Assoc. Prof. Dr. Pornthep Pungrasme

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Pornthep Pungrasme (Thai: รศ.นพ. พรเทพ พึ่งรัศมี) is a Bangkok plastic and reconstructive surgeon who qualified in dentistry before medicine and who now divides his work between a Chulalongkorn University teaching post and two private hospitals. His surname appears in two romanisations. Chulalongkorn University, PubMed and RCST (Royal College of Surgeons of Thailand) member records all write Pungrasmi; Phyathai 2 Hospital writes Pungrasme, the form this page uses. Every official source that prints his name in Thai prints it the same way, so the two spellings belong to one surgeon.

At Chulalongkorn he is an Associate Professor; his unit is Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, part of the Department of Surgery. For clinics and teaching, the unit uses King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital in Pathumwan, where the Faculty of Medicine trains its students. His two private listings are the Beauty Center at Phyathai 2 Hospital, whose English profile calls him a surgeon in plastic and reconstructive surgery, and Samitivej Chinatown Hospital on Yaowarat Road, whose profile names cosmetic and aesthetic plastic surgery as his area of special expertise. The ThPRS lists him as well, and its entry for him, updated in October 2025, names those same two private hospitals as the places he practises.

The Chulalongkorn department profile gives five special interests: maxillofacial surgery, orthognathic (jaw-alignment) surgery, ear reconstruction, augmentation mastopexy (lifting the breast and placing an implant within one plan) and hair transplantation. Samitivej Chinatown's list overlaps with it and adds breast augmentation and breast lift surgery, liposuction with body contouring, and burn care. The facial and jaw interests sit alongside a 1991 dental degree, a 1993 certificate in oral and maxillofacial surgery and craniofacial training in Taipei in 2012. For plastic surgery as a whole, his specialist qualification dates from 2006, when the Medical Council of Thailand awarded him its board diploma in the field.

Four of these areas have their own guides on this site and are linked to his profile: breast augmentation, breast lift, liposuction and hair transplant. Jaw surgery, ear reconstruction and burn care appear on his official pages too, but we have no matching guide, so this page reports them only in the terms those pages use. If one of these areas brought you here, you can request a consultation with Dr. Pornthep; the hospital you pick hears from our patient team, and we report back on what it can offer before anything is fixed.

Two official pages set out Dr. Pornthep's qualifications: the Chulalongkorn Department of Surgery profile and the Samitivej Chinatown Hospital profile. They agree on most entries; where they word or date something differently, the list below gives both.

• 1991, dental degree. Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Dentistry awarded him the Doctor of Dental Surgery (ทันตแพทยศาสตรบัณฑิต), according to the university profile.
• 1993, oral and maxillofacial surgery. A Certificate in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery appears on the Samitivej Chinatown profile, which does not say which institution issued it.
• 1997, medical degree. He graduated in medicine (แพทยศาสตรบัณฑิต) from Thammasat University's Faculty of Medicine. The university profile dates this 1997. Samitivej Chinatown dates it 1998 and describes it as a first-class honours degree; we follow the university's year.
• 2004, Thai Board of Surgery. His first Medical Council diploma (วุฒิบัตร), covering surgery.
• 2004, family medicine. A Medical Council certificate of proficiency (อนุมัติบัตร) in family medicine, which Samitivej Chinatown describes as a Thai board diploma in family medicine.
• 2006, Thai Board of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. The specialist diploma, again from the Medical Council. Samitivej Chinatown gives Chulalongkorn University as the place he trained for it.
• 2008, hair surgery. Samitivej Chinatown records a certificate from an Asian Hair Surgery Workshop held in Seoul, South Korea.
• 2012, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taipei. Two periods of training in Taiwan, one in plastic and reconstructive surgery and one in craniofacial surgery. Samitivej Chinatown lists them as fellowships; the Chulalongkorn profile lists them as visiting scholar posts.

Residency dates are not published on either page, so we have not added any.

Read as a patient, the list points to three things. The qualification that covers breast, body and hair surgery is the 2006 diploma in plastic and reconstructive surgery, which followed his 2004 diploma in surgery. The dental degree, the 1993 maxillofacial certificate and the Taipei craniofacial training are the background to the jaw and facial-bone interests on his university profile. And the 2008 Seoul workshop is the only entry that concerns hair surgery specifically, which is worth knowing if a hair transplant is your reason for contacting him.

One item is still open. The licence can be looked up on the Medical Council of Thailand's public register at checkmd.tmc.or.th, and our patient team can help you confirm it before you travel. A search under his Thai name, พรเทพ พึ่งรัศมี, or a direct question to him at your first appointment will settle it.

Chulalongkorn University. His title on the Department of Surgery profile (modified July 2025) is Associate Professor (รศ.นพ.), and the department's roster of current faculty (modified May 2026) and the Samitivej Chinatown profile use the same rank. Two older listings have not caught up: a Faculty of Medicine staff page from March 2018 calls him Assistant Professor, while the RCST's online member search still shows the older rank (ผศ.). The department profile gives in-hours clinic times of 08:00 to 14:00 every Monday and Wednesday, in the Chakri Thotsamo building, sixth floor. Other surgeons in the unit carry exactly the same line on their profiles, so treat it as the unit's clinic slot rather than his personal timetable; no out-of-hours schedule is published.

PubMed papers from 2021 and 2022 add a second affiliation: the Faculty's centre of excellence for burn and wound care, where none of his pages gives him a title.

King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital. The unit's clinics are held at this Thai Red Cross Society hospital, which serves as Chulalongkorn's teaching hospital and has been open since 30 May 1914. The HA Thailand accreditation database shows it holding Advanced Hospital Accreditation (a re-accreditation) valid until 22 May 2029. Its Department of Surgery is organised into ten divisions; plastic and reconstructive surgery is one, and that division's current roster has ten plastic surgeons, Dr. Pornthep included.

Phyathai 2 Hospital. On Phyathai 2's English site he appears as Dr. Pornthep Pungrasme, without an academic title, as a plastic and reconstructive surgeon in the Beauty Center; his sessions in the 'Clinic Cosmetic Surgery' are listed from 14:00 to 16:00. Our Phyathai 2 Hospital profile records the Beauty Center as the home of the Phyathai Plastic Surgery Center.

Samitivej Chinatown Hospital. The Samitivej Chinatown profile (624 Yaowarat Road, Samphanthawong) gives his expertise as plastic surgery, with cosmetic and aesthetic plastic surgery as his special field, and it is the only one of his profiles that lists languages. We have not yet written a profile of this hospital.

Societies. Three professional bodies list him:

• ThPRS: its public member entry (Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons of Thailand) records Samitivej Chinatown and Phyathai 2 as his practice addresses;
• the RCST, whose member record files him under plastic surgery;
• ThSAPS, in full the Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons of Thailand: he appears on an archived February 2020 copy of its surgeon list. No current list is published, so that archive is the only record we could read.

Published research. Eight of his PubMed-indexed papers carry a Chulalongkorn University or King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital affiliation. Their subjects are:

• the anatomy of the nasal septal cartilage and what it means for surgery (Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, 2021);
• ear dimensions measured in Thai people (2022) and the perforator blood vessels of the side chest wall, mapped in cadavers with oncoplastic breast surgery in mind (2025), both published by the Journal of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery;
• whether negative-pressure wound therapy prevents seroma where a latissimus dorsi flap has been taken (Archives of Plastic Surgery, 2017);
• 3D PED BURN, an app for estimating the burned body surface in children, described in Health Science Reports in 2022, and a survey of skin banking guidelines in the Asia Pacific Burn Association region (Burns & Trauma, 2020);
• how sex reassignment surgery developed in Thailand, viewed from a social angle (The Scientific World Journal, 2014), and spermatogenesis abnormalities seen after hormonal treatment in trans women (BioMed Research International, 2018).

These papers show his research fields. They are not a menu of private operations; the areas in the next section come from his hospital and university profiles.

For every area below, his own profiles are quoted first, and general notes drawn from our procedure guides follow. That general material stops short of advice for you personally: suitability, technique and timing are for Dr. Pornthep to judge once he has examined you.

Augmentation mastopexy, breast lift and breast augmentation. His Chulalongkorn profile singles out augmentation mastopexy, the pairing of a lift with an implant, and Samitivej Chinatown lists breast augmentation and breast lift surgery. The combined operation is aimed at breasts that have become both emptier and lower, for example after pregnancy or weight loss. In general, an implant alone restores fullness but cannot raise a breast that has dropped well down, and a lift alone raises and reshapes the breast but adds little volume. Our breast lift guide points out that combining the two in one sitting is more complex and more likely to need revision surgery later than either procedure by itself, so ask Dr. Pornthep whether he would do yours as one operation or two, and what decides it. Lift scars follow the pattern chosen: a ring around the areola, a 'lollipop' that adds a vertical line down to the fold, or an anchor that also runs along the fold; our guide says they fade over 12–18 months. Implant-related risks include capsular contracture and BIA-ALCL, a rare lymphoma linked mainly to textured implants. Read the breast augmentation and breast lift guides before you meet him.

Liposuction and body contouring. Samitivej Chinatown lists 'liposuction and body contouring' under his procedural expertise; his Chulalongkorn and Phyathai 2 pages do not mention it. That profile does not say which contouring operations it means, so ask him directly what he offers besides liposuction and at which hospital. As general guidance from our liposuction guide, a thin tube (cannula) passed through small cuts draws out localised fat; the aim is a change of shape rather than of body weight, and loose skin will not be firmed up. The compression garment becomes part of daily dressing for several weeks, and the final outline needs three to six months to emerge as swelling fades. Possible complications include contour irregularities, numbness, seroma and infection, with rarer serious ones such as blood clots and fat embolism; the risk grows with larger volumes and with combined procedures. Early walking and a plan for clot prevention on the flight home are part of recovery. See the liposuction guide.

Hair transplantation. His Chulalongkorn profile lists hair transplantation as a special interest, and the 2008 Seoul workshop certificate on the Samitivej Chinatown profile is his one hair-specific training entry. Neither page says whether he uses FUE, DHI or the strip (FUT) method, who on his team extracts and places the grafts, or at which hospital he operates, so ask all three. In general, according to our hair transplant guide, follicles are moved from a permanent donor zone, usually the back of the scalp, in a procedure under local anaesthesia that often takes six to eight hours in a single day. The transplanted hairs often fall out between two and six weeks afterwards; fresh growth tends to appear from month three or four, and the result is largely in place by about month twelve, though the crown can lag behind. Donor hair is finite, so a good plan also allows for hair you may still lose. More in our hair transplant guide.

Orthognathic and maxillofacial surgery. Both are special interests on his Chulalongkorn profile. The same page lists his 2017 paper on maxillofacial trauma treated at King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, and his dental degree, maxillofacial certificate and Taipei craniofacial training relate to this field. In general, orthognathic surgery moves the upper jaw, the lower jaw or both to correct the bite and the balance of the face, and it is normally planned together with an orthodontist. It is different from cosmetic jaw slimming; no official page of his lists V-line or jaw-contouring surgery, so we do not link him to those operations. We have no guide to orthognathic surgery, so ask him how long your particular plan would keep you in Bangkok.

Ear reconstruction. The Thai term on his Chulalongkorn profile (การผ่าตัดสร้างใบหูใหม่) describes building a new ear. That is a different operation from otoplasty, which sets prominent ears back. In general, ear reconstruction rebuilds an ear that did not develop fully or was lost through injury, and it is commonly carried out in more than one stage. His 2022 study of ear measurements in Thai people is related research. We have no procedure guide for it.

Burns and wound care. Samitivej Chinatown lists burn care among his areas, his 2021 and 2022 papers name the Faculty's burn and wound centre as an affiliation, and he has co-authored work on children's burn area, skin banking and wound therapy. If you want advice about burn scars, say so in your request so that the hospital can tell you whether he sees such patients in private practice.

With three hospitals on his record, the first thing to settle with Dr. Pornthep is where your operation would happen. The hospital, not the surgeon alone, sets the fee, supplies the anaesthetist and nurses and handles aftercare, so ask which of Phyathai 2, Samitivej Chinatown or King Chulalongkorn Memorial he would use for your procedure, and whether your first visit has to take place there too.

Breast lift combined with implants

• Would you do my lift and implant together or in two operations, and what tips the decision in my case?
• Which lift pattern suits my breasts, and where would each scar sit?
• What implant shape, surface, size and pocket do you propose?
• Will I leave with an implant card showing brand, size and lot number?
• If I need a revision later, what would the hospital charge and what is covered?

Liposuction or body contouring

• Which areas can be treated together safely for my weight and health, and what total volume do you set as a limit?
• Will I have general anaesthesia, or local anaesthesia with sedation?
• What should I do on the journey home to guard against clots, and for how many weeks does the garment stay on?
• Which body contouring operations do you offer other than liposuction?

Hair transplant

• Which harvesting method, FUE, DHI or strip, suits my scalp in your view?
• What graft count do you foresee for my pattern of loss, and what donor reserve would I keep for later?
• Which steps do you perform yourself, and which does your team perform?
• Should I use medical treatment to protect the hair I still have?

Jaw, facial-bone, ear or burn-scar surgery

• Do I need orthodontic work first, and which scans should I bring?
• How many operations do you expect, and spread over how many months?
• For ear reconstruction, where would the tissue for the new ear come from?
• How many days after surgery must I remain nearby before a flight home is safe?

For any operation

• May I have your Medical Council licence number, to check it against the public register myself?
• Who gives the anaesthetic, and where do I recover?
• Which items does the quote cover: tests, nights in hospital, garments, medicines, follow-up visits?
• Which check-ups happen before I fly, and whom do I contact once I am home?

Before buying flights you can ask whether he will hold an online consultation. His profiles are silent on this, so our patient team asks the hospital for you.

Languages. Only the Samitivej Chinatown profile mentions languages for him: Thai and English.

Where you would be treated. His three hospitals are in different districts of Bangkok, so choose accommodation near the one that will treat you:

• Phyathai 2 Hospital: 943 Phaholyothin Road, Samsennai, Phayathai. Our profile of the hospital records an international patient desk.
• King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital: the hospital's address is 1873 Rama 4 Road, Pathumwan district. Its accreditation comes from HA Thailand; the JCI directory has no entry for it. Its website has English pages, but our research turned up no official description of an international desk, interpreting or airport pick-up at this hospital.
• Samitivej Chinatown Hospital: 624 Yaowarat Road, Samphanthawong. We have not researched its international patient services yet.

How long to stay. These are general ranges from our procedure guides for time spent in Thailand, not his instructions:

• implants alone: around 7–10 days;
• a lift: around 10–14 days;
• liposuction: around 7–10 days, and longer when large volumes or several procedures are involved;
• hair transplant: around 3–5 days.

When a lift and implants are combined, ask Dr. Pornthep which range he expects for you. Jaw surgery and ear reconstruction have no guide on our site, so the length of stay for them has to come from his plan. A changeable return flight is useful, because it is the surgeon's check-up that decides when you are fit to travel.

Before you leave Thailand. Ask for your operation notes and a discharge summary in writing, keep any implant card with your records, and agree before the operation how follow-up will run after you return home. Wear the support bra or compression garment as instructed, flights included, and get up and move on the plane to lower the chance of a blood clot.

Keep these ready, but share medical records and photos only once Dr. Pornthep's team has requested them, and then use nothing but our booking form or the WhatsApp line listed on our site. Having them to hand speeds up a useful answer.

For any request to Dr. Pornthep

• Age, height and current weight, and whether your weight has shifted lately
• Medical conditions and every medicine you take, blood thinners, supplements and hormones included; allergies; smoking
• Past operations and any reaction to anaesthesia
• Operation notes or reports if the same area has been operated on before
• When you could fly in, and how long you could remain in Bangkok afterwards
• The two or three questions that matter most to you

Breast lift, implants or both: five unfiltered views against a plain wall (straight on, left and right profile, and the two three-quarter turns) with your arms hanging loosely; your present bra size and a description of the look you are after; any implant card, earlier operation notes and recent breast scans; and whether more children or breastfeeding are in your plans.

Liposuction or body contouring: photos of every area of concern from the front, back and each side; which area matters most to you; and details of any earlier liposuction.

Hair transplant: photos of your hairline straight on, of the top and crown from above, of each side, and of the back of your scalp where donor hair comes from, all with dry hair in good light; how long the thinning has gone on, any family pattern, the medicines you have tried, and records of any earlier transplant.

Jaw or facial bones: relaxed front and profile photos with your back teeth together; orthodontic or dental records, X-rays or CT scans; and a short note on any biting, chewing or jaw-joint problems.

Ear reconstruction or burn scars: photos of the affected ear or area and of the other side for comparison, the date of the injury or diagnosis, and records of any earlier grafts or operations.

If you are not sure what applies to you, send the request with the basics first; our team will pass on whatever Dr. Pornthep's team asks for.