[About Medical Indications in Aesthetic Plastic Surgery]

The concept of indication is used in many ways in medicine and in the healthcare industry. In connection with "medical" and/or "physician-based", it is often used to describe the path that a doctor and a patient take - after weighing up all available information - to describe a common treatment goal and to define measures derived from that goal. From today's perspective, however, there is a third factor that plays a role: the healthcare industry, here in particular in the form of health insurance (both statutory health insurance and private health insurance), but more recently also in the form of financial administration. Plastic surgery is faced with the dilemma that, although there is a medically proven indication in many cases, neither the payers nor the financial courts or offices are willing to follow the medical assessment and reject the indication (usually without justification). This article offers support in defining an indication for aesthetic plastic surgery.