For International Patients
When you enquire about surgery you send us information about your body and your health. This page explains, in plain terms, what happens to it.
It is written for the enquiry form on this website. Once you become a patient, the clinic’s own patient privacy terms and Japanese medical records law also apply.
Enquiries submitted through this website are received and handled by GRACIA clinic (Fukuoka) and Casa de GRACIA GINZA (Tokyo), under the medical direction of Dr. Takao Higuchi. This website, drtakaohiguchi.com, is his personal professional site and its enquiry form routes to the same clinical team.
Only what we need in order to answer you properly. Through the enquiry form, that is:
We do not ask for, and you should not send us, identity documents, passport numbers, insurance numbers or payment card details through this form. We will never request them by email. If you receive a message appearing to come from us that asks for any of those, it did not come from us.
Information about your body and your medical history is sensitive by nature, and Japanese law treats it as requiring particular care. By submitting the enquiry form you are consenting to our using what you send for the purpose of assessing your enquiry and planning your care.
Your photographs are not published, and are not used for teaching, marketing or social media, unless you separately and explicitly agree to it. The monitor programme mentioned elsewhere on this site is exactly such a separate agreement: it is opt-in, it is explained to you in advance, and enquiring is not consenting to it.
We do not use your information to build advertising profiles, and we do not use it to send you marketing you did not ask for.
Being specific about this matters more for international patients than for domestic ones, because it means your information crosses borders.
Beyond these, your information is not transferred outside the clinics.
We do not sell your information. We do not share it with advertisers, data brokers, medical tourism agencies or referral platforms. We do not pass it to other clinics.
We would disclose information only where we are legally required to do so, or where it is necessary to protect someone’s life or health in an emergency.
Enquiries that do not lead to treatment are kept only as long as they are needed to deal with the enquiry, and are deleted on request. If you would like your enquiry and any photographs removed, tell us and we will do it — you do not need to give a reason.
If you become a patient, your clinical records are retained for the period required of medical institutions under Japanese law, which we cannot shorten at request.
This site is served over an encrypted connection (HTTPS), so what you type into the form is encrypted in transit. Access to enquiries is limited to the people who need it in order to respond to you or provide your care.
No transmission over the internet can be guaranteed absolutely secure, which is the honest position and the reason we ask you not to send identity or payment details this way.
At the time of writing, this website does not use advertising cookies, analytics cookies, or tracking pixels of any kind. There is nothing here that follows you to other websites.
If we later add website analytics in order to understand which pages are useful, this page will be updated to say so before that happens.
The procedures described on this website are for adults. We do not knowingly accept enquiries from anyone under 18. Where a patient under the age of 20 is treated in Japan, written consent from a parent or guardian is required.
If this notice changes, the revised version appears on this page with a new date below. Material changes affecting how we handle information already given to us will be communicated to the people affected.
For any question about your information — including a request to have your enquiry deleted — write to us or contact either clinic directly.