Why this section
A site about life as a couple meets surgery at every stage: the breasts or nose you want to change before dating, the circumcision a religion or a family asks for, the intimate operation you dare not mention, the transition that upends a couple. These operations have two things in common: they are rarely urgent, which leaves time to get informed, and they are increasingly done abroad, where it is cheaper or legal, with risks the price does not mention. Each page describes the techniques without needless detail, gives the published complication rates, says what the law allows country by country and names the reference centres and bodies — professional registers, learned societies — that let you check a practitioner. Nothing here replaces a consultation: it is what you need to arrive with the right questions.
Five rules for every operation
- Check the surgeon: registration with the General Medical Council and the specialist register in plastic surgery (UK), board certification by the American Board of Plastic Surgery (US), the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada; a "cosmetic doctor" is not a surgeon.
- Two consultations, a written quote, a cooling-off period: the UK's Royal College of Surgeons recommends at least two weeks between consultation and operation; a practitioner who hurries you is one to avoid.
- A licensed facility: a hospital or clinic registered with the Care Quality Commission (England) or its equivalent, with an operating theatre and an anaesthetist; never an office, a hotel or a flat.
- Follow-up: most complications occur within three weeks; operating three hours' flight away with no doctor on site for aftercare is the first factor in medical-tourism accidents.
- Insurance: the NHS, Medicare and private insurers do not cover cosmetic surgery or its complications abroad; medical repatriation costs tens of thousands.