The world is now wide open for medical tourism.  Many developing countries are welcoming and courting foreign patients to come for various types of medical and dental services.  Because of high medical costs at home, more people are discovering that it makes sense to get on plane and go to another country to save money.  The other obvious advantage is the trip can be combined with a vacation to a warm, tropical country and it can be done in privacy without anyone at home knowing about it.  India, Malaysia, Thailand, and Brazil are the some of the most popular destinations for medical tourism, but many other countries such as Colombia, the Philippines and Poland are also starting to actively promote it. The tourist-patient today has a lot of choices. I’m going to talk a little about Brazil specifically, because I can relate it to my own experience.  Brazil might not be the absolutely cheapest place to go for plastic surgery, but it does retain some definite advantages over the other countries.  And on average it will cost you a half of what the same procedure at home would.   Plastic surgery is big in Brazil.  On a per capita basis, there are more certified plastic surgeons in Brazil than in the U.S.   There are about 4,100 of them compared to approximately 5,000 in the U.S.   This works out to a ratio of roughly one plastic surgeon per 44,000 vs. one per 59,000 in the U.S.   Brazil’s Plastic Surgery Society estimates that there were 700,000 plastic surgery procedures performed in 2006, up from 616,000 in 2004.  This makes Brazil one of the most popular spots on the planet for what they call “lipotourism.”  According to the Ministry of Tourism about 50,000 foreigners came to Brazil for health treatments in 2006, a big jump over 2004.   Brazilian plastic surgeons are renowned as the world’s best at “bellies, butts, and boobs” while European surgeons are generally considered the best at wrinkle treatments and face-lifts.   This is a somewhat generalized statement, of course.  But the Brazilian Society of Plastic Surgery says that the top 3 procedures performed in the country in 2006 were:  1)  Liposuction, with 198,000 operations;   2)  Breasts, with 117,800 procedures;  3) Faces, with 100,200 treatments.  There have been some interesting innovations coming out of Brazil - such as the “threadlift,”  a quick one-hour face-lift; - the “liposelection,” a lighter version of liposuction with minimal pain; and the “internal bra,” to permanently lift the breasts.   Not to mention the famous “Brazilian butt-lift.”  I didn’t go there for any of these things, of course. I was already in Brazil for some other business.   I got the idea for doing a hair transplant from some newspaper ads, and I was curious to know what the prices would be.  I was a little hesitant to do an operation alone, but a friend introduced me to some people who had done this already.  Having some references gave me more confidence and I liked what I saw. I went to the consultation and the doctor looked me over and explained how the operation would go, and took photos.  I noticed that he had lots of art books in his office of classic Greek and Italian art.  He said that he studies this classic art, to better understand the human form and to apply it in his work.

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It was a regular hospital, with all the modern equipment, and they also gave me my own private room.  After they wheeled me into the operating theatre, they gave me a sedative in the arm but I was awake the whole time.  They gave me little injections of local anesthetic in my scalp.

There wasn't any pain, but it felt as if someone was pulling my hair.  They cut a strip of scalp from the back of my head to provide the hair roots to transplant.  They started implanting the roots in the front, and slowly worked to the back.  At about the midway point, they gave me more local injections of anesthetic. 
 

The whole procedure lasted about 3 ½ hours. The doctor said that they were able to harvest more donor hair than they thought and cover more area, so it took longer than usual. They wrapped my head up in a bandage and took me back to the hospital room. They brought lunch and I rested a little bit and then we left. They gave me a prescription for a pain-killer and an antibiotic. 

The next day, I went back to the doctor's office. They removed the head bandage and washed my head.  The doctor told me I didn't need to take the pain medication any more if I wasn't feeling any pain.  So I stopped taking it.  There wasn't any bleeding or swelling.  At that point I was back to normal already, but I had to stay out of the sun for 2 weeks.

A week later, I returned to the doctor's office to have the stitches removed from the back of my head.  A light crust had already covered my head - part of the healing process.  It took about a month for it to heal up and the crust to fall off.  At this point you could see all of the tiny roots that the doctor had placed on the scalp, waiting to grow. He said the new hair would start to grow out about 3 to 4 months later.

After I got home nobody even noticed that I had had surgery.   I didn’t have any new hair yet, but they thought I had sunburn or something.   Hair grows slowly, roughly 1 centimeter per month, so it took several months before a noticeable difference could be detected.   By the way, it’s very important to stay out of the sun after the surgery.   Looking back now almost a year later, I think it was a good thing to do this.

This was not my first experience with medical tourism.  In 1998 I went to Tijuana, Mexico for LASIK eye surgery.  Some people thought I was crazy to go there T to do something so delicate.   But the Mexican doctor had the credentials and the same laser equipment.  He graduated from a large well-known California university, and he had already performed hundreds of operations.   My old roommate from college and two of his buddies had already been there before me, and they were happy with it.   After they came back and told me all about it, it didn’t seem so risky.

If you’re new to this, you might ask “how do I do my homework?”    The best way, of course, is to get a referral from someone who’s actually gone there and done what you’re contemplating.    It’s no different to getting a reference for a good doctor in your home town.   If you don’t know anyone, start by reading a good book on the subject, like “Beauty from Afar” by Jeff Schult, or “Patients Beyond Borders” by Josef Woodman, and visit some of the medical tourism forums on the internet.   From there, talk to people who have already gone and had the surgery abroad and check it out carefully.   Or, to make it easy, use one of the referral agencies like Makeover Brazil. 

It would not be unusual for someone, as a medical tourist, to do more than one type of operation on the same trip.   For example, someone could combine dental work, with a hair transplant, skin treatments, and possibly LASIK eye surgery (but probably not all on the same day).    I met someone at the dentist office who traveled to Brazil for dental implants.  I don’t remember what the exact prices were, but she said there were substantial savings from doing the same dental work in New York – more than $10,000 in fact.

Everyone wants to know what the cost will be, but if you ask five different doctors, you’ll get a range of prices.   In Brazil, it’s more a question of the market.   There are different options for high and low income earners.   Access to cosmetic treatment has become more democratic, with the development of “minimal incision” and “less invasive” methods. 

Plastic surgery in Brazil is not limited only to the wealthy upper class.   In some cases, it’s offered free to impoverished patients at the Hospital Geral da Santa Casa da Misericórdia in Rio de Janeiro.  The legendary surgeon Dr. Ivo Pitanguy has treated more than 50,000 poor patients suffering from congenital and traumatic deformities and burns over the last 30 years at the 38th Infirmary of Hospital Santa Casa.   Every day, people line up outside the hospital and some are chosen for the free medical treatment.

I met a Norwegian man on the beach in Buzios who also had the hair transplant procedure done.   He told me that his doctor has 3 clinics in the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro – one in a high income neighborhood, one in a middle income neighborhood, and one in a low income neighborhood.   As you might guess, each has a different price depending on the income level.

In my case I spent a total of 2,800 US dollars for my hair transplant.  Of that amount, $400 went for the hospital.   I think it’s a good idea to do any cosmetic surgeries only in accredited hospitals, and not in doctor’s clinics.  The price in Brazil has gone up somewhat since a year ago, because the currency exchange rate has changed and from general inflation.  But a substantial savings can still be realized over the U.K., U.S. or European prices for this type of surgery.

I watched Seth Garon talk about his hair transplant and the Battle Against Bald website on the Donny Deutsch show on YouTube and he said that he paid $12,000 dollars to the Bosley clinic for the same thing that I did.  After you see how easy it is, you’ll realize that you can do the same thing in Brazil, Thailand, or Malaysia for a lot less, and have a lot more fun on the trip too. 
 

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