Stacey Cavaliere’s story starts off pleasantly enough. After two years of diet and exercise she lost 135 pounds, and as a reward she was planning a Costa Rica vacation, where a nice relaxing trip awaited her. Or that’s what the tourist Web site promised her. It also promised that Caveliere, 35, would come back lifted, tucked and toned in places where her extreme weight loss yielded excess hanging skin. But upon returning to the U.S., Cavaliere wasn’t showing off her new body — she was rushed to the emergency room where her abdomen had to be completely reconstructed after a botched body lift. Only after eight surgeries did she end up with the body she wanted.
Source: aolhealth.com/condition-center/plastic-cosmetic-surgery/medical-tourism

The problem with trying to offer large scale surgery on the cheap is that you often are short changed on the technical and safety aspects …the stuff that really matters. Any patient can get a wound infection, but if these are detected early in good follow-up they are much less damaging. Using the proper precautions they are rare, but what if some of those precautions are skipped because they are deemed too costly? You are the one who loses here.

When your surgeon lives on another continent, it is difficult to get good follow-up care even if the surgical care was good. This woman had a catastrophe requiring eight operations by a domestic plastic surgeon for repair. In this case, cheap became really expensive.

Best Regards,

John Di Saia MD

Related:

Tameka Foster (Usher’s Wife) and Surgical Tourism

Dr D’s “Cheap Plastic Surgery”

Originally posted 2009-03-27 14:25:00.