The latest in plastic surgery statistics

Consumer demand for body-shaping procedures stands out in newly released ASPS member stats. (Piotr Marcinski - stock.adobe.com)

American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) members report they performed more than 17.7 million surgical and minimally invasive aesthetic procedures in the U.S. in 2018. That’s nearly 277,000 more cosmetic procedures than in the previous year.

Reconstructive procedures, including breast reconstruction and tumor removal, were down from 5,834,353 in 2017 to 5,805,880 in 2018, according to the 2018 ASPS annual plastic surgery statistics report released March 11, 2019. 

The stats, according to ASPS, reveal several body enhancement trends, including spikes in non-invasive fat reduction, surgical breast augmentation and liposuction when comparing 2018 to 2017:

• Non-invasive fat reduction increased 6% to nearly 377,000 procedures

• Breast augmentation, was up 4% to 313,735

• Liposuction increased by 5% to 258,558

Despite the growing demand for non-invasive fat reduction, it didn’t make the top five minimally invasive procedures in 2018, which were botulinum toxin type A, soft tissue fillers, chemical peels, laser hair removal and microdermabrasion.

Breast augmentation took the number one place among the top five most popular cosmetic surgical procedures. Liposuction came in second, with rhinoplasty (down 2%), blepharoplasty (down 1%) and abdominoplasty (0% change) rounding out the top five surgical cosmetic procedures.

ASPS member plastic surgeons performed about 12,000 more liposuction procedures and 13,000 more breast augmentations in 2018 versus 2017. While buttock implant procedures went down by 28% and were among the least performed procedures in 2018, buttock augmentation with fat grafting went from 20,301 procedures in 2017 to nearly 25,000 in 2018, a 19% increase.

Other big winners and a loser were fat fillers for the face, which soared 16% from the previous year, and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) treatment, which increased 12%, from 113,356 procedures in 2017 to 127,394 in 2018. Among surgical procedures, pectoral implant demand plummeted 29%, while hair transplantation rose 18% from 2017 to 2018.