A review of the hospital's national standing, the scope of its international patient programme, and the academic conferences that place its Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery department at the forefront of the discipline.
Published by the International Patient Services Office — Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital
Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital, affiliated with Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, is one of China's foremost academic medical institutions. Its Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery — established in 1961 and among the oldest of its kind in the country — has grown into a nationally designated centre of excellence that attracts patients not only from across China's 34 provincial-level administrative divisions, but from an expanding roster of countries across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North America.
This article examines how the department has achieved and maintained that reach, and what it means in practical terms for international patients considering care at this institution.
China's Fudan University Hospital Management Research Institute publishes an annual ranking of hospital departments across 40 specialties. The Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery department at Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital has consistently placed within the top tier of this ranking — a designation based on academic output (peer-reviewed publications and citations), clinical outcome data, teaching activity, and peer evaluation by senior practitioners nationally.
The hospital holds a Tier 3A designation from China's National Health Commission — the highest classification awarded to hospitals that meet the most demanding criteria for clinical staffing ratios, equipment, safety protocols, research activity, and teaching functions. Fewer than 6% of hospitals in China hold this designation.
In the specific sub-specialty of craniofacial and maxillofacial reconstruction, Ninth People's Hospital operates China's largest dedicated unit — a function that draws complex referrals from provincial hospitals across the country and from international centres that lack the case volume or specialist expertise to manage the most demanding reconstructive presentations.
China's tiered hospital referral system channels the most complex cases toward Tier 3A institutions in major metropolitan centres. For plastic and reconstructive surgery, this means that patients presenting with:
…are routinely referred to Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital from institutions across Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian, and beyond. This volume of complex referrals generates a clinical experience base that no private clinic can replicate — surgeons operating within this system encounter, in a single year, case presentations that a typical private practitioner may not encounter across an entire career.
The hospital's International Department provides a dedicated care pathway for patients travelling from outside China. Services provided through this programme include:
Prospective patients submit medical records, clinical photographs, and a written case summary. The international coordination team works with the relevant surgical specialist to conduct a preliminary assessment and advise on the feasibility of the intended procedure, without requiring the patient to travel for an initial consultation in all cases.
Dedicated English-language coordination is available throughout the patient journey — from initial enquiry through consultation, admission, operative consent, and discharge. Additional language support (Arabic, French, Korean, and Japanese) is available on request with advance notice.
Discharge summaries, operative notes, pathology reports, and post-operative instructions are issued in both Chinese and English as standard. Patients requiring documentation for insurance purposes or for continuity of care with a domestic physician receive a standardised international medical summary prepared by the treating team.
The International Department issues official hospital invitation letters to support applications for medical treatment visas, which may also be used to substantiate applications for accommodation near the hospital and for travel insurance purposes.
Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital's Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery department hosts and participates in a regular calendar of academic conferences that serve as both a mechanism for continuing education among its own faculty and as a platform for international knowledge exchange.
This department-led symposium convenes annually and draws attendees from across China and from international academic plastic surgery societies. Sessions cover advances in facial aesthetic surgery, scar biology and management, perforator flap techniques, and Asian aesthetic considerations. Live surgical demonstrations and cadaveric workshops are integral components of the programme, and international faculty are regularly invited to present and to participate in operative sessions.
As a nationally designated CME training institution, the department hosts multiple accredited training courses annually for qualified surgeons from provincial hospitals. These programmes cover technical skills in microsurgery, tissue expansion, and revision surgery, and contribute to the propagation of the department's clinical standards across China's broader surgical community.
Senior faculty within the department maintain active relationships with academic plastic surgery programmes in the United States, Europe, South Korea, and Japan. International visiting surgeons regularly participate in clinical observation programmes, and departmental surgeons present at major international congresses including the International Confederation for Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery (IPRAS), the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) Annual Meeting, and the European Association of Plastic Surgeons (EURAPS).
For a patient considering care at Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital from outside China, the institutional context described above has several practical implications.
First, the surgeons treating international patients are the same faculty who publish the research, train the next generation of plastic surgeons nationally, and operate on the highest-complexity referrals in China. There is no separate tier of care for international patients — the international programme provides access to the same clinical team, operating facilities, and post-operative infrastructure that serves the hospital's broader patient population.
Second, the volume of complex revision cases managed through the national referral system means that the department's surgeons have encountered, and resolved, the specific complications that international patients most frequently present — unsatisfactory blepharoplasty results, ptosis uncorrected or worsened by prior intervention, hypertrophic scarring following procedures performed elsewhere, and implant-related complications including capsular contracture and asymmetry.
Third, the department's sustained academic output — peer-reviewed publications in journals including Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, and Facial Plastic Surgery & Aesthetic Medicine — provides an independently verifiable record of its clinical methods and outcomes, a standard of transparency rarely available when selecting a private clinic.
For international patients, the combination of institutional standing, specialist referral volume, academic rigour, and dedicated international services represents a clinical environment that is genuinely difficult to replicate elsewhere.