Cairo’s $300 nose jobs are no bargain

KHALED DESOUKI/AFP

Getting nipped and tucked at one of Cairo’s rapidly-proliferating “bargain” plastic surgery clinics is probably a bad idea, despite rock-bottom prices (“arm or thigh liposuction for LE 1,500 ($260) only!”) and aggressive marketing practices:

Upon visiting one such center in central Cairo, an AFP reporter was immediately offered a ‘Nefertiti nose’ for a few hundred dollars by a doctor without a diploma.”

There’s little recourse in the event that the procedure goes seriously awry, says Dr. Mohammed Kadry of the Egyptian Society of Reconstructive and Plastic Surgeons:

They maintain a high turnover … That way if a problem arises, these centers can always say ‘Sorry this doctor doesn’t work for us anymore’,” he explains.

And they do go awry:

[R]ecurring accounts of freakish mishaps by bogus surgeons and even the much publicized deaths of two women in September 2003 from complications after liposuction have failed to dissuade patients from flocking to bargain centers.