Brazil Surpasses USA and Becomes World Leader of Plastic Surgery

08/01/2014 - 08h20

Brazil has eclipsed the USA in the number of cosmetic surgical procedures and has become the world leader in this segment, responsible for 12.9% of 11.6m annual procedures.

The total number of aesthetic surgeries for 2013 topped 1.49m against 1.45m in the USA alone, a report by the International Society of Aesthetic Surgery (Isaps) outlines.

It is the first time these figures are inverted, according to the entity. In the last report, from 2011, USA topped the chart with 1.09m surgeries (against 905 thousand in Brazil).

The North Americans still top the ranking for non-surgical aesthetic procedures, such as botox.

The Brazilian surgeon Carlos Uebel, president of Isaps, says that the rise in plastic surgery in Brazil is due to, fundamentally, the higher purchasing power of the country's middle class. "People now have more opportunities to undergo surgery", he said.

The high level of competition (there are 5.473 specialists) has also led to a fall in the pricing of aesthetic procedures, according to João de Moraes Prado, president of the Brazilian Plastic Surgery Association. "A while ago only the upper and part of the upper middle classes could afford this type of surgery."

The interventions that are most commonly carried out in Brazil are liposuction (228 thousand), followed by silicone breast implants (226 thousand) and breast lifts (140 thousand).

Of the 19 types of cosmetic surgical procedures that feature in the research, Brazil is the world leader in 10 of them, among which are labiaplasty, buttock implants as well as nose and ear surgeries.

Women are responsible for 88% of aesthetic procedures, although there has also been a rise among men.

LIMITATIONS

This report by Isaps has its limitations, such as the fact that it gathers data from only 1.567 plastic surgeons from a universe of 35 thousand that were initially contacted.

According to Uebel, from a methodological perspective, the data represents 30 countries (out of a total of 83 that have professional surgeons affiliated to Isaps). Data was collected over four months and was carried out by Industry Insights, a research company based in Ohio, USA.

Translated by CRISTIANE COSTA LIMA