Name: DEEPPLANE™ — plastic surgery regulators by country
Creator: DEEPPLANE™
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Question 1

How do I check whether a plastic surgeon's license is valid?

Accepted Answer

Every country has a registry maintained by the national medical regulator (the body that issues the licence to practise). DEEPPLANE™ catalogues the relevant authority and direct registry URL for 25 countries — pick the country your surgeon practises in and follow the registry link to look up their name or licence number directly. A board certification in plastic surgery (issued by the specialty board, e.g. ABPS in the United States, RCSI in Ireland, EBOPRAS in Europe) is a separate signal layered on top of the basic licence. Both should match before you commit.

Question 2

Is a US board certification recognised internationally?

Accepted Answer

Specialty board certifications (ABPS, ABOHNS) are nationally awarded credentials and do not automatically grant practice rights in another country — each country's regulator decides what counts as equivalent. That said, US certification is widely respected as a benchmark and many destination-market regulators publish lookup tables of accepted international equivalents. For medical-tourism patients, the practical hierarchy is: (1) does the local regulator list the surgeon as currently licensed; (2) does the local plastic-surgery board list the surgeon as board-certified; (3) does the surgeon hold any equivalent international certification (US ABPS, RCS UK, EBOPRAS, etc.). All three is gold; one alone is a real risk.

Question 3

Why are some surgeons missing a regulator entry on this catalog?

Accepted Answer

Two reasons. First, the catalog is country-keyed — every cosmetic-surgery destination has at least one entry, but a few smaller jurisdictions (city-state or sub-national regulators) are still being mapped to the canonical authority name. Second, dual-licensing surgeons (e.g. a surgeon practising primarily in the United States but with a separate licence in Mexico) only show the primary jurisdiction here; secondary licences appear directly on the surgeon's profile. Email hello@deepplane.com to flag missing or outdated regulator data — corrections land within 48 hours.

Question 4

Does an entry in this catalog imply DEEPPLANE™ endorses the regulator?

Accepted Answer

No. The catalog is a factual index of the legally-recognised licensing authority in each country, not a quality judgement on the regulator's rigor, registry transparency, or enforcement history. Some regulators publish detailed public registries with discipline history; others publish only a name list. Patients weighing two destination countries should read both the regulator entry and the surgeon's per-profile credential breakdown side by side.

Surgeon Licensing Authorities by Country