Despite claims to the contrary, liposuction no longer holds the reigning title as the king (or queen) of cosmetic surgery procedures. As of 2008, it’s no longer true that liposculpture, or liposuction, is the most popular non invasive cosmetic surgery procedure performed in the United States of America.
In May of 2009, the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, more informally known as ASAPS, released their annual survey on surgery trends from over 15,000 surgeons. The year 2008 marked the 12th year they’d been doing such a survey and tracking numbers for such things.
This survey reported a number of interesting changes and trends in the cosmetic surgey world. Here’s a few of the highlights you might be interesting in, such as:
- 2008 was the first year in which there was more than a 10% drop in the amount of plastic surgeries performed. This was the first time this had happened since 2002, 6 years ago.
- Despite the drop in overall numbers, 2008 still saw a total of over 10 million cosmetic procedures (this includes both surgical and non surgical cosmetic procedures)
- This number is approximately a million less than their report showed the previous year in 2007
- Despite the decrease in the number of customers, overall the industry reported over 12 billion dollars in income still.
For an industry like cosmetic surgery / plastic surgery to exist right now in a bad US economy, who is able to report a 10% drop in its customer base yet still report 12 billion dollars if income is amazing.
The survey goes on to report the most popular cosmetic surgeries. Let’s take a look them now. Here are the top 5 surgical cosmetic procedures:
1. Breast Augmention
Breast augmentation is a surgical procedure to change the size and shape of the breasts. This typically translates to the use of silicone and saline breast implants.
2. Liposuction (liposculpture)
Liposuction involves having fat removed from the body, along with body sculpting and skin tightening in the treatment area.
3. Eyelid Surgery
Eyelid surgery is done to remove fat, skin, and muscle from the eyelids. This is sometimes described as fixing drooping eyelids. The technical name for this surgery is called blepharoplasty.
4. Rhinoplasty
Rhinoplasty is more popularly known as a nose job.
5. Abdominoplasty
Abdominoplasty involved removing extra skin in the stomach and often tightening the abdominal muscles and skin. This is commonly referred to as a tummy tuck.
The big difference between 2007 and 2008 is that liposuction is no longer the number cosmetic surgery being performed in the United States. The two actually traded positions between 2007 and 2008, swapping each other out for number one and number two of the most popular cosmetic surgery procedures done.
