pension333: US plastic surgery statistics: chins, buttocks and breasts up, ears down

US plastic surgery is enjoying a boom, despite the economy. Find out which cosmetic procedures and treatments are going up and down
? UPDATE: now with a decade of data
? Get the data

Plastic surgery is big business in the US - and the latest figures show that despite the recession, that business is booming.

Americans had nearly 14m cosmetic procedures last year, spending $10.1bn in the process - on collagen and botox injections, breast implants, buttock lifts and nose jobs. The big rise was in chin lifts - or Mentoplasty, which is up 71% on 2010, with 20,680 procedures over the year.

These figures, from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, give us a real insight into an industry which is still a lot smaller in the UK.

The Association has also given us overall figures going right back to 2000.

The total numbers are up 5% on the year before - and an 87% increase on the year 2000. The vast majority of those procedures are defined as "minimally invasive" - some 13.8m of them, in fact.

Here are some of the key facts:

?�Botox is the biggest cosmetic treatments that Americans have - up 5% on last year to 5.7m procedures. It was rare in the year 2000 - and is up 621% on then. But it is also one of the cheapest procedures you can have, costing an average of $375 each time. It adds up to over $1bn a year
? Breast enhancement is the top surgical procedure - up 4% on last year. That's 307,180 procedures in 2011
? The biggest decrease is in hair transplants, which is down 17% to 15,754, and ear corrections, or Otoplasty, are down 11% to 26,433
? The biggest increase is in Chin augmentation (Mentoplasty) - up 71% year on year to 20,680

The latest gender figures from the Association show that male procedures are on the rise too, up 6% on 2010. That includes 19,766 breast reductions (+8% on 2010), 62,110 nose jobs, and 28,637 eyelid 'lifts'.

What may seem the most unusual figure for British audiences are the number of teenagers getting treated. Although it's only 2% of the total, that's still 230,617 procedures in a year (+5%) - such as laser hair removal (69,434 procedures), nose jobs (33,892), boys having breast reductions (14,371), and teens having botox injections (16,160). Another 8,892 teenage girls have breast implants.

Reconstructive surgery - where someone is recovering from an operation, accident or illness, is also substantial - 5.5m treatments in 2011 (in addition to the 14m cosmetic total), up 5% on the year before. Four million of them are for tumour removal, including skin cancer.

We've extracted the key data from the report - and you can download it below. You can also compare it over time.

What can you do with it?