With the rise of social media and an increased focus on physical appearance, the rates of plastic surgery have begun to skyrocket. Interestingly, the type of procedure most Americans are opting for has also begun to shift.
Cosmetic surgery in the U.S. has grown form 1.6 million procedures in 1997 to over 4.6 million in 2019. That is truly staggering growth.
Over this same period, the types of surgery that people are choosing has changed as well. From 2011 to 2018 breast augmentation was the #1 procedure among cosmetic surgeries. Breast augmentation is now the 5th most popular operation, being passed by nose reshaping, eyelid surgery and facelifts.
It’s also evident that some new procedures are quickly becoming more popular. Cheek implants have increased nearly 10x over the past 3 years and neck lifts have nearly tripled (this was not even on the chart until 2013.
Probably the most notable addition to the list of most common plastic surgery procedures in the US is the buttock augmentation with fat grafting. If you’ve been on social media for any amount of time, you’ll have seen this trend at play.
Buttock augmentations were rarely done prior to 2010 and have seen exponential growth over the past decade.
As a general trend the emphasis seems to be shifting from the top half of the body to the bottom half.