a country · PanamaPanama

The smallest of the three Latin American clusters this site carries, and the one with the fewest surgeons. Panama City has private hospitals, a US-dollar economy — the balboa is fixed one to one with the dollar and US notes circulate — and Tocumen airport, which connects the isthmus to most of the Americas. The trade sells cosmetic surgery, dentistry and health screening, mostly to Americans and to Venezuelans and Colombians in the region.

The scale is the story. In the ISAPS survey of procedures performed in 2024, Panama reported 21,254 aesthetic procedures, 13,579 of them surgical — about a twenty-third of Colombia's count and a hundred and forty-seventh of Brazil's. Panamanian surgeons reported a median 10.0% of patients attending from other locations and an average of 12.4%, naming the United States, Venezuela and Colombia as the three origins.

Where the work happens is closer to Colombia's profile than to Brazil's: 57.9% of Panamanian cosmetic procedures were performed in a free-standing surgicentre, the highest share of any location in the survey, against 18.9% in a hospital and 16.3% in a surgicentre worldwide.

Inference — a small market is not a safer or a riskier one, but it is a thinner one. A country with a few hundred procedures a year in any given operation gives a patient fewer surgeons to compare, fewer second opinions in the same city, and — when something goes wrong at three in the morning — fewer places to be taken.

Trade practice — the Panamanian arrangement looks like the Costa Rican one: a hospital international office or a private clinic quotes the procedure with transfers and a hotel, and the patient flies in for a consultation the day before. Prices are quoted in US dollars because the currency is pegged to it, which removes the exchange-rate argument that runs through most of this subject. Follow-up is by video call once the patient is home.

As of the 2024 survey year Panama's reported cosmetic volume is 21,254 procedures and its foreign-patient share sits near the worldwide median. No Panamanian government register or arrival series was read for this record, and none is carried.