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US Facelift Fee
ASPS 2024 average, surgeon only | 12K–19K |
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US Cosmetic Surgery
growth in 2025, per ASPS | +7% |
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Penang Medical Tourists
first half of 2026 | 285,400 |
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| Quoted $30,000 at home, he paid $9,000 in Guadalajara |
| David Dickson lost 100 pounds. |
| The weight came off, but the loose skin under his chin stayed, and at 55 the face in the mirror no longer matched the man he felt like inside. |
| So he priced a facelift. |
| A stay-at-home dad in Georgia, David figured the work would easily run $30,000, before aftercare or anything else. |
| For his family, that was a closed door. |
| He wasn’t exaggerating, either. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons puts a facelift alone at 12,000–19,000 in the US, and that’s just the doctor’s fee. Add a neck lift and both sets of eyelids and the low end tops $26,000, before anyone bills you for anesthesia or an operating room (insurance covers none of it, since it’s cosmetic). |
| So David looked south… to Guadalajara. |
| There he found Dr. Maribel Belmontes Castillo, a plastic surgeon who operates at San Javier, a private hospital in the Providencia district that opened in 1994. |
| In one trip she gave him a lower facelift, a neck lift, upper and lower eyelid surgery, an earlobe reduction and a CO2 laser resurfacing. |
| The bill for the surgery and his hospital stay came to… $9,000. |
| Lower facelift, neck lift & eyelids |
| Georgia estimate | $30,000 |
| Guadalajara, Mexico | $9,000 |
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| | | “I just feel like my old self, you know, my confidence is back.” | | David Dickson, Georgia |
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| In other words, he got more work for less than a third of what he expected to pay at home. |
| But $9,000 wasn’t the whole tab. |
| He has said he spent about $5,000 more on medicine, recovery and aftercare, and he stayed ten days in Guadalajara (mariachi country, if you need a reason to linger) while the swelling went down. |
| Call it $14,000 all-in, plus a flight he puts at roughly three hours. Spread over five years, that’s about $233 a month before interest, which is less than a lot of car payments. |
| How did he pay for it? None of the coverage I found says. |
| Still, the math is the math: $30,000 was never going to happen, and $14,000 did. |
| Recovery had a rough patch. |
| Back home, alone most days and still swollen, he worried his face looked lopsided and went through what he calls a bit of depression (doctors say those feelings are common after facial surgery). |
| Two things to check before you book. |
| I couldn’t confirm a current JCI listing for San Javier, so look it up yourself. And David says Dr. Belmontes’s prices have climbed since his videos went viral. Treat his $9,000 as a place to start asking, not a quote. |
| The result, though, he’s sure about. |
| “I just feel like my old self, you know, my confidence is back,” he said. |
| Next on his list: a nose job. |
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| Memorial Şişli Hospital, Istanbul |
| Revision rhinoplasty · March 2026 · bookimed.com |
| Maritza flew from the US to Istanbul for a revision rhinoplasty, a second operation to correct an earlier nose job, and posted a verified review on Bookimed in March. |
| Her surgeon was Dr. Mustafa Akarcay, an ENT specialist with 29 years of practice who once ran the ENT department at Demiroğlu Bilim University. He operates at Memorial Şişli, a 252-bed hospital with 13 operating rooms that was the first in Turkey to earn JCI accreditation. Patients get one- or two-bed rooms with a private bath, and the building has its own small five-star hotel. |
| She gives the credit to a relay of people: Maurice, the coordinator who matched her with the surgeon, Fatiha, who ran the details on the ground, and two translators, Mohamed and Beyza, who made sure she understood every word. |
| She calls Dr. Akarcay “top notch” and says the result went beyond what she expected. Asked what could be better, she couldn’t name a thing. |
| Her review doesn’t say what she paid. Bookimed lists Dr. Akarcay’s rhinoplasty package at $7,000 with a five-star hotel and VIP transfers, while US clinics on the same site quote 10,000–18,900 for a revision. One caution: another patient of the same surgeon reported a surprise $179 charge after surgery, so get every fee in writing before you fly. |
| Maritza P., United States Verified Patient |
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| Quick Reads |
| Destination |
| Colombia keeps climbing |
| Between January and August, 21,034 foreigners who don’t live in Colombia came in for medical treatment, according to the national travel agency group ANATO. That’s up 17.6%. Interesting… and not hard to explain. One cosmetic dentist in Medellín’s El Poblado lists ten ceramic veneers at about $6,450, against 15,000–25,000 in the US, and insurance won’t touch either one. Miami to Medellín is a short hop, too, which matters if a veneer ever chips. This is one to watch. |
| Beauty |
| Seoul set up shop in Los Angeles |
| On September 17, the Korea Tourism Organization brought 12 Korean medical and wellness clinics to the JW Marriott at L.A. Live for its first big medical tourism roadshow in the US. The audience was travel agents and healthcare buyers, and the pitch was Korea’s skin and aesthetic work. One thing to know before you price a Seoul trip: the roughly 10% VAT refund on cosmetic procedures ended on January 1, 2026. Older price guides that baked in the refund now run low… so add it back when you budget. |
| Trend |
| An airline wants your surgery trip |
| Emirates signed a deal with the Medical Tourism Association on September 17 that makes it the group’s preferred airline for medical and wellness travelers. The two plan to map the markets and routes patients use most, mainly across Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and Emirates says it wants to be the first airline accredited by Global Healthcare Accreditation. Will any of this make the flight to your surgery cheaper? I have no idea. The airline’s own pitch is about premium demand… not budget fares. We’ll see. |
