Can I get my money back after cosmetic surgery in Brazil?

By Ramon Martins Andrade, attorney (OAB/RJ 188.374)

You flew to Brazil for a cosmetic procedure, or you had one done while living here, and the result is not what was agreed. The first question is almost always the same: can I simply get my money back? Brazilian law answers it, but not with a single yes or no. It separates three different remedies, and choosing the wrong one weakens the claim.

Three remedies, and they are not the same thing

Brazilian consumer law treats a medical or aesthetic procedure as a service. Article 20 of the Consumer Protection Code (Law 8.078/1990) states that the supplier answers for defects in quality that make the service unfit or reduce its value, and that the consumer may demand, “alternatively and at his choice”, one of three things: “the re-performance of the services, at no additional cost and where appropriate”; “the immediate refund of the amount paid, monetarily updated, without prejudice to any losses and damages”; or “a proportional reduction of the price”.

So a refund is one of three options, not the default. Re-performance may be assigned to a qualified third party at the supplier’s cost and risk, under paragraph 1 of the same article. And the words “without prejudice to any losses and damages” matter: a refund does not, by itself, cover harm that goes beyond the price.

Undoing the contract is not the same as being compensated

Alongside consumer law, the Civil Code allows the injured party to terminate the contract. Article 475 gives the creditor an alternative: demand the money equivalent of the promised performance, or terminate the contract. The Superior Court of Justice applied exactly that logic in 2026, in a dental malpractice case involving orthognathic surgery, and drew a line that surprises many claimants: having chosen termination with the refund of what was paid, the patient could not also demand the cost of a corrective surgery performed by someone else, “under penalty of unjust enrichment”.

The practical reading is simple. You pick one road. Asking for the money back and, on the same ground, for someone else to fund the corrective procedure is asking to be paid twice for the same failure. Moral damages and aesthetic damages are a separate matter, with their own legal basis, and are not affected by that choice.

When a bad result is not a legal claim at all

This is the part most foreign patients are not told. Dissatisfaction is not, in itself, a defect. Where the procedure carried a documented risk, the risk was disclosed in the consent form, and the technique followed accepted standards, a disappointing outcome may produce no right to a refund and no right to compensation. Brazilian courts look at what was promised, what was documented and what the expert evidence shows — not at how the patient feels about the mirror.

Conversely, a promise of a specific result, made in writing or in advertising, changes the balance considerably. So does the absence of records: a clinic that cannot show the consent form, the clinical chart or the identification of the product used is in a weak evidentiary position, because documenting was its duty.

Time limits, and why they are shorter than people assume

Article 27 of the Consumer Protection Code sets a five-year limitation period for compensation for harm caused by a defective product or service, counted “from the knowledge of the damage and of its authorship”. That period governs claims for harm. Complaints about defects in the service itself follow shorter periods and should not be left to mature. Leaving Brazil does not stop the clock.

What this article does not settle

Whether your own case is a refund case, a compensation case or neither depends on documents that no article can read for you: the contract, the consent form, the clinical chart, the photographs, the advertising you relied on. Nor does anything here predict an outcome — Brazilian professional conduct rules do not permit that, and honest practice would not either. What can be said is that the three remedies are distinct, that they are chosen rather than accumulated, and that the strength of a claim in Brazil is built almost entirely out of paper.

Ramon Martins Andrade (OAB/RJ 188.374) is a lawyer who graduated from UFRJ in 2011, with master’s degrees from Université Sorbonne Nouvelle and from the Naval War College (EGN, Brazilian Navy). He is currently a researcher in Human Rights and Health at ENSP/Fiocruz.

This content is for information and education only. It does not constitute legal advice, advertising of results or any guarantee of outcome, under Rule 205/2021 of the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB).