Cross-border Aesthetic Surgery Practice: Advantages, Pitfalls and Mitigation

Cross-border dual-site surgery—a surgeon holding an ongoing licence and active practice in two countries, rather than making occasional operating visits—is becoming more common among aesthetic surgeons who treat diaspora patients and medical tourists, yet it remains little studied. Central to any safe version of the model is that patients are assessed by video consultation, and in most cases seen in person, before surgery is scheduled; the operating window carries out an agreed plan rather than serving as first assessment. This review draws together published work on medical tourism complications, dual practice within single health systems, surgeon fatigue and postoperative telemedicine, and adds a first-hand account of two parallel versions of the same arrangement: one author’s Dubai-to-Bengaluru practice and the co-author’s Dubai-to-Delhi NCR practice, each run alongside a shared Dubai base. We describe five advantages: wider case exposure, two-way exchange of technique and protocol between health systems, a broader referral network for mobile patients, income diversification with continuity of practice under regional disruption and transfer of experience to the second site’s patients and team. We describe eight recurring problems: discontinuity of postoperative care during the surgeon’s absence, a dual licensing burden, gaps in indemnity cover, a conflict of interest arising from equity in the second site, pressure to over-schedule a short window, the disproportionate cost of cancellations, constraints on case selection and an unfamiliar theatre team. We set out the safeguards that make the model defensible, and argue it suits only a narrow group of surgeons.