's name outside the marketing sphere — forums, Reddit, Trustpilot, RealSelf — and read the one-star reviews specifically. Patterns matter more than individual accounts.

6. Ask for the written complications and revision policy before any deposit.

7. Insist on a video consultation with the operating surgeon before booking flights.

Apply all seven to me. I would rather lose a patient to scrutiny than gain one who did not do it.

The honest bottom line

Cosmetic surgery in Thailand can be performed to a standard equal to anywhere in the world, by properly certified specialists, in licensed hospitals, with outcomes that hold up. It can also be performed by unqualified doctors in unlicensed premises on patients who never met them, and the marketing for both looks identical from Australia.

Price is not the variable that predicts which one you get. Credential, facility, consultation and aftercare are.

If the seven questions above are answered clearly and in writing, you have removed the failure modes that are removable in advance. You have not removed surgical risk. The complications listed above happen to well-selected patients operated on by properly certified surgeons in accredited hospitals, and they will keep happening. What you have done is make sure that if one occurs, it occurs inside a system that can manage it. If the questions are deflected, no discount compensates for what you are accepting.

And if, after reading this, you conclude that having the surgery at home — closer to your surgeon, inside your health system, with recourse if things go wrong — is worth the extra cost, that is a completely rational decision, and I would rather you make it than fly here uncertain.

When to seek care

If you have already had surgery overseas and are back home: seek urgent medical review for fever above 38°C, increasing pain, spreading redness, wound discharge, a rapidly enlarging or tense swelling at a surgical site, or one-sided leg pain and swelling. Seek emergency care for sudden breathlessness, chest pain worse on breathing in, or coughing blood. Do not delay because you are worried about how the surgery was obtained — present to an emergency department and tell them exactly what was done and when.

Dr. Rushapol Sdawat (known to international patients as Dr. Dominic) is a Thai Board-certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon practising at Intrarat Hospital, Bangkok, Medical Licence No. 17689. He holds Thai Board certification in General Surgery (Phramongkutklao Hospital) and in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University), is a member of ISAPS since 2008 and an international member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. His post-specialist training includes craniofacial and microsurgery at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taipei (2001); facial bone contouring in Seoul (2012); the MAFAC facelift course with Dr. Bryan Mendelson, Melbourne (2022); advanced blepharoplasty, St Petersburg (2022); and preservation rhinoplasty with Dr. Baris Cakir and deep plane facelift with Dr. Michael Nayak, Istanbul (2023).

Dr. Rushapol holds Thai specialist certification. He is not registered with Ahpra and does not hold Australian or New Zealand specialist registration. His Thai Medical Council registration (Licence No. 17689) can be verified independently at checkmd.tmc.or.th.

This article is provided for general information and education. It is not medical advice. Surgery carries risk, including risk of serious complications and of outcomes that do not meet expectations. Results vary between patients.

Dr. Rushapol Sdawat (known to international patients as Dr. Dominic) is a Thai Board-certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon practising at Intrarat Hospital, Bangkok, Medical Licence No. 17689. He holds Thai Board certification in General Surgery (Phramongkutklao Hospital) and in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University), has been a member of ISAPS since 2008 and is an international member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Dr. Rushapol holds Thai specialist certification; he is not registered with Ahpra and does not hold Australian or New Zealand specialist registration. His registration can be verified on the Medical Council of Thailand register at checkmd.tmc.or.th.

This article is provided for general information and education. It is not medical advice and cannot substitute for individual assessment by a qualified practitioner who knows your history. Surgery carries risk, including risk of serious complications and of outcomes that do not meet expectations. Results vary between patients.

Why Is Plastic Surgery Cheaper in Thailand?

By Dr. Rushapol Sdawat, MD — Thai Board-certified Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon, Medical Licence No. 17689
Last reviewed: 28 AUG 2026

You have seen a quote that is a third of the Australian one and you are trying to work out what is wrong with it. That instinct is sound. Most things that cost a third of the going rate are worse, and you have been taught, correctly, that surgery is not where you look for a bargain.

But you may also have noticed that nobody in this industry ever answers the question properly. The clinic pages say "lower cost of living" and move on. That is not an explanation, it is a shrug in the shape of one.

So here is the actual economics, with numbers you can check. And then the part that most of this market will not print: the same structural forces that let a properly credentialled surgeon in a certified hospital charge less than Sydney also let a genuinely unsafe operator charge far less than that. Price is not a safety signal in either direction.

The single number that explains most of the gap

World Bank data puts current health expenditure per capita in 2023 at US$6,980 in Australia and US$327 in Thailand. That is not a typo and it is not a rounding error. The entire health system you are comparing against operates on roughly one-twentieth of the per-person spend.

The broader economy sits at a smaller multiple: GDP per capita in 2024 was US$64,610 in Australia against US$7,386 in Thailand — around nine times. So Thai health spending is low even relative to Thai income. Some of that is a genuinely efficient public system, some of it is care Australians would consider inadequate, and a great deal of it is simply that everything a hospital buys — staff hours, buildings, cleaning, catering, sterile services, security — costs a fraction of what it costs in Sydney.

Every cost line in your quote inherits that ratio.

Medical indemnity, and what an Australian surgeon pays before touching anyone

An Australian specialist's indemnity premium is a fixed cost that has to be recovered across their operating list before they earn anything.

Published Australian figures give a sense of scale: an insurance brokerage citing 2019/20 data reported annual premiums of A$38,500 to A$52,000 for an orthopaedic surgeon and A$65,000 to A$92,000 for an obstetrician and gynaecologist, against A$5,000 to A$10,000 for an anaesthetist and A$3,750 to A$8,000 for a general practitioner. The same source is explicit that these represent specific practitioners rather than the whole occupation. [CONFIRM: a published annual indemnity premium range specifically for Australian plastic surgeons — I have not found one and will not extrapolate.]

The Thai medicolegal environment produces materially lower premiums. I am not going to tell you that is unambiguously a good thing. A litigation environment that prices risk aggressively also disciplines behaviour. It is a real difference in the cost base and it is also a real difference in the consequences of a bad outcome, and you should hold both of those thoughts at once.

Wages, and the fact that a hospital is mostly people

A hospital's largest cost is payroll. Australian full-time adult average weekly ordinary time earnings were A$2,083.70 in May 2026 according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Thai wages across every hospital role — nursing, theatre technicians, sterile services, orderlies, administration, catering, security — sit far below that, in proportion to the GDP-per-capita gap above.

That is the single biggest structural driver, and it is worth being clear about what it does and does not mean. It means your theatre is staffed at a lower cost. It does not mean it is staffed by fewer or less trained people, and if a clinic is achieving its price by running thin — one nurse where there should be two, no dedicated recovery staff, a general practitioner administering sedation instead of a specialist anaesthetist — then the saving has come out of your safety margin rather than out of Thailand's wage structure.

Land, buildings and what a theatre costs to exist

An operating theatre is expensive real estate that sits idle much of the week. Commercial land and construction costs in Bangkok are a fraction of Sydney or Melbourne, so the fixed cost per case is lower before a single instrument is opened.

Equipment is a partial exception, and it is worth understanding why. A VASER handpiece, a Renuvion generator or a pair of breast implants is imported and priced in a global market, often with an import duty on top. Those inputs do not get cheaper because they are used in Thailand. This is why device-heavy procedures show a smaller percentage saving than skin-and-suture ones: our breast augmentation with round gel implants (Mentor) is ฿125,000 while an abdominoplasty — a much longer, more demanding operation with no implanted device — is ฿160,000. In Australia those two prices sit far further apart. The device is doing that, and the device costs roughly the same wherever you are.

The corollary is one you can use. If a clinic's implant pricing is dramatically below the market, ask where the implants come from, ask for the manufacturer's implant card at discharge, and ask for the lot numbers. Counterfeit and grey-market devices exist. Your surgeon should be able to answer all three questions without hesitating.

Competitive density, and what it does to price

Bangkok has an unusual concentration of cosmetic surgical capacity serving domestic, regional and international patients. Dense competition compresses margin. In a functioning market that is entirely healthy: it is the reason a well-run clinic with a board-certified surgeon publishes a price rather than quoting you privately.

It is also the mechanism by which the floor falls out. Where there are many providers and a steady flow of price-sensitive international patients, there is always someone willing to go lower — by shortening the operation, by using an unqualified assistant, by discharging you the same day when you should be monitored, or by operating outside their scope of training.

Currency, and why the gap looks bigger from Australia

Our prices are set in Thai baht. An abdominoplasty here is ฿160,000; a breast augmentation with round gel implants (Mentor) is ฿125,000. Converted, those are approximately A$7,000 and A$5,500 — indicative figures, converted from Thai baht at approximately 23 THB/AUD, and confirmed at booking.

The Australian dollar figure moves with the exchange rate; the baht figure does not. So part of "why is it cheaper" is simply that you are buying a service produced in a lower-cost currency, and the apparent size of the discount changes with the market. Do not mistake a favourable month for a structural saving.

What the structural gap does not explain

Everything above accounts for a large and legitimate price difference between a properly resourced Bangkok operation and an equivalent Australian one. It does not account for the very bottom of the market.

If a quote is dramatically below the range of established, credentialled Bangkok providers, the difference is no longer being funded by land prices or wages. Something is being removed. The candidates are: theatre time, anaesthetic staffing, post-operative monitoring, implant provenance, the surgeon's training, or your follow-up.

Each of those has a recognisable signature. Theatre time gets removed by combining more procedures into one anaesthetic than is safe, or by rushing closure — you see it later as poor scars and asymmetry. Anaesthetic staffing gets removed by having a doctor who is not a specialist anaesthetist administer sedation, sometimes while also assisting. Monitoring gets removed by same-day discharge after an operation that warrants an overnight bed with observations. Follow-up gets removed by scheduling your flight home before the wound has declared itself.

None of those savings are visible in the quote. All of them are visible in the outcomes, several weeks later, in a different country, to a doctor who has never met the surgeon involved. That asymmetry — where the money is saved in one place and the cost lands in another — is the entire structural problem with the bottom of this market, and it is why an unusually low price is worth interrogating rather than celebrating.

Price is not a safety signal in either direction

Here is the passage that does not help me sell anything.

A very low price should prompt questions. It does not prove anything is wrong. There are competent surgeons in quiet practices with low overheads charging modestly.

A high price proves nothing at all. It does not buy you board certification, an accredited facility, a specialist anaesthetist, ICU availability, or a surgeon operating within their scope. It certainly does not buy you a guarantee — and no checklist, credential or protocol removes surgical risk. The 60 Minutes investigation that aired in Australia in August 2026, and the disfigurement it documented, did not involve the cheapest operator in Bangkok. It involved a large, heavily marketed one.

Which is why ASAPS, two days later, called for regulation of Australian facilitators, criticising "heavily curated patient stories, before-and-after content and positive recovery experiences" that "can create an impression of safety that may not show complications, recovery difficulties or longer-term outcomes." Their consumer research found that 89.3% of people said surgeon qualifications mattered to them — and only 49.1% actually checked.

Checking is free. It is also the only step in this entire process that reliably correlates with safety.

What a very cheap quote should make you ask — and what an expensive one guarantees

QuestionWhat a good answer looks likeWho is operating, and what is their licence number?A name and a verifiable registration number you can check with the Medical Council of Thailand. Mine is Medical Licence No. 17689.What board are they certified by?A national specialty board. I hold Thai Board certification in General Surgery and in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Note that ISAPS and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons are membership societies — they certify and accredit nobody. I am an ISAPS member since 2008 and an ASPS international member, and neither of those is a certification.Where is the operation performed?A named hospital. Ours is Intrarat Hospital, which is ISO 9001:2015 certified. It is not JCI-accredited and we do not claim it is.Who administers the anaesthetic?A specialist anaesthetist, named.What happens on night one?For our body-contouring patients, monitoring in ICU.What if there is a complication after I fly home?A specific answer, including who pays.Is the price all-in, and what is excluded?A written list. Ours excludes airfares, your support person, food, insurance, lost income and follow-up in Australia.

Two things I would add. Any clinic that answers "we've never had a complication" is either inexperienced or not telling you the truth; complications are a feature of surgery, not of bad surgeons. And in October 2025 the ATO and Ahpra jointly warned that some practitioners were "inappropriately supporting individuals to access their superannuation on compassionate grounds, particularly for cosmetic procedures that aren't aligned to compassionate release requirements." If anyone in the chain offers to help you unlock your super for cosmetic surgery, walk away from the whole arrangement.

When to seek care

This applies whatever you paid and wherever you had it done.

Emergency — nearest emergency department immediately, in Bangkok or in Australia, without waiting for anyone's reply. Sudden shortness of breath, chest pain, coughing blood, or a hot, swollen, painful calf — these suggest venous thromboembolism, which can present days or weeks after surgery, including in flight. Tell the cabin crew if you are airborne. Also: heavy bleeding through dressings, a rapidly expanding tense swelling suggesting haematoma, fever above 38.5°C with shaking chills, confusion, or operated skin turning dusky, grey or black.

Same-day review. Pain escalating after day three rather than settling; a wound edge separating; purulent or foul-smelling discharge; redness spreading beyond the incision; a fluid collection that is enlarging; new numbness or weakness; a garment too tight to tolerate. In Australia, that means your GP or an emergency department today, not next week.

Next available appointment. A lump in a scar, plateaued numbness, asymmetry, or a result you are technically fine with and emotionally disappointed by.

If you are back in Australia, be aware that Medicare does not cover overseas treatment and Australia has no reciprocal health agreement with Thailand; your private fund is generally unlikely to cover overseas procedures and may not cover follow-up at home either. That does not change the advice above. Get seen. Sort the funding out afterwards.

What actually correlates with safety

Not price. Verified board certification in the specialty being performed. A named, licensed hospital rather than a day clinic for a major operation. A specialist anaesthetist. Realistic pre-operative counselling that includes the complications and the possibility of disappointment. A surgeon willing to decline. And a plan for what happens if something goes wrong nine hours' flight from where it was done.

I would rather you took that list to a competitor and used it than took our price to anyone without it.

Dr. Rushapol Sdawat (known to international patients as Dr. Dominic) is a Thai Board-certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon practising at Intrarat Hospital, Bangkok, Medical Licence No. 17689. He holds Thai Board certification in General Surgery (Phramongkutklao Hospital) and in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University), has been a member of ISAPS since 2008 and is an international member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Dr. Rushapol holds Thai specialist certification; he is not registered with Ahpra and does not hold Australian or New Zealand specialist registration. His registration can be verified on the Medical Council of Thailand register at checkmd.tmc.or.th.

This article is provided for general information and education. It is not medical advice and cannot substitute for individual assessment by a qualified practitioner who knows your history. Surgery carries risk, including risk of serious complications and of outcomes that do not meet expectations. Results vary between patients.

Is Cosmetic Surgery in Thailand Safe? An Honest Answer From a Bangkok Surgeon

By Dr. Rushapol Sdawat, MD — Thai Board-certified Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon, Medical Licence No. 17689
Last reviewed: 27 August 2026

In August 2026, Australian television broadcast the stories of women who came to Bangkok for cosmetic surgery and went home disfigured. I am a plastic surgeon in Bangkok. I watched it, and I am not going to tell you those stories were unrepresentative or unfair.

The honest answer to the question in the title is: it depends entirely on who operates on you, where, and what happens afterwards — and the gap between the best and the worst in this city is wider than in almost any other medical market in the world. That is an uncomfortable thing for someone in my position to write, and it is also the only useful thing I can tell you.

What follows is an attempt to give you the tools to tell the difference, including the parts that do not flatter my own industry.

What the criticism gets right

Two days after the broadcast, the Australasian Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons issued a statement calling for government action. The line that should concern you most is this one:

"heavily curated patient stories, before-and-after content and positive recovery experiences can create an impression of safety that may not show complications, recovery difficulties or longer-term outcomes."

They are describing the standard marketing model of this entire category, and they are correct. If you have spent an evening reading Thailand surgery websites, you have seen hundreds of glowing testimonials and close to zero discussion of what happens when things go wrong. That asymmetry is not evidence that complications are rare. It is evidence that nobody publishes them.

The Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons is blunter still: cosmetic tourism is "a price-driven practice," surgical qualifications and facility standards overseas "may not consistently meet the high standards required in Australia," and — the criticism that lands hardest — "patients who have had surgery overseas often report only meeting their surgeon on the day of their operation."

I have met patients for whom that was true elsewhere. It is indefensible. You cannot consent properly to an operation you discussed for the first time an hour beforehand, through a coordinator, with a surgeon whose name you learned that morning.

ASAPS also estimates that around 15,000 Australians travel overseas for cosmetic surgery each year — adding that they "believe the true number may be considerably higher" — spending roughly $300 million, and that revision surgery may be needed in up to seven per cent of cases. Dr Mark Duncan-Smith, a Perth plastic surgeon, has publicly estimated that Australian plastic surgeons collectively treat two to three thousand patients a year for complications from overseas procedures.

Take those numbers seriously. I would add one caveat in the interests of accuracy rather than defence: as a professor quoted in an Australian health-fund article on this topic noted, medical tourism data should be "taken with a heavy grain of salt" because it is "rarely collected by impartial third parties." The bodies producing complication estimates also compete commercially with overseas providers. That does not make the numbers wrong. It means nobody — including me — is a neutral source here, and you should weight everything you read accordingly, including this.

What the criticism gets wrong

The weakest part of the case against Thai surgery is the implication that the country lacks surgical standards. It does not.

Thailand has a formal specialist certification system administered by the Royal College of Surgeons of Thailand under the Medical Council of Thailand. Thai Board certification in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery requires a completed medical degree followed by either a general surgery residency plus a further plastic surgery residency, or a direct-entry plastic surgery residency, at an accredited teaching hospital, with examination at each stage. My own path was the first of those: Siriraj Hospital for medicine, Phramongkutklao Hospital for the general surgery board, and Ramathibodi Hospital at Mahidol University for the plastic surgery board.

Every registered doctor in Thailand carries a Medical Council licence number. Mine is 17689. It is publicly verifiable — the Medical Council of Thailand runs a free English-language register at checkmd.tmc.or.th — and so is every other Thai doctor's. Go and check mine now.

The problem in Bangkok is not the absence of a standard. It is that the standard is not what most patients are actually buying. A great deal of cosmetic work in this city is performed by doctors who are not plastic surgeons at all — general practitioners, dermatologists, doctors with a weekend course certificate — in clinics rather than hospitals. Nothing about the phrase "Thailand" tells you which of those two worlds you have walked into. The word that matters is not the country. It is the credential.

The seven questions that actually separate safe from unsafe

If you do nothing else, ask these. Ask them of me, and ask them of everyone else you are considering — including surgeons in Australia and New Zealand.

1. What is your surgeon's name and licence number, and can I verify it myself?If a provider will not name the operating surgeon before you pay a deposit, stop. A named surgeon with a verifiable Medical Council number is the floor, not a feature. Be alert to the surgeon being changed after booking.

2. Is the surgeon certified by the Thai Board of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery?Not "board certified" unqualified — the specific board. Membership of international societies is not certification. ISAPS and ASPS are membership organisations; they do not certify or accredit anyone, and any provider describing a surgeon as "ISAPS-certified" either misunderstands this or is hoping you do.

3. Will I speak to the operating surgeon before I fly, on video, for long enough to disagree with him?This is the single strongest predictor of a good experience, and it is where ASAPS's criticism has the most force. The consultation should be with the surgeon, not a coordinator, and long enough that you could be told no.

4. In what facility will the operation take place, and what is its accreditation?A licensed hospital with an intensive care unit, a resident anaesthetist and blood banking is a materially different risk environment from a day clinic. Ask what the accreditation actually is and check that the accrediting body exists and accredits hospitals. Intrarat Hospital, where I operate, is certified to ISO 9001:2015. It is not JCI-accredited, and you should be sceptical of any provider implying otherwise — several sites quote Thailand-wide JCI statistics in a way that reads as a claim about their own hospital.

5. Who administers the anaesthetic and what monitoring is in place?The answer should be a qualified anaesthetist, in a hospital, with full monitoring and post-operative recovery capability. Anaesthesia is where the worst outcomes in cosmetic surgery originate.

6. What is the written policy on complications and revisions — who pays, and for what?Get it in writing before you pay. Include: who reviews you after you fly home, how you contact the operating surgeon directly, what a revision costs, and who pays for return flights and accommodation if one is needed. Vagueness here is the reddest flag in this industry.

7. What are you not telling me — what are the risks, and when would you refuse to operate?A surgeon who cannot readily describe the complications of your procedure, or who has never declined a case, is telling you something important. I decline operations regularly: patients whose expectations cannot be met by surgery, patients too young for what they are asking, patients whose risk profile makes the procedure unwise, and patients whose problem is not surgical. If that answer never comes, ask harder.

The things that go wrong

Because nobody in my industry writes this section, here it is.

• Haematoma — bleeding into the surgical space, typically within the first 24 to 48 hours. The most common early complication in facelift surgery. Usually requires a return to theatre. This is the primary clinical reason to remain near your surgeon in the first week.

• Seroma — a fluid collection, most common after abdominoplasty and extensive liposuction. Often managed with drainage in clinic, sometimes repeatedly.

• Infection — surgical site infection is a recognised risk in any procedure. Australian sources have raised specific concern about resistant organisms acquired abroad. Ask about antibiotic protocols.

• Wound breakdown and delayed healing — significantly more likely in smokers, in diabetics, and at tension points such as the vertical limb of a body lift.

• Skin or fat necrosis — tissue loss from compromised blood supply. Higher risk in smokers and in long-flap procedures.

• Nerve injury — temporary numbness is expected after most procedures. Permanent motor nerve injury in facelift surgery is uncommon but real, and must be disclosed.

• Capsular contracture — hardening of scar tissue around a breast implant, which can occur years later and may require further surgery.

• Venous thromboembolism — deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism. Rare but potentially fatal, and the reason risk scoring and prophylaxis matter.

• An outcome you do not like — asymmetry, scarring worse than hoped, or a result that is technically sound and emotionally disappointing. This is not a rare complication. It is the most common reason for regret, and it is prevented at the consultation, not in theatre.

If a provider has not walked you through this list, you have not consented.

The financial exposure nobody mentions

Understand the position before you book, not afterwards.

Medicare does not cover overseas medical treatment. Australia holds reciprocal health agreements with a small number of countries, mostly for emergency care — Thailand is not among them. Australian private health insurance generally does not cover procedures performed overseas, and may not cover follow-up treatment at home either — the Better Health Channel puts it as "unlikely" rather than impossible, so check your own policy in writing and do not assume either way. Standard travel insurance generally excludes medical tourism outright; Smartraveller advises obtaining a specialised policy and warns that medical evacuation home can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In New Zealand the position is conditional, and widely misunderstood. NZAPS states that ACC does not cover injuries sustained from surgery overseas. A 2020 peer-reviewed analysis of ACC treatment-injury claims by Jonathan Wheeler, covering 1 July 2014 to 30 June 2019, found 1,048 claims lodged and 738 accepted, valued at NZ$6.3 million; of all claims with breast reconstruction excluded, 76 patients had had their initial surgery overseas. Critically, Wheeler notes that ACC "will accept a treatment injury only if the surgery has been performed by an appropriately qualified doctor," and that it is "not well understood by health professionals in New Zealand that the ACC may cover some patients who have complications as a result of surgery undertaken overseas." Whether you are covered turns on your surgeon's qualifications, not simply on where you flew. Seek that in writing from ACC rather than from a clinic.

One more, specific to Australia and currently being enforced: in October 2025 the ATO and Ahpra issued a joint warning that some health practitioners and registered agents are "inappropriately supporting individuals to access their superannuation on compassionate grounds, particularly for cosmetic procedures that aren't aligned to compassionate release requirements." Penalties apply to anyone who helps prepare or submit an application "for health treatments that are not necessary," which the ATO treats as a false or misleading statement to the Commissioner. In April 2026 the WA State Administrative Tribunal found a Perth doctor had engaged in professional misconduct for helping a patient access $18,500 of superannuation to fund liposuction, and suspended his registration. If any provider offers to help you access your super for cosmetic surgery, treat that as a serious warning sign about the provider.

How to check a Thai surgeon yourself, in ten minutes

1. Get the surgeon's full name in Thai and English and their Medical Council licence number. Refusal to provide these ends the conversation.

2. Search the licence number alongside the surgeon's name. It should appear on the hospital's own website. A surgeon whose credentials exist only on agency sites is a problem.

3. Confirm the specific credential is Thai Board of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery — not "cosmetic surgery," not a society membership, not a fellowship certificate from a course.

4. Identify the hospital, not the agency. Confirm the operation happens in that hospital, that it has an ICU, and confirm what its accreditation actually is.

5. Search the surgeon's name outside the marketing sphere — forums, Reddit, Trustpilot, RealSelf — and read the one-star reviews specifically. Patterns matter more than individual accounts.

6. Ask for the written complications and revision policy before any deposit.

7. Insist on a video consultation with the operating surgeon before booking flights.

Apply all seven to me. I would rather lose a patient to scrutiny than gain one who did not do it.

The honest bottom line

Cosmetic surgery in Thailand can be performed to a standard equal to anywhere in the world, by properly certified specialists, in licensed hospitals, with outcomes that hold up. It can also be performed by unqualified doctors in unlicensed premises on patients who never met them, and the marketing for both looks identical from Australia.

Price is not the variable that predicts which one you get. Credential, facility, consultation and aftercare are.

If the seven questions above are answered clearly and in writing, you have removed the failure modes that are removable in advance. You have not removed surgical risk. The complications listed above happen to well-selected patients operated on by properly certified surgeons in accredited hospitals, and they will keep happening. What you have done is make sure that if one occurs, it occurs inside a system that can manage it. If the questions are deflected, no discount compensates for what you are accepting.

And if, after reading this, you conclude that having the surgery at home — closer to your surgeon, inside your health system, with recourse if things go wrong — is worth the extra cost, that is a completely rational decision, and I would rather you make it than fly here uncertain.

When to seek care

If you have already had surgery overseas and are back home: seek urgent medical review for fever above 38°C, increasing pain, spreading redness, wound discharge, a rapidly enlarging or tense swelling at a surgical site, or one-sided leg pain and swelling. Seek emergency care for sudden breathlessness, chest pain worse on breathing in, or coughing blood. Do not delay because you are worried about how the surgery was obtained — present to an emergency department and tell them exactly what was done and when.

Dr. Rushapol Sdawat (known to international patients as Dr. Dominic) is a Thai Board-certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon practising at Intrarat Hospital, Bangkok, Medical Licence No. 17689. He holds Thai Board certification in General Surgery (Phramongkutklao Hospital) and in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University), is a member of ISAPS since 2008 and an international member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. His post-specialist training includes craniofacial and microsurgery at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taipei (2001); facial bone contouring in Seoul (2012); the MAFAC facelift course with Dr. Bryan Mendelson, Melbourne (2022); advanced blepharoplasty, St Petersburg (2022); and preservation rhinoplasty with Dr. Baris Cakir and deep plane facelift with Dr. Michael Nayak, Istanbul (2023).

Dr. Rushapol holds Thai specialist certification. He is not registered with Ahpra and does not hold Australian or New Zealand specialist registration. His Thai Medical Council registration (Licence No. 17689) can be verified independently at checkmd.tmc.or.th.

This article is provided for general information and education. It is not medical advice. Surgery carries risk, including risk of serious complications and of outcomes that do not meet expectations. Results vary between patients.

Dr. Rushapol Sdawat (known to international patients as Dr. Dominic) is a Thai Board-certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon practising at Intrarat Hospital, Bangkok, Medical Licence No. 17689. He holds Thai Board certification in General Surgery (Phramongkutklao Hospital) and in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University), has been a member of ISAPS since 2008 and is an international member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Dr. Rushapol holds Thai specialist certification; he is not registered with Ahpra and does not hold Australian or New Zealand specialist registration. His registration can be verified on the Medical Council of Thailand register at checkmd.tmc.or.th.

This article is provided for general information and education. It is not medical advice and cannot substitute for individual assessment by a qualified practitioner who knows your history. Surgery carries risk, including risk of serious complications and of outcomes that do not meet expectations. Results vary between patients.

Why Is Plastic Surgery Cheaper in Thailand?

By Dr. Rushapol Sdawat, MD — Thai Board-certified Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon, Medical Licence No. 17689
Last reviewed: 27 August 2026

You have seen a quote that is a third of the Australian one and you are trying to work out what is wrong with it. That instinct is sound. Most things that cost a third of the going rate are worse, and you have been taught, correctly, that surgery is not where you look for a bargain.

But you may also have noticed that nobody in this industry ever answers the question properly. The clinic pages say "lower cost of living" and move on. That is not an explanation, it is a shrug in the shape of one.

So here is the actual economics, with numbers you can check. And then the part that most of this market will not print: the same structural forces that let a properly credentialled surgeon in a certified hospital charge less than Sydney also let a genuinely unsafe operator charge far less than that. Price is not a safety signal in either direction.

The single number that explains most of the gap

World Bank data puts current health expenditure per capita in 2023 at US$6,980 in Australia and US$327 in Thailand. That is not a typo and it is not a rounding error. The entire health system you are comparing against operates on roughly one-twentieth of the per-person spend.

The broader economy sits at a smaller multiple: GDP per capita in 2024 was US$64,610 in Australia against US$7,386 in Thailand — around nine times. So Thai health spending is low even relative to Thai income. Some of that is a genuinely efficient public system, some of it is care Australians would consider inadequate, and a great deal of it is simply that everything a hospital buys — staff hours, buildings, cleaning, catering, sterile services, security — costs a fraction of what it costs in Sydney.

Every cost line in your quote inherits that ratio.

Medical indemnity, and what an Australian surgeon pays before touching anyone

An Australian specialist's indemnity premium is a fixed cost that has to be recovered across their operating list before they earn anything.

Published Australian figures give a sense of scale: an insurance brokerage citing 2019/20 data reported annual premiums of A$38,500 to A$52,000 for an orthopaedic surgeon and A$65,000 to A$92,000 for an obstetrician and gynaecologist, against A$5,000 to A$10,000 for an anaesthetist and A$3,750 to A$8,000 for a general practitioner. The same source is explicit that these represent specific practitioners rather than the whole occupation. [CONFIRM: a published annual indemnity premium range specifically for Australian plastic surgeons — I have not found one and will not extrapolate.]

The Thai medicolegal environment produces materially lower premiums. I am not going to tell you that is unambiguously a good thing. A litigation environment that prices risk aggressively also disciplines behaviour. It is a real difference in the cost base and it is also a real difference in the consequences of a bad outcome, and you should hold both of those thoughts at once.

Wages, and the fact that a hospital is mostly people

A hospital's largest cost is payroll. Australian full-time adult average weekly ordinary time earnings were A$2,083.70 in May 2026 according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Thai wages across every hospital role — nursing, theatre technicians, sterile services, orderlies, administration, catering, security — sit far below that, in proportion to the GDP-per-capita gap above.

That is the single biggest structural driver, and it is worth being clear about what it does and does not mean. It means your theatre is staffed at a lower cost. It does not mean it is staffed by fewer or less trained people, and if a clinic is achieving its price by running thin — one nurse where there should be two, no dedicated recovery staff, a general practitioner administering sedation instead of a specialist anaesthetist — then the saving has come out of your safety margin rather than out of Thailand's wage structure.

Land, buildings and what a theatre costs to exist

An operating theatre is expensive real estate that sits idle much of the week. Commercial land and construction costs in Bangkok are a fraction of Sydney or Melbourne, so the fixed cost per case is lower before a single instrument is opened.

Equipment is a partial exception, and it is worth understanding why. A VASER handpiece, a Renuvion generator or a pair of breast implants is imported and priced in a global market, often with an import duty on top. Those inputs do not get cheaper because they are used in Thailand. This is why device-heavy procedures show a smaller percentage saving than skin-and-suture ones: our breast augmentation with round gel implants (Mentor) is ฿125,000 while an abdominoplasty — a much longer, more demanding operation with no implanted device — is ฿160,000. In Australia those two prices sit far further apart. The device is doing that, and the device costs roughly the same wherever you are.

The corollary is one you can use. If a clinic's implant pricing is dramatically below the market, ask where the implants come from, ask for the manufacturer's implant card at discharge, and ask for the lot numbers. Counterfeit and grey-market devices exist. Your surgeon should be able to answer all three questions without hesitating.

Competitive density, and what it does to price

Bangkok has an unusual concentration of cosmetic surgical capacity serving domestic, regional and international patients. Dense competition compresses margin. In a functioning market that is entirely healthy: it is the reason a well-run clinic with a board-certified surgeon publishes a price rather than quoting you privately.

It is also the mechanism by which the floor falls out. Where there are many providers and a steady flow of price-sensitive international patients, there is always someone willing to go lower — by shortening the operation, by using an unqualified assistant, by discharging you the same day when you should be monitored, or by operating outside their scope of training.

Currency, and why the gap looks bigger from Australia

Our prices are set in Thai baht. An abdominoplasty here is ฿160,000; a breast augmentation with round gel implants (Mentor) is ฿125,000. Converted, those are approximately A$7,000 and A$5,500 — indicative figures, converted from Thai baht at approximately 23 THB/AUD, and confirmed at booking.

The Australian dollar figure moves with the exchange rate; the baht figure does not. So part of "why is it cheaper" is simply that you are buying a service produced in a lower-cost currency, and the apparent size of the discount changes with the market. Do not mistake a favourable month for a structural saving.

What the structural gap does not explain

Everything above accounts for a large and legitimate price difference between a properly resourced Bangkok operation and an equivalent Australian one. It does not account for the very bottom of the market.

If a quote is dramatically below the range of established, credentialled Bangkok providers, the difference is no longer being funded by land prices or wages. Something is being removed. The candidates are: theatre time, anaesthetic staffing, post-operative monitoring, implant provenance, the surgeon's training, or your follow-up.

Each of those has a recognisable signature. Theatre time gets removed by combining more procedures into one anaesthetic than is safe, or by rushing closure — you see it later as poor scars and asymmetry. Anaesthetic staffing gets removed by having a doctor who is not a specialist anaesthetist administer sedation, sometimes while also assisting. Monitoring gets removed by same-day discharge after an operation that warrants an overnight bed with observations. Follow-up gets removed by scheduling your flight home before the wound has declared itself.

None of those savings are visible in the quote. All of them are visible in the outcomes, several weeks later, in a different country, to a doctor who has never met the surgeon involved. That asymmetry — where the money is saved in one place and the cost lands in another — is the entire structural problem with the bottom of this market, and it is why an unusually low price is worth interrogating rather than celebrating.

Price is not a safety signal in either direction

Here is the passage that does not help me sell anything.

A very low price should prompt questions. It does not prove anything is wrong. There are competent surgeons in quiet practices with low overheads charging modestly.

A high price proves nothing at all. It does not buy you board certification, an accredited facility, a specialist anaesthetist, ICU availability, or a surgeon operating within their scope. It certainly does not buy you a guarantee — and no checklist, credential or protocol removes surgical risk. The 60 Minutes investigation that aired in Australia in August 2026, and the disfigurement it documented, did not involve the cheapest operator in Bangkok. It involved a large, heavily marketed one.

Which is why ASAPS, two days later, called for regulation of Australian facilitators, criticising "heavily curated patient stories, before-and-after content and positive recovery experiences" that "can create an impression of safety that may not show complications, recovery difficulties or longer-term outcomes." Their consumer research found that 89.3% of people said surgeon qualifications mattered to them — and only 49.1% actually checked.

Checking is free. It is also the only step in this entire process that reliably correlates with safety.

What a very cheap quote should make you ask — and what an expensive one guarantees

QuestionWhat a good answer looks likeWho is operating, and what is their licence number?A name and a verifiable registration number you can check with the Medical Council of Thailand. Mine is Medical Licence No. 17689.What board are they certified by?A national specialty board. I hold Thai Board certification in General Surgery and in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Note that ISAPS and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons are membership societies — they certify and accredit nobody. I am an ISAPS member since 2008 and an ASPS international member, and neither of those is a certification.Where is the operation performed?A named hospital. Ours is Intrarat Hospital, which is ISO 9001:2015 certified. It is not JCI-accredited and we do not claim it is.Who administers the anaesthetic?A specialist anaesthetist, named.What happens on night one?For our body-contouring patients, monitoring in ICU.What if there is a complication after I fly home?A specific answer, including who pays.Is the price all-in, and what is excluded?A written list. Ours excludes airfares, your support person, food, insurance, lost income and follow-up in Australia.

Two things I would add. Any clinic that answers "we've never had a complication" is either inexperienced or not telling you the truth; complications are a feature of surgery, not of bad surgeons. And in October 2025 the ATO and Ahpra jointly warned that some practitioners were "inappropriately supporting individuals to access their superannuation on compassionate grounds, particularly for cosmetic procedures that aren't aligned to compassionate release requirements." If anyone in the chain offers to help you unlock your super for cosmetic surgery, walk away from the whole arrangement.

When to seek care

This applies whatever you paid and wherever you had it done.

Emergency — nearest emergency department immediately, in Bangkok or in Australia, without waiting for anyone's reply. Sudden shortness of breath, chest pain, coughing blood, or a hot, swollen, painful calf — these suggest venous thromboembolism, which can present days or weeks after surgery, including in flight. Tell the cabin crew if you are airborne. Also: heavy bleeding through dressings, a rapidly expanding tense swelling suggesting haematoma, fever above 38.5°C with shaking chills, confusion, or operated skin turning dusky, grey or black.

Same-day review. Pain escalating after day three rather than settling; a wound edge separating; purulent or foul-smelling discharge; redness spreading beyond the incision; a fluid collection that is enlarging; new numbness or weakness; a garment too tight to tolerate. In Australia, that means your GP or an emergency department today, not next week.

Next available appointment. A lump in a scar, plateaued numbness, asymmetry, or a result you are technically fine with and emotionally disappointed by.

If you are back in Australia, be aware that Medicare does not cover overseas treatment and Australia has no reciprocal health agreement with Thailand; your private fund is generally unlikely to cover overseas procedures and may not cover follow-up at home either. That does not change the advice above. Get seen. Sort the funding out afterwards.

What actually correlates with safety

Not price. Verified board certification in the specialty being performed. A named, licensed hospital rather than a day clinic for a major operation. A specialist anaesthetist. Realistic pre-operative counselling that includes the complications and the possibility of disappointment. A surgeon willing to decline. And a plan for what happens if something goes wrong nine hours' flight from where it was done.

I would rather you took that list to a competitor and used it than took our price to anyone without it.

Dr. Rushapol Sdawat (known to international patients as Dr. Dominic) is a Thai Board-certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon practising at Intrarat Hospital, Bangkok, Medical Licence No. 17689. He holds Thai Board certification in General Surgery (Phramongkutklao Hospital) and in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University), has been a member of ISAPS since 2008 and is an international member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Dr. Rushapol holds Thai specialist certification; he is not registered with Ahpra and does not hold Australian or New Zealand specialist registration. His registration can be verified on the Medical Council of Thailand register at checkmd.tmc.or.th.

This article is provided for general information and education. It is not medical advice and cannot substitute for individual assessment by a qualified practitioner who knows your history. Surgery carries risk, including risk of serious complications and of outcomes that do not meet expectations. Results vary between patients.