The Sunday Times October 14, 2007
These days it’s not just women who are opting for a nip or tuck. Since 2004, the number of men turning to cosmetic surgery has more than doubled to about 2,500 last year, according to figures from the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS).

The most popular procedures are nose jobs (rhinoplasty), eyelid surgery (blepharoplasty), liposuction, ear correction (otoplasty) and face or neck lifts. Many people expect surgery to change their life, improve their job prospects or fix a relationship, but this is not necessarily the case. About half the men who have nose jobs aren’t happy with the immediate results, warns BAAPS.

more http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/men/article2642484.ece

Channel 4 News 16/10/07
Less than one in ten women who lose weight by dieting manage to keep it off, according to a new survey.

Only 9% diet successfully while the remaining 91% put the fat back on and are doomed to a cycle of calorie counting for the rest of their lives.

Researchers found women used a range of substances – including class A drugs – to lose weight. Almost four out of 10 (37%) had tried slimming pills, laxatives (26%) and amphetamines or cocaine (15%).

Three out of 10 (31%) women admitted they had made themselves sick after eating and one in ten (10%) said they would have a gastric band fitted.

More than eight out of ten (82%) of those questioned had dieted. Almost a third (32%) counted the calories all the time, a further 20% watched what they ate every month, 11% three or four times a year, 6% twice a year and 13% once a year. Only 18% of women never tried to diet.

The survey of 2,000 people, commissioned by women’s magazine Now, revealed that only 2% of those questioned were happy with their body while the average woman would spend £11,000 for a better one.

Now editor Helen Johnston said: “Women today have a shocking relationship with food and are living a binge/purge lifestyle. Six out of 10 British women are so hooked on quick fix diets they say they no longer know how to eat normally.”

She added: “Body image is the female curse of the 21st Century. Whatever a woman’s achievements in life, her whole self image is totally bound up in her body shape.”

A third of women said they would give up sex to be slim forever and 86% said they would rather drop a dress size than sleep with David Beckham.

Just over half the women said they would have cosmetic surgery, now or in the future. The three most popular treatments were liposuction, tummy tuck and breast enhancement.

emediawire.com 26/09/2007
Prospective patients can actually view cosmetic surgeries in their entirety online. This website also includes voice-over narration and even post-operative photographs, according to Dr. Edward Domanskis, the innovative plastic surgeon who has introduced this free service.

Viewable surgeries at www.seesurgery.com include liposuction, breast enlargement, blepharoplasty, rhinoplasty, and abdominoplasty(tummy tuck), which are the five most common cosmetic procedures that patients have done.

“I have patients who really wanted to see how these surgeries were performed, and how they looked after them,” said Dr. Domanskis, an Assistant Clinical Professor of Surgery(Plastic)WOC at the University of California(Irvine).

“This free service makes it now possible,” continued Dr. Domanskis, Orange County Physician of Excellence in Plastic Surgery for the past several years. Not only are the surgeries edited and professionally narrated, but also, the patients are shown immediately after and then, during their recovery, and up to two and one half years after their procedures.

Michelle Miller at first was skittish about watching the tummy tuck surgery that she was considering, but found it extremely enlightening. “It helped me prepare for my surgery and showed me how I would look after it.” “I was much reassured by what I saw and it proved invaluable to me!”

There are presently ten surgeries ranging from breast enlargement to facelift available for viewing on www.seesurgery.com. Another twenty have been taped and will be periodically added to the site.

Brits spending £161m a year on medical tourism
Last year over 50,000 Britons traveled abroad for low cost medical treatment, with trips for cosmetic surgery and dentistry among the most popular. A rapidly growing number of UK residents are now combining a few weeks in the sun with surgery for popular procedures such as breast augmentation, liposuction, tummy-tucks and teeth whitening.

Huge savings can be made by going abroad for treatment and this growing trend for medical tourism is set to soar with many people choosing to travel to exotic places as far a field as Malaysia and India with locations like Spain, Cyprus and Belgium among the most popular among British medical tourists.

An independent survey commissioned for TreatmentAbroad shows that savings of up to 80 per cent can be made on some cosmetic surgery and dental work with a tummy-tuck costing about £4,450 in Britain, whereas in Belgium it is only about £2,400.

The internet is the obvious first place medical tourists look to for advice on traveling abroad for treatment but with such a large number of countries offering competitively priced surgery and with so much choice it can be hard to make the right decision.
To make it easier for those wishing to travel abroad for surgery there are now many companies offering packages, which include travel, surgery and accommodation. Keith Pollard of treatmentabroad.net explains that:

“Many clinics and medical tourism companies are now offering an all-in package embracing all procedure, travel and accommodation costs that may offer additional savings. Patients who have become ‘medical tourists’ have been extremely positive about their experience and the quality of care they have received.�
Debi Robinson, one such patient from Middlesborough, used treatmentabroad.net to find a clinic in Eastern Europe. She paid £2,500 to have loose skin removed from her arms and stomach area which, even with the cost of accommodation and flights, meant that she paid less than if she’d undergone the same procedure in the UK.

“The difference in price was huge,” she revealed. “I would have to have saved up for ages to get it done in Britain.

Daily Mail – 7th September 2007 – By CHRIS BROOKE

A high street chemist has launched a drop-in Botox treatment service, sparking concerns about patient safety.

From Monday customers at some Superdrug stores will be able to undergo a range of ‘nonsurgical cosmetic treatments’.

A variety of anti-wrinkle and line treatments and ‘lip plumping’ procedures, from £55 to almost £500, will be available following a brief discussion with a nurse.

Office workers would even be able to have a treatment during the lunch break.

The cosmetic clinics are believed to be the first opened by a reputable national pharmacy chain, but experts believe regulation is needed to safeguard patient care.

Superdrug insists it is making popular anti-ageing treatments ‘more accessible in terms of price’, and the cosmetic procedures are already widely available in beauty salons.

‘Everybody who comes in has to have a proper consultation and have their medical history taken by a nurse.

‘We wouldn’t do it if we weren’t doing it responsibly,’ said a spokesman.

The first two cosmetic treatment clinics are to open in stores at Brighton and Milton Keynes.

They will be run by a partner firm, Transform, the UK’s largest provider of cosmetic surgery.

Customers will be taken to ‘dedicated treatment rooms’ and will be seen by a qualified nurse.

Although Botox is a prescription only drug, the Superdrug spokesman said the nurses were ‘authorised to prescribe under a Patient Group Directive signed off by a doctor’.

Last month Superdrug became the first national pharmacy chain to offer ‘teeth whitening’ and other ‘drop-in dental services’ at several High Street stores.

There have also been concerns about the safety of many teeth whitening treatments.

The new stores in Brighton and Milton Keynes are also offering other ‘health-focused’ treatments and services including a mole clinic, allergy screening, healthy heart check and weight management programme.

16/10/2007 QCK.COM
Thousands of British consumers will turn to borrowing money in their efforts to finance cosmetic surgery, according to recent research.

Figures compiled by Abbey Loans show that more than 918,000 people around the UK intend to borrow money in order to go under the knife in the pursuit of physical enhancement.

Collectively, these beauty-conscious Britons are set to spend close to £1.4 billion on plastic surgery, with breast augmentation and tummy tucks proving the most popular procedures, Abbey Loans reports.

Paul Morrish, head of Abbey Loans, said: “Whether striving for visible perfection or as part of a medical treatment, plastic surgery is getting more and more popular amongst Britons.

“We are seeing an increase in requests to borrow for plastic surgery [and] we’d be more than happy to speak to anyone who is seriously considering cosmetic procedures.”

Abbey has been part of the Santander Group since 2004 and is aiming to become the “best bank in the UK”, according to its own website.

Monday, September 3 2007, 00:51 BST
story courtesy of Digital Spy www.digitalspy.co.uk
By Dave West

Doctors have criticised the BBC for a programme which sees a 17-year-old former anorexic have breast implants.

In Under 18 And Under The Knife, airing on BBC Three on Sunday, student Lynsey Bowman is sent to America for the surgery.

She could not have it done in the UK because of rules on under-18s so programme makers paid for her family’s travelling expenses.

Paul Bagley, a senior British cosmetic surgeon, said Bowman would not have “matured physically enough” for the operation.

And a leading child psychologist, Ruth Coppard, added of the Endemol-produced show: “They have behaved in a very dodgy way. It’s awful.

“This girl is only 17. Emotionally she is still a child and there’s still a lot of physical changing to do too.”

However, Bowman tells how she feels the surgery, to take her from 30AA to 30C, will improve her life.

And her surgeon Peter Driscoll commented: “It can really affect their personality if they have a big hang-up about looking like other girls.”

A spokesman for the corporation added: “Expenses are a normal part of the cost of a documentary. We didn’t pay for Lynsey’s operation, this was paid for by her family and done with her family’s consent.”

Following research by the University of Aberdeen which revealed that British women have cosmetic surgery to please their partners, healthcare provider, BMI Healthcare said that it wrongly reflects the British cosmetic surgery industry. BMI Healthcare has conducted approximately 1262 procedures since January this year for their national cosmetic surgery product and one of its surgeons,Akhtar Hussain, believes that the majority of patients are doing it for their own reasons.

Akthar Hussein comments: “There can be a great deal of physical and emotional trauma associated with plastic surgery and it is important that patients do it for their own reasons. According to best practice guidelines issued by the General Medical Council, we can turn patients away if we feel that they are pressurised into having cosmetic surgery or where we believe that cosmetic surgery would not be of any benefit to them.”

According to BMI, one of most common trends is women undergoing breast augmentation surgery post-pregnancy, as they tend to lose weight and find that extensive breast-feeding can change the shape of their breasts.

Is your nose too long? Too short? Too bumpy? The beauty of the modern rhinoplasty procedure is that there is so much room for artistic improvement, so much flexibility to achieve a perfectly balanced shape at the hands of your skilled cosmetic surgeon. A few strategic changes in the appearance of you nose can positively affect your entire facial appearance. Your doctor will reshape your nose with the ultimate goals of accentuating positive features, while minimizing features you’re not happy with.

Modern advances in rhinoplasty have allowed today’s surgeons to choose from a wide range of techniques to give each patient a truly unique result, correcting even the smallest features they are unsatisfied with. In keeping with the parameters of a functional nose, you and your doctor are free to design a nose that adds an aesthetic beauty to your face not possible without cosmetic enhancement.

Today’s nose surgeries are more concerned with aesthetics and artistry than those of the past. “Facial harmony” is always the first priority with nose surgery, and your nose surgeon will take all the elements of your face into consideration when planning your nose results. In order to architect your ideal nose, your surgeon can use technology like computer imaging, nasal endoscopy to explore your nasal anatomy, and other methods of internal evaluation.

To decide on the “perfect nose,” you can look through magazines, view before and after photos, and discuss specific sizes, shapes, and relative proportions with your surgeon. Think about your profile, and how you’d like to look from the front and sides. Point out specific features of your nose that you are not happy with, and features on others that you find particularly attractive. You cosmetic surgeon should be able to interpret and balance all of this information to create a nose that is uniquely you.

Once a perfect model is designed, your surgeon will decide on the right nose surgery procedure:
· Open Method – An incision is made on the columella between the nostrils
· Closed Method – An incision is made inside the nostrils

During the nose surgery, skin is separated from underlying bone and cartilage, the bone and cartilage is artfully shaped with a combination of surgical skill and advanced tools, and the skin is then draped over the new nose.

Women in the UK are more likely to have plastic surgery to please their partners, according to Dr Debra Gimlin, a sociology lecturer at Aberdeen University. She said American women were more likely to have the surgery for themselves.

She interviewed 20 American and 40 British women ranging from 23 to 52 years old.

She said: “All my respondents were concerned with their physical attractiveness, but only the British women said that they had undergone cosmetic surgery to suit the desires of a particular man.

“I found that British women who have cosmetic surgery have a greater tendency to blame others for their decision.”

In some cases, Dr Gimlin said, the men made their views abundantly clear through offers to pay for the procedure or snide comments about the woman’s appearance. She said: “One British barmaid told me that her husband’s criticism of her figure prompted her decision to have abdominoplasty.

“She said it wouldn’t have entered her mind otherwise, but after she’d had her second child her husband said ‘I love the wee ones but I wish having them hadn’t ruined your figure’.”

In other cases, Dr Gimlin said she found that British women had cosmetic surgery in the hope of cementing their partnership. She said: “A book keeper explained that she probably wouldn’t have had a breast enhancement if it hadn’t been for her partner.

The British sample consisted of 20 women living in Scotland and 20 in the South West of England. The Americans lived on Long Island, New York. Her findings also suggest British women are more inclined to keep their surgery a secret from family and friends.

The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons said people should not feel pressurised and women should consider what could be a serious surgical procedure carefully.