Who is it not suitable for?

The sentence "not suitable at the moment" is not treated here as a label that sorts people. The aim is to make clear why an aesthetic procedure may be deferred, or why it may not be recommended. The sections below are not a list for diagnosing your own condition or scoring your own suitability; no individual assessment result can be derived from the examples given here.

What does a suitability assessment describe?

Article 11 of the Turkish Patient Rights Regulation governs the right to have a diagnosis made, treatment carried out and care given in accordance with the requirements of modern medical knowledge and technology.¹ The same article also states that no diagnosis or treatment contrary to the principles and legislation of medicine, or of a misleading nature, may be carried out.¹ The article governs the right to ask for care consistent with medical knowledge together with the prohibition on diagnosis and treatment that is contrary to medical principles or misleading.¹

Article 13 of the Medical Deontology Regulation puts it more directly: a physician may not, in the absence of a diagnostic, therapeutic or preventive purpose, do anything that would reduce a person's mental or physical resilience, whether in compliance with the patient's wish or for other reasons.² That provision establishes that a procedure having been asked for does not by itself make it appropriate.²

The assessment described here is not a health test a person applies to themselves. The illness and timing examples in the following sections are used to help make sense of the reasoning behind a decision. Which document evidences which title, and how authority is verified, is the subject of how to verify a specialist.

How do coexisting illnesses affect the decision?

This section considers how coexisting conditions relate to risk through two examples from research. A systematic review and meta-analysis of the association between diabetes and surgical site infection included 94 articles, of which 90 provided an estimate for the association between diabetes and infection.³ The pooled result gives an odds ratio of 1.53 for surgical site infection in people with diabetes; the 95 per cent predictive interval runs from 1.11 to 2.12, and variability between studies is high (I² 57.2 per cent).³ A predictive interval is the range calculated for the values the association might take in a similar new study; it does not show an individual's probability of infection, nor the confidence interval around the average estimate.⁴ The same study reported the association to be stronger in cardiac surgery (2.03; 95 per cent predictive interval 1.13 to 4.05).³

Data specific to aesthetic surgery also exist. In a multicentre database that prospectively followed 127,961 people undergoing aesthetic surgery between 2008 and 2013, major complications were examined, defined as those requiring an emergency department visit, hospital admission or reoperation within 30 days of the procedure.⁵ The complication rate rose in steps as body mass index rose: 1.4 per cent below 18.5; 1.6 per cent for 18.5-24.9; 2.3 per cent for 25-29.9; 3.1 per cent for 30-39.9; and 4.2 per cent at 40 and above.⁵

The other side of the figure: In the highest body mass index group too, more than 95 per cent of people had no major complication as the study defined it recorded within the first 30 days.⁵ That result does not mean there were no minor problems or later events.⁵ The data come from people who were operated on; they do not give a suitability verdict for everyone at the same body mass index.⁵

Smoking, the medicines a person takes and instructions for preparing for surgery are not the subject of this article; they are set out in the preparation sections of the relevant surgery articles. No cessation interval, instruction to stop a medicine, or target measurement has been carried over here.

What do these studies not say about individual suitability?

These studies examine associations with complications among people who had surgery; they are not studies testing a decision to accept or refuse an individual for surgery.^3,5 In the diabetes review, the high variability between studies and the fact that the association differs by type of surgery show that the same diagnosis does not mean a difference of the same size in every operation.³ In the aesthetic surgery data, likewise, the effect of body mass index was calculated with age, sex, smoking, diabetes, the combining of multiple procedures and the type of facility taken into account.⁵ On multivariate analysis, compared with the group below a body mass index of 25, the relative risk of any complication was reported as 1.17 for the overweight group and 1.51 for the obese group, that of infection as 1.63 and 2.73, and that of venous thromboembolism as 1.67 and 2.56.⁵

There is no limit in this article of the form "above such an age it is not suitable"; nor could a source specific to aesthetic procedures supporting such a limit be found for this article.

These figures from research are not given as a table from which a person can calculate their own risk. What a group average means for a particular person depends on the assessment of the physician examining them. The group results given here are not meant for you to derive a suitability verdict about yourself.

When is the timing reconsidered?

Some reasons concern postponing a procedure rather than ruling it out altogether. Where there is an active infection in the body, surgery is postponed.⁶ The surgical site infection guideline of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States advises identifying and treating, wherever possible, infections remote to the surgical site before an elective operation, and postponing elective operations until the infection has resolved.⁶ That advice concerns elective operations and cannot be extended to mean that all surgery is prohibited where an emergency intervention is needed.⁶

Pregnancy calls for a similar distinction. The joint opinion of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Society of Anesthesiologists advises that elective surgery be postponed until after delivery.⁷ The same document also states expressly that medically necessary surgery should not be denied or delayed by reference to the stage of pregnancy, since delay can have adverse consequences for both the pregnant woman and the fetus.⁷ The document further stresses the importance of obtaining an obstetric consultation before nonobstetric surgery during pregnancy.⁷

No list of the signs by which an infection is to be recognised, and no interval that must pass after delivery, is given here. These examples were chosen in order to keep clear which kind of procedure a reason for deferral was stated about.

Why might a physician recommend not doing a procedure?

Article 6 of the Medical Deontology Regulation provides that a physician is free in determining the treatment to be applied and acts according to their professional judgement.² Article 13 requires diagnosis and treatment to accord with scientific requirements, and prohibits diagnosis and treatment that is contrary to medical principles or misleading.² These provisions show that a procedure asked for cannot be considered apart from the medical assessment.²

Article 18 of the same regulation governs declining to attend a patient, which is distinct from not recommending a particular procedure.² It allows a physician to decline to attend a patient for professional or personal reasons, apart from emergency assistance and the performance of an official or humanitarian duty.² The provision should not be read as an unlimited power to refuse.²

Declining is not indifference: Article 14 of the Patient Rights Regulation requires personnel to show the medical care the patient's condition requires.¹ A particular aesthetic procedure not being performed does not remove that duty of care; the procedure requested and the care owed to the patient are separate things.¹

Nor is the subject here a value judgement about your appearance. The meaning of the wish, and the research frame concerning body dysmorphic disorder, are dealt with in what is a realistic expectation?; this page contains no psychological diagnosis, screening, or criterion to be applied to a person.

What can change on reassessment?

In the example of an elective operation deferred because of infection, the guideline advises postponing the operation until the infection has resolved.⁶ That is an example where looking only at the time elapsed is not enough; it is not given as a common timetable or criterion for every reason for deferral.

A physician recommending a reassessment on medical grounds, and your deferring your own decision in order to think it over, are kept separate in this article. What can be asked in the consultation, how to keep a subject open when an answer remains unclear, and a person's ability to defer their decision, are set out in questions to ask before deciding.

You are not expected to arrive at a suitability verdict about yourself at the end of this page. Understanding whether the explanation "not suitable at the moment" concerns the resolution of an infection, some other health assessment, or the benefit the procedure can provide, is what this article is about.

References

1. Ministry of Health. Patient Rights Regulation. Official Gazette, 1 August 1998, no. 23420. Articles 11 and 14. saglik.gov.tr ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. Medical Deontology Regulation. Council of Ministers decision of 13 January 1960, no. 4/12578. Official Gazette, 19 February 1960, no. 10436. Articles 6, 13 and 18. mevzuat.gov.tr ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

3. Martin ET, Kaye KS, Knott C, et al. Diabetes and Risk of Surgical Site Infection: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol. 2016;37(1):88-99. doi:10.1017/ice.2015.249 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

4. Cochrane. Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. Chapter 10: Analysing data and undertaking meta-analyses, section 10.10.4.3 (Prediction intervals from a random-effects meta-analysis). cochrane.org ↩

5. Gupta V, Winocour J, Rodriguez-Feo C, et al. Safety of Aesthetic Surgery in the Overweight Patient: Analysis of 127,961 Patients. Aesthet Surg J. 2016;36(6):718-729. doi:10.1093/asj/sjv268 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

6. Mangram AJ, Horan TC, Pearson ML, Silver LC, Jarvis WR. Guideline for Prevention of Surgical Site Infection, 1999. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Hospital Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol. 1999;20(4):250-278. Relevant recommendation: Recommendations, 1. Preoperative, a. Preparation of the patient, item 1 (Category IA), p. 266. doi:10.1086/501620 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

7. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists; American Society of Anesthesiologists. Nonobstetric Surgery During Pregnancy. Committee Opinion No. 775, April 2019; reaffirmed 2025. acog.org ↩ ↩² ↩³