Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery Center

Free consultation

A plastic surgeon can tell you what is realistic before you book anything

The remote file review costs nothing and commits you to nothing. Send photographs of the area taken as the team instructs, which are handled privately, along with your height and weight, your medical history including smoking status, your current medications and any prior operation notes, and a surgeon replies in writing with a surgical opinion, an honest statement of what result is realistic in your case, and an itemized quote.

What the Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Center operates on

One specialty covers both the operation a person chooses and the operation that cancer, injury or a burn makes necessary. At Biruni Hospital the aesthetic and the reconstructive halves of the specialty share the same operating rooms, the same anesthesiology team and the same wards, and a patient traveling for either one is treated inside the full infrastructure of a university hospital.

Aesthetic surgery

Cosmetic rhinoplasty reshapes the nose for appearance. Breast surgery covers augmentation with implants, reduction for heavy breasts that cause back and shoulder pain, and the lift that restores shape after pregnancy or weight change. Abdominoplasty removes loose abdominal skin and tightens the muscle wall, while liposuction removes localized fat deposits and fat grafting moves that fat elsewhere, including gluteal fat grafting, the operation marketed as the Brazilian butt lift, which has its own honest paragraph further down this page. Facial procedures form a smaller group: facelift, eyelid surgery, correction of prominent ears. After major weight loss, staged body contouring removes the skin envelope the weight left behind, often across several planned operations.

Non-surgical treatments such as injectables belong to the hospital's separate Medical Aesthetics department and are outside this center's scope.

Reconstructive surgery

Breast reconstruction after cancer surgery is planned jointly with the hospital's oncology teams, who work in the same building, so the timing of reconstruction fits around chemotherapy or radiotherapy instead of colliding with it. Scar and burn revision improves tissue that healed badly. Skin cancers are excised and the defect repaired in one plan. Hand and peripheral nerve surgery completes the reconstructive side, handled with the caution that small structures demand.

Where this center's nose surgery ends and the ENT center's begins

A nose can need surgery for its shape, for its breathing, or for both, and the hospital keeps the boundary explicit. Cosmetic rhinoplasty belongs to this center. Surgery on the septum, turbinates or nasal valve to open the airway belongs to the ENT and Head and Neck Surgery Center. When a patient wants shape and breathing addressed together, the case is planned by both teams and both aims are written into the plan before the operation, so the goals are agreed before anesthesia rather than argued about afterward.

The questions that separate an operating room from a photograph

Market guides estimate that over 300,000 international patients travel to Istanbul for aesthetic surgery each year. Nearly every page competing for them shows results. Almost none describes what stands behind the operating room, which is the only information that matters on the rare day something goes wrong. Four questions expose it. Put them to every provider you compare, this hospital included, and judge the answers rather than the galleries.

Who delivers the anesthesia, and where?

General anesthesia is a medical act with its own specialist, its own equipment and its own risks. Here it is delivered by a physician anesthesiologist, in a hospital operating room, with continuous monitoring from induction to recovery. Any provider you compare should be able to say the same in one plain sentence, and to name the person who will be in the room.

What stands behind the operating room if something goes wrong?

Severe bleeding, a drug reaction or a breathing problem during surgery is managed at Biruni Hospital by moving the patient along a corridor to an intensive care unit inside the same building. A facility without one manages the same emergency by calling an ambulance and losing the minutes the transfer takes. Neither skill nor good intentions changes that arithmetic; the building does.

Who sees you at 2 a.m. on the third night?

A hospital is staffed at 2 a.m. because it is staffed at every hour: physicians and nurses are physically present on the wards, and a patient worried about pain, bleeding or a tight dressing is examined in person within minutes. An outpatient clinic that closed at seven answers that same worry by telephone at best. Ask where you will actually sleep on the third night, and who is in the building with you.

What happens if a complication appears after discharge but before your flight?

Wound problems rarely respect the discharge date. If an incision opens or reddens on day six, a Biruni patient returns to the same building, the same team and the same records, and is readmitted if the wound requires it. That return path should exist wherever you go. A provider whose answer involves finding another facility is describing a gap you would fall into.

None of these answers claims surgical skill, which no infrastructure can substitute for. They are facts about how a university hospital is built, and every one of them can be verified before you travel.

The risks advertisements leave out, with the numbers behind them

Counseling that deserves the name puts the complication, its mechanism and its published frequency in front of the patient before any deposit is paid. Three risks earn that treatment here, because they attach to three of the most requested operations in this market.

Beyond these three, the ordinary risks of surgery apply across the specialty: bleeding, infection, fluid collection under the skin, clots in the leg veins, and reactions to anesthesia. The written opinion you receive before traveling states them for your specific operation, with what is done to prevent each one.

What a realistic result looks like, and who is asked to wait

A result is judged on photographs at one year. In the first weeks there is swelling, bruising, numb patches and, commonly enough that surgeons warn about it in advance, a period of low mood in which patients quietly regret the operation they will later be glad of. The shape that was planned emerges over months as swelling settles, and after rhinoplasty the final refinement of the tip can take a full year. Anyone comparing themselves at one week to a gallery picture is comparing the wrong two things.

Scars follow biology as much as technique. A surgeon controls the placement and the closure; genetics and skin type control much of the rest, and scars keep maturing for 12 to 18 months. Nobody can promise an invisible scar, only a well-planned one.

Revision surgery exists in every honest practice, because healing cannot be fully controlled. Before committing anywhere, ask in writing how a revision would be handled: who decides one is justified, what it costs, and how the travel works. The answer tells you more about a provider than the gallery does.

Candidacy has honest limits too. Smoking raises wound healing complications across body-contouring surgery, because nicotine narrows the small vessels that healing skin depends on, so quitting before surgery is part of candidacy itself. Body contouring gives its best and most durable result at a stable weight, so a patient still losing or regaining may be asked to wait. Some readers of this page will be told "not yet" after the file review. That answer is care, delivered early and at no cost, and the plan that follows it states what would change it.

The trip to Istanbul, and follow-up after you fly home

The file comes first, and for this specialty the file is mostly photographs. Take them exactly as the team instructs, because angle and lighting decide whether a surgeon can plan from them; they are handled privately and used only for your assessment. Add your height and weight, your medical history with smoking status stated plainly, your medication list, and the operation notes if a previous surgeon has already worked on the same area. For breast reconstruction, include the oncology treatment summary, since radiotherapy in particular changes what reconstruction is possible and when. The written reply covers the surgical opinion, the realistic expectation, the length of stay and the itemized quote.

Plan the stay around the surgery, never the reverse. Rhinoplasty patients stay around 7 days, so the splint comes off and the nose is checked before the flight. Breast and body surgery needs 7 to 10 days, so drains are removed and the wounds inspected before clearance. If a package timetable says you can fly sooner, the timetable is serving the package. Clearance here follows the wound.

Two habits protect the flight itself. Compression garments, worn as instructed after body procedures, stay on for the trip home, and walking from the first day plus steady hydration lowers the risk of clots in the leg veins, a risk that long flights add to on their own. The international office arranges the airport transfer and helps with accommodation near the hospital, and interpreter support runs from the first message through discharge.

Once you are back home, follow-up continues by photograph. You send images of the area at set intervals and the team reviews them remotely, on the same channel that handled your file. See a doctor where you live promptly for spreading redness, fever, a wound that opens, or new swelling or pain in one leg, and message Istanbul in parallel; the center answers from here while you are being seen there.

What cosmetic surgery costs in Istanbul

Price built this market, so the figures belong on the page. The ranges below come from 2026 price guides published by Istanbul clinics and medical travel platforms, which market them as 50 to 70 percent below typical UK and US prices. Read them as orientation, since what a quoted figure includes varies as much as the figure itself.

Five factors move a real quote inside those spreads. The operation itself, and whether several are combined under one anesthesia, which shares the fixed costs. The implant make and surface, where implants are used. The number of hospital nights. Whether the case is primary or a revision of earlier surgery, because revision takes longer and demands more. And what the quote includes at the edges: garments, follow-up visits, transfers, medication.

One warning appears even in the price guides written to sell packages: an offer far below these ranges, the $800 rhinoplasty being the standard example, usually means something was removed to reach the number, and the removed thing tends to be the anesthesia staffing, the facility, the follow-up or the surgeon's time. The cheapest quote in your inbox is also, as a rule, the one with the weakest answers to the four questions earlier on this page.

This center publishes no standing figure, because a serious surgical quote cannot be written before the photographs are seen. After the free file review you receive it in writing, itemized, naming what it covers, so quotes can be compared line by line rather than headline by headline.

Questions patients ask before cosmetic surgery abroad

References

1. Mofid MM, Teitelbaum S, et al. Report on Mortality from Gluteal Fat Grafting: Recommendations from the ASERF Task Force. Aesthetic Surgery Journal. 2017;37(7):796-806.
2. Picavet VA, Prokopakis EP, et al. High Prevalence of Body Dysmorphic Disorder Symptoms in Patients Seeking Rhinoplasty. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. 2011;128(2):509-517.
3. Doren EL, Miranda RN, et al. U.S. Epidemiology of Breast Implant-Associated Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. 2017;139(5):1042-1050.