Statistics Are in the Air
Perhaps there’s no time of year more eagerly anticipated than this one. Spring is right around the corner, with its promise of beautiful weather, abundant flora and fauna, comfy shorts and t-shirts—and the plastic surgery societies’ reports on the previous year.
Ok, so perhaps you don’t look forward to the statistics as much as you await the moment you can put away the snow shovel and get out your bicycle. But if you follow plastic surgery, spring is a time you can find out about trends from the organizations’ reports. And if you’re willing to spend a little time reading beyond the high level press releases, you can gain an even better understanding of what’s really happening in the industry.
Here are two suggestions that can help you become an expert in interpreting the information the professionals publish on last year’s plastic surgery activity.
• Understand the two leading organizations. The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, or ASAPS, has been tracking statistics since 1997. That means that their website, surgery.org, offers a perspective informed by nearly 20 years of data. If you go to the media section of the site, you can find out how the numbers have changed for various procedures over the last two decades.
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons, or ASPS, has been monitoring statistics just since the year 2000, so track records for particular procedures are not quite as lengthy. This group, however, tracks numbers for both aesthetic (cosmetic) procedures and reconstructive surgery. Therefore, if you’re interested in learning about breast reconstruction, for instance, the ASPS website, plasticsurgery.org, is the place to go.
The ASAPS and ASPS are both cooperative and competitive with each other, as you might imagine. There are many similarities between the two, including the fact that both groups require their members to be board certified in plastic surgery no matter what types of procedures they perform. The ASAPS and ASPS also have rigorous membership requirements, demand ongoing education and so on.
• Look beyond what the press releases have to say. Like any organization will do in an annual report or review, the ASAPS and ASPS present yearly statistics in the best possible light. Although accurate, the headlines can be misleading if you don’t take a closer look.
For instance, over the past couple of years both societies (and plastic surgeons as well) have made much of the fact that “more men are seeking plastic surgery than ever before.” Strictly speaking this is true, however, as the recent recession ended, more people of both sexes opted for cosmetic procedures. The proportion of men to women patients stayed about the same, at around 10%.
This year the ASAPS and ASPS are touting the incredible popularity of buttocks augmentation procedures. The ASPS recently published a startling statistic: butt implant surgery grew by a whopping 98% in 2014 over the previous year. But before this percentage causes you to develop a small booty complex, look closer and you’ll see that the actual number of implant surgeries reported by the ASPS in 2014 was less than 2000 for the entire U.S.
For us, this time of year brings to mind that saying about “lies, damn lies and statistics,” attributed to Benjamin Disraeli. But while we might smile at one or two of the talking points the societies come up with, we are glad they track the numbers. And with membership in both the ASAPS and ASPS, we applaud the various important ways they promote safety and great results for patients.
When the statistics are published each year, we encourage our New York City cosmetic surgery patients to apply critical thinking to understand them thoroughly. The ASPS released its report on 2014 last month. You can see it here. The ASAPS will publish its 2014 review shortly on surgery.org in the media section of the site.
