If you are considering anti-wrinkle treatment such as Botox injections, you’ll want to know upfront how much it costs. When you make an appointment, often this won’t be discussed over the phone because it might depend on just how much treatment is needed and the doctor can only decide this after examining you.  They don’t want to risk telling you the wrong price, so they prefer to wait.

However, how doctors charge can vary. Some charge by the amount of Botox used, so it is a cost per ampoule; others charge by facial zone, so if you have only eyebrow treatment done, that is one charge, while if you have forehead and eyes treated you’ll the charged for two zones.  Others may charge per time + the cost of the Botox.

However, generally speaking the cost is worked out by how much Botox is used, because the treatment only takes a few minutes, depending on how much you have done, and how active your muscles are. For someone whose muscles are highly active, more Botox will be needed to ensure they don’t move.

Botox is sold by the unit and a single unit costs $9-15.  While that doesn’t seem much, it is likely to take between 10 and 20 units to treat one area such as the forehead, so the cost can escalate quickly and can end up somewhere between $90 and $300 for just one zone or area of the face. If you are having two areas treated, the cost can double.

The downside of going overseas for treatment

The cost of the treatment is why some people tend to go overseas for their treatment. However, some of these people have found their Botox treatment is not done properly and they have to seek help from a professional back home who really knows what he or she is doing.  You can’t know for sure what overseas standards for any medical procedures are, but it is not likely to be of the same high standard in Australia, especially for a treatment that seems to be so minor.

It is wise to stick with fully trained and licensed cosmetic doctors that you can trust to do a good job and who will be on hand to treat anything that goes wrong, not a thousand or more km away like an overseas practitioner will be, once you return home.

If that Botox job gets botched overseas, you’d hardly want to go back to the same place to have it fixed anyway, because that too, could be botched.  And if you have to have it fixed when you come back to Australia you will certainly not be saving on the costs involved in getting the procedure done.  Cost should never be the main consideration when getting any such treatment.