A recent study carried out by the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ISAPS) revealed that plastic surgery procedures for aesthetic purposes decreased by 10.9% in 2020, as 77.8% of surgeons worldwide temporarily closed their doors.
The most common procedures largely remained the same globally during 2020, with breast augmentation making up 16% of all operations. The next most popular procedure at 15.1% was liposuction, followed by eyelid surgery (12.1%), rhinoplasty (8.4%), and abdominoplasty (7.6%).
Interestingly, in males, eyelid surgery was the top performed procedure with over 256,000 carried out worldwide. Liposuction came in a close second with over 225,000.
Mr. Hagen Schumacher a consultant plastic surgeon at Adore Life in Cambridge comments: “The statistics do reflect what we have been seeing in surgery. Despite the overall reduction in procedures due to Covid, it is interesting to see the increase in blepharoplasty procedures. I have continued to see a lot more enquiries come through on this procedure.
Most ageing concerns stem from the eyelids and face, but I think the continuous wearing of facemasks, combined with remote working and webcams has resulted in a lot more focus being placed on the eye area, so I think people have become more aware of themselves.
Looking forward, I think this increase in eyelid procedures will continue to rise because many of them can be performed under local anaesthetic and provide more dramatic results. Besides eyelid, I have also noticed an increase in lower body procedures, such as thigh lifts and abdominal recontouring so I think this will be interesting to watch.”
Elsewhere, the demand for non-surgical treatments, including dermal fillers and hair removal treatments continued to rise, although they were at lower proportions than seen in previous years (5.7% in 2020, compared to 7.6% in 2019). Overall, this has resulted in a decrease of 1.8% for all procedures.
The top five non-surgical treatments remained largely the same as previous years, with botulinum toxin making up 43.2% of all non-surgical procedures, closely followed by hyaluronic acid treatments at 28.1% and hair removal at 12.8%. Non-surgical fat reduction sits at 3.9% and photo rejuvenation at 3.6%.
Botulinum toxin remains the top performed procedure across both men and women with over 6 million injections being carried out around the world with the most common age bracket between 19-34.
Full survey results can be found here.