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Cosmetic surgery flourishing in Cuba
By VANESSA BAUZA
Copyright 2004 South Florida Sun-Sentinel
HAVANA, Cuba -- Idania Bello Acosta's bruised face was wrapped with gauze and her swollen, stitched eyes were concealed behind dark sunglasses as she waited for a checkup at one of Havana's largest and busiest hospitals.

While most patients around her had little choice but to succumb to the scalpel to remove cysts or tumors, Bello Acosta was just making another brief detour on the road to beautiful.

The 47-year-old store manager had a tummy tuck four years ago. Then she had a breast lift. Now a surgeon had smoothed out the wrinkles around her eyelids and chin just four days ago.

"As long as I see something out of place, I'll take it away," Bello Acosta said. "My friends say, `You're crazy; why are you doing this?' I'm not worried about the operation, I'm worried about the mirror."

The combined procedures would have cost Bello Acosta about $11,000 in a U.S. hospital or clinic. In Cuba, where medical treatments are free, they didn't cost a peso, although she did have to appeal to friends with connections at the hospital to help speed along the wait for an operating room.

In the United States the demand for cosmetic procedures has stagnated in recent years, reflecting a tighter economy, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. In Cuba, however, vanity medicine is on the rise as more women, and even some men, try to ward off the effects of aging.

After Cuba's 1959 revolution, when hundreds of doctors fled, cosmetic surgery was seen by some as a bourgeois holdover. Then the specialty focused on reconstructive surgery for scarred burn victims or patients with disfiguring birth defects.

Times have changed and several plastic surgeons said cosmetic procedures have become increasingly popular in the past decade, even in provincial cities outside Havana.

There is one notable cultural difference between American and Cuban patients: While more than twice as many American women seek breast augmentation over reduction, in Cuba less is more when it comes to cup size, making reductions more popular.

Dr. Elvira Martinez Barreto is one of several plastic surgeons in the city of Cienfuegos, on Cuba's southern coast.

"The demand is high," she said, adding that she treats patients from nearby provinces that don't have the Mexican liposuction equipment her hospital bought several years ago.

Martinez Barreto, 47, is not only a surgeon; she is also a patient.

"I've had everything done, the tummy, the thighs, the breast lift and the face," she said. "They (the surgeons) give me a sedative so I don't try to give instructions during the operation."

Raquel Padron, 40, a petite brunette who always longed to get rid of her tummy paunch, was one of her patients.

She had liposuction two years ago. Her older sister followed suit a day after Padron's surgery and her 20-year-old niece went in for it about a year after that.

"This is the best thing that can happen to a woman for her ego," said Padron, who now lives in Montreal. "I can wear tight dresses and low-cut jeans. I am completely satisfied and the scars are minimal."

In recent years cosmetic surgery has become one of the most sought after procedures in Havana hospitals serving dollar-paying foreigners.

At the Cira Garcia clinic, which is better stocked and equipped than most hospitals serving Cuban patients, many procedures cost about half of what they do in the United States. Despite a ban on American travelers to Cuba, U.S. patients -- many of them Cuban Americans -- rank third after Bahamians and Venezuelans seeking cosmetic surgery, said Dr. Jesus Burgue, one of the clinic's surgeons.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/2413040