{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "colombia",
 "type": "destination",
 "names": {
  "name": "Colombia",
  "aliases": [
   "República de Colombia",
   "Republic of Colombia"
  ],
  "said": "Two cities carry it. Medellín is the cosmetic surgery name; Bogotá is where the teaching hospitals and the complex cases are."
 },
 "region": [
  "south-america"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "iso2": "CO",
  "direction": "inbound",
  "currency": "COP",
  "languages": [
   "Spanish",
   "English"
  ],
  "draws": [
   "liposuction",
   "bbl",
   "breast-augmentation",
   "rhinoplasty",
   "abdominoplasty"
  ]
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "The South American country whose surgeons report the highest share of foreign patients anywhere in the ISAPS survey. Cosmetic surgery is the trade — liposuction, buttock augmentation, breast and body work — concentrated in Medellín and Bogotá, sold mostly to the United States and to Colombians living abroad. The country also runs a large domestic insurance system that the visiting patient does not touch.",
  "story": "The number worth carrying here is a proportion, not a headcount. In the ISAPS survey of procedures performed in 2024, Colombian plastic surgeons reported a median 20.0% of their patients attending from other locations, and an average of 30.0% — against a worldwide median of 5.0% and average of 14.3%. The three origins Colombian surgeons named most often were the United States, Spain and Canada. Only Tunisia, at a median 45.0%, and the UAE, at 30.0%, report higher; Singapore ties it. It is a survey answer from surgeons about their own practices, extrapolated across an estimated surgeon population, and not a count of arrivals.\n\nThe volume behind that share is 490,944 aesthetic procedures in 2024, 321,408 of them surgical. Where they happen is unusual: 46.5% of Colombian cosmetic procedures were performed in a free-standing surgicentre, against 16.3% worldwide and 30.9% in a hospital. *Inference —* a free-standing centre is not by itself a worse place to be operated in, but it is a different place to have a complication in, because the intensive care unit is somewhere else and somebody has to decide to move you.\n\n*Trade practice —* the argument in Colombia is over who holds the knife: the specialist register on one side, the unlicensed operator on the other, and a professional society in between publishing a searchable list of its own members. A patient booking from abroad is buying at one remove from every one of those registers, and this record did not read the Colombian ones.",
  "how": "*Trade practice —* the Colombian trade runs through co-ordinators who bundle the operation, a recovery apartment or hotel, post-operative massage and drains, and a driver. Multiple procedures in one anaesthetic is the house style and the reason the quoted totals look low per item. Payment is a deposit by transfer and the balance in cash or card on arrival. Colombian law and Colombian professional registers govern the surgeon; a complication that appears three weeks later appears in another country's hospital.",
  "today": "As of the 2024 survey year Colombia's reported foreign-patient share leads the Americas and its procedure mix is body-led. No Colombian government arrival series is carried on this page: the ProColombia figures the trade press quotes were not read off a publisher's page for this record, and they are left out rather than repeated."
 },
 "geo": {
  "lat": 4.711,
  "lon": -74.0721,
  "precision": "country",
  "source": "s:natural-earth"
 },
 "metrics": {
  "note": "490,944 aesthetic procedures in 2024, 321,408 surgical, and a reported median 20.0% / average 30.0% of patients attending from other locations. These are ISAPS survey extrapolations from 2,975 responding board-certified plastic surgeons across 32 locations, built on an estimated count of surgeons per country. They count aesthetic work by plastic surgeons and nothing else — no dentistry, no fertility, no orthopaedics, and no procedure done by anyone outside that specialty.",
  "as_of": "2024",
  "source": "s:isaps-global-survey-2024",
  "url": "https://www.isaps.org/media/razfvmsk/isaps-global-survey-2024.pdf"
 },
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "medellin",
   "as": "The cosmetic surgery cluster, and the name the trade sells.",
   "rel": "part"
  },
  {
   "to": "bogota",
   "as": "The capital cluster, where the teaching hospitals and complex cases sit.",
   "rel": "part"
  },
  {
   "to": "clinica-las-americas",
   "as": "One of the Medellín institutions the trade routes patients to.",
   "rel": "part"
  },
  {
   "to": "fundacion-santa-fe",
   "as": "The Bogotá hospital on the complex end of the same country.",
   "rel": "part"
  },
  {
   "to": "bbl",
   "as": "The operation most argued over here, and the one with a published mortality literature.",
   "rel": "procedure"
  },
  {
   "to": "liposuction",
   "as": "The volume operation behind the country's surgical count.",
   "rel": "procedure"
  },
  {
   "to": "bbl-mortality",
   "as": "The risk attached to the operation this country is best known for.",
   "rel": "risk"
  },
  {
   "to": "surgical-site-infection",
   "as": "What a free-standing surgicentre manages differently from a hospital.",
   "rel": "risk"
  },
  {
   "to": "united-states",
   "as": "The origin Colombian surgeons name most often for their foreign patients.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "isaps",
   "as": "The society whose survey supplies every number on this page.",
   "rel": "measured-by"
  }
 ],
 "links": [
  {
   "label": "ISAPS survey of procedures performed in 2024",
   "url": "https://www.isaps.org/media/razfvmsk/isaps-global-survey-2024.pdf"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:isaps-global-survey-2024",
  "s:cdc-yellowbook-medical-tourism",
  "s:natural-earth"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:isaps-global-survey-2024"
  },
  "fields": {
   "text.story": {
    "tier": "cited",
    "source": "s:isaps-global-survey-2024",
    "note": "the surgicentre reading and the society paragraph are marked inline as inference and trade practice"
   },
   "text.how": {
    "tier": "tradition",
    "note": "the shape of a co-ordinated Colombian cosmetic trip, hedged in the prose"
   },
   "geo": {
    "tier": "harvested",
    "source": "s:natural-earth"
   }
  }
 },
 "x_commons_files": [
  "File:Medellín skyline.jpg",
  "File:Bogotá skyline.jpg"
 ],
 "needs_verification": true,
 "confidence": "medium",
 "updated": "2026-09-16",
 "blurb": "The South American country whose surgeons report the highest share of foreign patients anywhere in the ISAPS survey.",
 "region_terms": [
  {
   "key": "south-america",
   "name": "South America",
   "note": "Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru"
  }
 ],
 "kin_out": [
  {
   "to": "medellin",
   "type": "hub",
   "name": "Medellín",
   "as": "The cosmetic surgery cluster, and the name the trade sells.",
   "rel": "part"
  },
  {
   "to": "bogota",
   "type": "hub",
   "name": "Bogotá",
   "as": "The capital cluster, where the teaching hospitals and complex cases sit.",
   "rel": "part"
  },
  {
   "to": "clinica-las-americas",
   "type": "facility",
   "name": "Clínica Las Américas",
   "as": "One of the Medellín institutions the trade routes patients to.",
   "rel": "part"
  },
  {
   "to": "fundacion-santa-fe",
   "type": "facility",
   "name": "Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá",
   "as": "The Bogotá hospital on the complex end of the same country.",
   "rel": "part"
  },
  {
   "to": "bbl",
   "type": "procedure",
   "name": "Gluteal fat grafting",
   "as": "The operation most argued over here, and the one with a published mortality literature.",
   "rel": "procedure"
  },
  {
   "to": "liposuction",
   "type": "procedure",
   "name": "Liposuction",
   "as": "The volume operation behind the country's surgical count.",
   "rel": "procedure"
  },
  {
   "to": "bbl-mortality",
   "type": "risk",
   "name": "Death from gluteal fat grafting",
   "as": "The risk attached to the operation this country is best known for.",
   "rel": "risk"
  },
  {
   "to": "surgical-site-infection",
   "type": "risk",
   "name": "Surgical site infection",
   "as": "What a free-standing surgicentre manages differently from a hospital.",
   "rel": "risk"
  },
  {
   "to": "united-states",
   "type": "destination",
   "name": "United States",
   "as": "The origin Colombian surgeons name most often for their foreign patients.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "isaps",
   "type": "org",
   "name": "International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery",
   "as": "The society whose survey supplies every number on this page.",
   "rel": "measured-by"
  }
 ],
 "source_list": [
  {
   "id": "s:isaps-global-survey-2024",
   "kind": "report",
   "title": "ISAPS International Survey on Aesthetic/Cosmetic Procedures Performed in 2024",
   "publisher": "International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, tabulated by Industry Insights Inc.",
   "url": "https://www.isaps.org/media/razfvmsk/isaps-global-survey-2024.pdf",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:cdc-yellowbook-medical-tourism",
   "kind": "org",
   "title": "Medical Tourism — CDC Yellow Book: Health Information for International Travel",
   "publisher": "US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention",
   "url": "https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/yellowbook/2024/health-care-abroad/medical-tourism",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "note": "the standing public-health account of what travelling for treatment involves and what goes wrong"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:natural-earth",
   "kind": "dataset",
   "title": "Natural Earth — Admin 0 Countries, 1:110m",
   "publisher": "Natural Earth",
   "url": "https://www.naturalearthdata.com/",
   "license": "Public domain",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  }
 ],
 "tiers": {
  "text.what": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:isaps-global-survey-2024"
  },
  "text.story": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:isaps-global-survey-2024",
   "note": "the surgicentre reading and the society paragraph are marked inline as inference and trade practice"
  },
  "text.how": {
   "tier": "tradition",
   "note": "the shape of a co-ordinated Colombian cosmetic trip, hedged in the prose"
  },
  "text.today": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:isaps-global-survey-2024"
  },
  "geo": {
   "tier": "harvested",
   "source": "s:natural-earth"
  },
  "metrics": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:isaps-global-survey-2024"
  }
 },
 "primary_image": null,
 "tag_facts": [],
 "recognition_facts": [],
 "acclaim": 0,
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "brazil",
   "type": "destination",
   "name": "Brazil",
   "as": "The regional contrast: a fifth of the volume, four times the foreign share, and the operations done in surgicentres rather than hospitals.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "from": "panama",
   "type": "destination",
   "name": "Panama",
   "as": "The regional heavyweight, and one of the three origins Panamanian surgeons name.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "from": "bogota",
   "type": "hub",
   "name": "Bogotá",
   "as": "The country whose complex hospital work concentrates here rather than in Medellín.",
   "rel": "destination"
  },
  {
   "from": "medellin",
   "type": "hub",
   "name": "Medellín",
   "as": "The country whose cosmetic surgery trade is concentrated here.",
   "rel": "destination"
  },
  {
   "from": "clinica-las-americas",
   "type": "facility",
   "name": "Clínica Las Américas",
   "as": "The Medellín route into Colombian private medicine, run through an international office that starts with the visa.",
   "rel": "destination"
  },
  {
   "from": "fundacion-santa-fe",
   "type": "facility",
   "name": "Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá",
   "as": "The country's first JCI-accredited organisation, and the one that sells complexity rather than a price.",
   "rel": "destination"
  },
  {
   "from": "isaps",
   "type": "org",
   "name": "International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery",
   "as": "Where its respondents reported the highest share of patients attending from other locations, a median of 20 per cent.",
   "rel": "place"
  }
 ]
}