For years, half the cosmetic surgery advertising in Lima promised the same thing: free assessment. We do not offer it, and it is worth explaining why, because at first glance it looks as though charging is the thing that needs justifying.
It is the other way round.
What "free" actually means
A consultation that is not charged for has to be paid for some other way, and there is only one: with the surgery. That puts whoever is seeing you in a position that is hard to sustain. If the assessment only generates income when it ends in theatre, the answer "you do not need an operation" costs money every time it is given.
This is not an abstract suspicion. In practice it translates into fifteen-minute consultations given by someone who will not be operating, quotations handed over the same day with a discount for deciding on the spot, and indications that appear from nowhere: someone comes about their nose and leaves with a quotation that includes chin and submental area.
An assessment that is charged for can end in "do not have the operation", and still be a good day's work.
What you are paying for
A plastic surgery consultation is not a sales conversation. It is a medical act, and it contains the same things as any other:
- A clinical history. Background, medication, previous operations, smoking, conditions that change the risk or the indication.
- A physical examination. In plastic surgery it is half the diagnosis: skin quality, muscle tone, symmetry, what is possible and what is not.
- Judgement. Which procedure applies, which does not, whether something needs sorting out first, whether it is better to wait.
- Real time. Enough to explain the technique, the recovery as it actually is and the risks that apply to your case, and for you to ask everything you want.
- A written quotation, with what it includes and what it does not.
That is not done in fifteen minutes and it is not done by a sales adviser. It is done by a surgeon, and the same one who will be in theatre if you decide to go ahead.
You leave with something, whatever you decide
From a paid consultation you leave knowing what you have, what the options are, what each would cost and what the recovery involves. That information is yours from that moment: it is useful for deciding, for comparing with a second opinion and for coming back in a year if this is not the moment.
Some consultations end in surgery and some end in a cream, a referral to dermatology or "what is worrying you is not fixed by operating". All three are correct outcomes.
And if you decide to go ahead
The cost of the consultation is independent of the cost of surgery and conditions nothing. There is no discount for deciding today and no price that expires this week. A quotation with an expiry date is a sales technique, not a medical fact: what an operation is worth does not change because you take time to think.
If you want a second opinion before deciding, ask for one. We ask for them too.