U.S. still dominates plastic surgery market; China followsU.S. still dominates plastic surgery market; China follows

New York — The United States continues to dominate the plastic surgery field, but some countries not always associated with such procedures are emerging as leaders, according to a global survey released by the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ISAPS).

The “ISAPS Biennial Global Survey” of plastic surgeons and procedures is a first in terms of independent statisticians collecting and analyzing reliable international plastic surgery data, PRNewswire-USNewswire reports.

The society says the survey represents 75 percent of all cosmetic surgery procedures performed in 2009. Among many trends analyzed, the survey reveals what it calls “a new hierarchy of countries with the most surgical and nonsurgical cosmetic procedures.”

Among the top 25 countries are China (No. 2), India (No. 4), South Korea (No. 7), Turkey (No. 9), Colombia (No. 18), Thailand (No. 20) and Saudi Arabia (No. 23).

The survey also notes that liposuction is the leading aesthetic surgical procedure, comprising 18.8 percent of all such procedures worldwide. Breast augmentation follows, at 17 percent, along with blepharoplasty (13.5 percent), rhinoplasty (9.4 percent) and abdominoplasty (7.3 percent).

Nonsurgical procedures outnumbered surgeries, according to the survey. The top five were toxin or neuromodulator injections (32.7 percent), hyaluronic acid injections (20.1 percent), laser hair removal (13.1 percent), autologous fat injections (5.9 percent) and intense pulsed light laser treatment (4.4 percent).

The ISAPS Global Survey also estimates the total number of board-certified (or national equivalent) plastic surgeons practicing today to be 30,817, the total number of surgical procedures to be 8.54 million, and the number of nonsurgical procedures to be 8.76 million.

Full details of the ISAPS Biennial Global Survey are available at www.isaps.org.