It’s often been said that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. If, for instance, a consulting plastic surgeon tells you that, yes, he can easily reconstruct your face so that you can have Tia Carrere’s chin, Amy Adams’ nose, and Beyonce’s lips all in one session and for less than $1000, they’re probably lying to you. Conversely, if you go to a physician and he tells you that your breast augmentation will cost $30,000, he’s ripping you off.

“While it’s true that all medical procedures will come with a certain amount of necessarily high cost, there is a line at which this pricing can become absurd,” said Dr.Sompob Sansiri, the lead plastic surgeon at SP Clinic.

There is a multitude of resources on the web that give national averages for surgery costs, and some medical practices will post these on their specific websites as well. As most elective and cosmetic surgeries are exempt from insurance, the cost of a given procedure will be the total responsibility of the patient to cover. With that in mind, a certain amount of wariness and comparative shopping is in order. Some practices, unfortunately, are in place purely to make their staffs mone without regard to the patient, charging astronomical fees for specific procedures. In a free-market society, anyone is perfectly free to charge however much they like for a given service. Given that most cosmetic surgeries are put in place precisely because of their glamor factors, some of these same practices’ astronomical prices are in place just because of the popularity of the procedure, regardless of the complexity, materials, or time needed to perform it.

It is important, then, to cross-reference the average costs of the procedure you seek given a series of factors involved therein. Know that in any procedure you’re not only paying for the surgery itself, but post- and pre-operative medications, pre-operative lab tests, as well as the implants themselves. In some cases, the cost of post-operative materials (in the case of breast augmentation, for instance, compression garments) might or might not be included as well.# Fees for pre-operative medications (if necessary) and implants themselves tend to be fairly uniform, whereas the anesthesia costs and surgeons’ fees are dependent upon those specific practices. It’s the surgical fee that tends to be the one that slides the most, and it’s here where an unethical surgeon will take advantage of the unsuspecting or desperate patient.

This warning isn’t to be confused with the notion that there’s a direct corellation between how cheap a physician is and how good he might be. On the contrary, there are frauds out there who will continually undercut more reputable practices just to fill their ledgers with more patients, though those physicians tend to either be dangerously under-qualified or totally fraudulent.

“The balance between ensuring good care at an affordable price is a delicate one. Many factors contribute to the price of a given procedure, some of which are far too complex and multi-faceted to address in a single article,” added Dr.Sompob Sansiri.

On the other hand, there are quite a few resources available to help the patient find specific answers to any questions she might have, and we strongly recommend that all of those resources are taken advantage of before making a final decision on whom you choose to have your cosmetic procedure done.

Finally, know that, while any surgery will come with a set of standard costs and, being a surgery, none of those will necessarily be cheap, almost all procedures can and should be performed without forcing the patient to make a severe financial sacrifice. If you find that the standard fees and expenses of your desired procedure are too high to manage at this time, it’s possible that you should save enough money to be able to afford a proper one. Payment plans are also available for many cases with many physicians.

This article is written by SP Clinic, Cosmetic Surgery Thailand