Plastic Surgery In Prague

Some tourists prefer to take back more than photographs and crystal from their visits to Prague, and seek souvenirs like straight noses or perfect breasts. Others want to shed things: pounds from their hips and thighs.

Plastic surgery tourism is booming in the country's capital, and at a fraction of the cost you'd pay in Western Europe.

Since 2000, tourism experts say an increasing number of European travelers have been coming to the Czech Republic on plastic surgery holidays. Some Czech plastic surgeons estimate that roughly one-third of the people on their client lists come from abroad, mainly the United Kingdom, but also from Germany, Austria, Italy and Russia. The Laderma clinic in Prague 1, for example, says 70 percent of its clientele is foreign.

"Today, clients are shopping around the world," says Olivia Boland, who owns Beautiful Beings, a UK-based agency that arranges for British patients to go to Prague. "They come to us already having a quote from Tunisia, Hungary or Brazil."

Boland says her company sends 200 people a year to Prague. The company offers packages that include, for example, a local guide, a week of accommodation and a liposuction procedure — all for £1,700 ($3,000/71,350 Kč). In the UK, a similar procedure alone would cost double.

Cheap air tickets, good doctors

Boland says that the increase of foreigners coming to the Czech Republic for surgery is directly related to the number of affordable flights offered since 2000. Prague has a competitive advantage over other cities because it is a frequent destination of many budget airlines.

"Cheap flights are the key," she says. "Today, it is cheaper to fly from London to Prague than it is from Glasgow to London."

Affordable, short flights make it easy for Europeans to be in and out of a clinic within a week. According to Boland, that is the primary reason why Europeans still prefer European destinations, although other parts of the world may offer similar services at even cheaper rates.

That's why Americans — who live in the world's largest plastic surgery market — don't frequent the Czech Republic's operation rooms. "A lot of Americans go to Panama," Boland says.

Zuzana Černá, the lead plastic surgeon at Laderma clinic, agrees that the cost of air tickets is a big factor in a patient's decision. She also believes the quality of medical staff here and the country's historical ties to plastic surgery draw foreigners.

Professor František Burian, who established the first Czech Chair of Plastic Surgery at Charles University in 1938, is recognized as one of the founders of modern plastic surgery. "Plastic surgery has a long tradition in the Czech Republic," Černá says. "Our plastic surgeons are highly capable since they must go through five years of special training on top of five years of general surgery."

Making dreams happen

Which might account for why plastic surgeons make up a relatively small percentage of medical doctors in the Czech Republic: According to the Czech Office of Healthcare Statistics, 143 doctors out of a total 35,000 are licensed to practice plastic surgery.

Vlastimil Víšek, the head surgeon at the Lékařský dům (Medical House) clinic in Prague 7, says there are plenty of them for the size of the market here.

"New medical students are not encouraged to go into this profession. There are already too many of us," he says, claiming that some young doctors aspire to the field simply because they see the money in it. "Not every one of us is driving a Mercedes or a BMW."

Víšek, who has worked in the field for 24 years, performed the first liposuction in the Czech Republic in 1988. Today, liposuction is his daily routine. Patients come to him from all over the world, some with a dream of a better life, others equipped with a celebrity photograph as a guide to what they want, whether it be a nose or a pair of eyebrows, ears or breasts.

One of his patients in particular sticks in his mind. Víšek has a smile of satisfaction on his face when he talks about a young lady from Ukraine who recently visited his office because she wanted one of the, well, more delicate parts of her body altered.

"She came in with a pornographic magazine and, pointing to one of the explicit photos, she said, 'This is what I want mine to look like.' "

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