The International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ISAPS) shared the results of its annual Global Survey on Aesthetic/Cosmetic Procedures displaying a 19.3% overall increase in procedures performed by plastic surgeons in 2021, with more than 12.8 million surgical and 17.5 million non-surgical procedures performed worldwide.
Survey Highlights
The 19.3% increase shows recovery from 2020 (which saw an overall drop of -1.8% in all procedures and -10.9% in surgical procedures due to the impact of COVID-19). The report revealed a continuing rise in aesthetic surgery with a 33.3% increase over the last four years. Both surgical and non-surgical procedures increased since the last survey (18.5% and 19.9%) with a significant increase of 54.4% in non-surgical procedures in the last four years.
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Top Aesthetic Procedures
Liposuction was the most common cosmetic surgical procedure in 2021, with more than 1.9 million procedures and a 24.8% increase, overtaking breast augmentation (+3.8%). The top five most popular surgical procedures remain liposuction, breast augmentation, eyelid surgery, rhinoplasty and abdominoplasty. The top five non-surgical procedures are botulinum toxin, hyaluronic acid, hair removal, skin tightening and fat reduction.
Breast augmentation remains the most common surgical procedure for women, with only a slight increase of +0.5% in the last four years. By contrast, surgery to remove implants increased by 22.6% (+49.6% in the last four years), and breast lifts by 31.4% in the last year.
Face and head procedures increased by 14.8% with eyelid surgery being the most common procedure, and the most popular surgical procedure among men. Thigh lift showed the highest growth for all surgical procedures (+53.1%). Buttock lifts and buttock augmentation have also increased by 45.7% and 40.5% respectively since 2017. The other most common surgical procedures in women remain liposuction and eyelid surgery. Among men, the other top two are gynecomastia (increasing notably) and liposuction.
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"The data clearly reflects the experience of recovery from the previous year's negative impact of COVID-19 on aesthetic procedures and numbers now exceed the pre-pandemic ones," said Dr. Gianluca Campiglio, Global Survey Editor and plastic surgeon in Italy. "We noticed an interesting increase in surgical procedures related to so called 'body contouring,' such as liposuction, which is now ranked as the most common procedure, ahead of breast augmentation for the first time in many years, and also a similar emerging trend for abdominoplasty, thigh lift and buttock augmentation.
Most breast augmentations (53.1% of the total) and rhinoplasties (63.7%) took place in 19 to 34-year-olds, whereas botulinum toxin injectables were most popular among those aged 35–50 (47.2% of the total). Botulinum toxin remains the most common non-surgical procedure for both men and women and across all age groups, with more than seven million procedures performed by plastic surgeons worldwide. This also becomes the most common aesthetic procedure in patients aged 18 years or younger, overtaking rhinoplasty in previous years.
