A Gold Coast plastic surgeon planning his 10th annual trip home to his birth country of India to perform lifesaving surgeries says it is an honour to help.

Dr Dilip Gahankari will next month travel to a remote area of India to treat locals with tumours, deformities, and burns.

Each year, he volunteers a week of his time performing back-to-back surgeries.

"We don't send anyone home," Dr Gahankari said.

"We basically try and do everyone's operations during those four days."

Dr Gahankari said he has treated hundreds of patients over the past decade but one particular case has remained with him.

Three years ago he treated an 18-month old baby girl for severe burns.

"Her arm was literally stuck to her chest and her wrist was stuck to her forearm and her elbow was bent," he said.

"And this was because of the burns she got when she was only six or seven months old and crawled into the fire."

He and another surgeon performed skin grafts to treat the scarring.

"I saw this girl last year and she's a completely different girl," he said.

"She was playing around and it did bring tears to my eyes."

Honouring a promise

Dr Gahankari said he vowed to help people in India when he left the country to study medicine in Australia.

"I grew up in a small place myself and in those days and even now there are no plastic surgeons in the vicinity," he said.

"When I became a doctor and eventually became a plastic surgeon I think one of the things which always grounded me is the way I grew up and [I] obviously wanted to give something back to the community that I grew up with."

Dr Gahankari (right) left India to study medicine in Australia. ( Supplied: Woodrow Wilson Photography )

Gold Coast theatre nurse Penny Young went on the trip in 2014 and said it was an eye-opening experience.

"I got some amazing experiences out of the whole thing," she said.

"It's very different to what theatre is like here in Australia.