a procedureBreast augmentation

A silicone shell filled with cohesive gel or saline is placed behind the breast tissue or behind the chest muscle, through a cut in the fold under the breast, around the areola or in the armpit. The alternative operation takes fat by liposuction from elsewhere on the body and injects it into the breast, which adds less volume and holds it less predictably. An implant is a device with a serial number, a manufacturer and a register, and it is not permanent.

Breast augmentation is the operation that taught the trade to price by component. A Bangkok price table for one hospital runs to eighteen lines, and every line is a shell: round Mentor under 400 cc at 125,000 baht, Motiva Ergonomix at 217,000, Ergonomix II Zen at 289,000, each with one night on the ward. The operation barely changes across those lines. The device does, and so does the margin.

European lists are shorter and quieter about the device. Premier Clinic in Prague prices breast augmentation alone from 55,000 koruna; Artplastica in Poland prices augmentation with round implants at 25,500 zloty and lists the ward day separately at 800 zloty. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons publishes 4,875 US dollars for augmentation with implants and 5,719 for augmentation with fat grafting, and says that figure is a surgeon's fee with no anaesthesia and no operating room in it.

Inference -- the implant is where a cross-border comparison usually breaks. A patient who cannot name the manufacturer, the volume, the shell texture and the lot number of what was put in cannot be followed up properly at home, cannot be matched if one side fails, and cannot be found by a manufacturer's recall. The implant card is the document that carries those numbers, and asking for it is a step in the journey rather than a clinical courtesy.

General anaesthesia; most published packages name one night. Drains, where used, come out in days. Clinics commonly restrict overhead lifting for several weeks and a supportive garment is worn for longer. Implants are followed for life: rupture, capsular contracture and change of taste all produce revision operations, and every register that measures them counts device removals as well as insertions. Where a price is quoted per breast rather than per operation, the table usually says so in small type.

Prices on this record run from 25,500 zloty in Poland to 289,000 baht for a named gel implant in Bangkok, with a published American surgeon's fee of 4,875 US dollars that excludes the theatre it is performed in. Each row names its date and what it covers. None of them include the follow-up scan that most manufacturers and several regulators recommend for the years after.

This page describes an operation and the devices used in it. It is not advice about either.