Is surgery in Colombia safe? What the evidence says — and what it doesn’t

Surgery in Colombia is neither the bargain miracle of clinic marketing nor the horror story of the evening news. The country has internationally accredited hospitals, a large pool of plastic surgeons and a long record of treating foreign patients. It also has a sprawling unlicensed sector, and the US government explicitly warns that Americans have died after elective surgery there.

Both things are true at once. This page sets out the numbers we could verify at their source, says who produced each one, and ends with the checks that move you from the risky end of the market to the safer one.

01The short answer

02How many people have surgery in Colombia?

The International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery counted 490,944 aesthetic procedures in Colombia in 2024 — 321,408 surgical and 169,536 non-surgical — performed by 960 plastic surgeons¹. Liposuction was the most common operation (41,280), followed by breast augmentation, eyelid surgery and buttock augmentation.

On average, 30% of Colombian surgeons’ patients came from abroad (the median was 20%), led by the United States, Spain and Canada¹. ISAPS places Colombia 8th worldwide for liposuction and 10th for breast augmentation. It doesn’t publish an overall country ranking, so you won’t find one here — claims that Colombia is the “number one” or “third” destination in the world don’t come from ISAPS. Our statistics page collects the full set with sources.

03Internationally accredited hospitals

Joint Commission International (JCI) accreditation is voluntary and demanding. Its live directory lists eleven organizations in Colombia²:

Many cosmetic procedures take place outside these eleven, in smaller clinics. That is not a problem in itself — what matters is that the facility is registered in REPS, Colombia’s register of licensed providers. The CDC is explicit that accreditation “does not guarantee a good outcome”¹².

04What the outcome studies show — and who wrote them

The two figures you will see most often in Colombian clinic marketing come from peer-reviewed papers. They are real. They also come from one practice.

98.2% satisfaction. A 2020 paper in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Global Open reviewed 460 consecutive international patients at one private practice in Cartagena between 2016 and 2018; 98.2% said they would refer friends and family³. The authors are the surgeons of Premium Care Plastic Surgery, the practice studied, which cites the paper on its own site⁶.

6.2% complications. A 2025 follow-up by the same group reviewed 2,324 patients and 7,141 procedures at the same Cartagena practice from 2013 to 2024; 89% of patients came from the US or Canada. It reported complications in 6.2% of patients and 2.2% of procedures⁴. An earlier 2019 paper from the same group reported that all 1,796 procedures in its cohort took place in an accredited hospital⁵.

How to read this: the numbers are published, peer-reviewed and transparent about method, which is more than most clinics offer. But a practice studying its own patients has an obvious interest in the result, and one well-run clinic tells you little about the market as a whole. There is no national, independent complication rate for Colombian cosmetic surgery.

05What the US government says

The US State Department rates Colombia Level 3 — Reconsider travel, in an advisory dated March 31, 2026, for crime, terrorism, civil unrest, kidnapping and natural disasters⁷. Medellín and Antioquia are not among the Level 4 areas; Cali is excluded from the Level 4 rating for the rest of Valle del Cauca.

The advisory addresses medical travel directly: “U.S. citizens have suffered serious complications and even died from cosmetic or other elective surgeries.” It advises researching the doctor and the recovery facility, buying evacuation insurance, and understanding that legal options for malpractice are limited⁷. We think every patient should read that paragraph before booking. See our Medellín safety guide for the city-level picture.

06The unlicensed-clinic problem

Colombian press calls them clínicas de garaje — garage clinics. In two years the Antioquia health authority carried out 80 inspections of aesthetic centers and closed 64. Reporting in May 2026 counted 17 deaths in Medellín after procedures at irregular centers (11 in 2024, 5 in 2025, 1 in 2026 through May 21) and 379 cases of adverse complications⁸.

Those figures are the strongest argument for verification. Checking a surgeon on ReTHUS and a clinic on REPS takes fifteen minutes, and the step-by-step guide shows every screen.

07The BBL: the highest-risk procedure

The Brazilian butt lift deserves its own section because its risk profile is different in kind. In 2018 a multi-society task force (ASPS, ASAPS, ISAPS and others) put the death rate at approximately 1 in 3,000 — “the highest for any aesthetic procedure”⁹. An ASERF survey reported a career mortality of 1 in 6,214¹⁰.

The task force’s central recommendation was to graft fat only into the layer under the skin, never into the muscle. A later US study found deaths among surveyed surgeons fell from 1 in 11,400 cases (2016–18) to zero pulmonary fat emboli in 12,172 cases (2019–21) as the share injecting only above the muscle rose from 39% to 82%¹¹. The lesson travels: ask any surgeon, in any country, exactly where the fat will go. Our BBL guide covers it in detail.

08Flying home after surgery

Both surgery and long flights raise the risk of blood clots, and together they compound it. The CDC’s medical-tourism chapter says patients “should not fly for 10 days after chest or abdominal surgery”¹². The American Society of Plastic Surgeons suggests waiting five to seven days after body procedures such as liposuction and breast augmentation, and seven to ten days after facial procedures including facelifts, eyelid surgery and rhinoplasty¹³.

Build your return date around those numbers and your surgeon’s clearance — not around a cheap fare. Tummy tucks and combined procedures fall under the CDC’s abdominal-surgery guidance.

09If something goes wrong

The CDC warns that patients treated abroad “might not have the same legal recourse” as at home, and ASPS goes further: there may be no legal recourse at all if negligence occurs, and packages often include limited follow-up care, if any¹³. The most common complications are infections, and some appear after you are home.

Three practical defenses. First, get your complete records in English before you leave. Second, line up a doctor at home who will see you if needed. Third, look at complications insurance: standard travel policies usually exclude treatment trips — our insurance guide quotes the exclusions and the specialized alternatives.

10What makes it safer: a checklist