2012 Cosmetic Surgery Demographics

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons compiled data regarding how frequently different ethnic groups underwent cosmetic surgery, what types of cosmetic surgery they chose, and where most of the surgeries took place. In 2012, most cosmetic surgeries were performed in a plastic surgery office with 10,427,178 or 71% percent of surgeries.  Free-standing ambulatory surgical facilities had the second most with 1,414,865 surgeries followed by hospitals with 2,787,233 surgeries.  The ethnicities that underwent cosmetic surgeries most frequently were Caucasians with 10,242,650 surgeries, Hispanics with 1,592,445 surgeries, African-Americans with 1,171,751 surgeries, Asian-Americans with 976,694 surgeries, and other ethnicities with 645,736 surgeries.  The frequency of surgeries among Caucasians, African-Americans, and Asian-Americans has risen since 2011 while that of Hispanics and other ethnicities has decreased in the same amount of time.  Of the five most popular procedures, being breast augmentation, nose reshaping, liposuction, eyelid surgery, and tummy tuck,  Caucasians lead all other ethnicities in the amount of surgeries they underwent.  Caucasians were followed by Hispanics, African-Americans, Asian-Americans and other ethnicities, in the order.  The closest total by any other ethnic group for any of these procedures is 59% less than that of Caucasians.  In non-surgical procedures, this trend in which Caucasians underwent the most procedures continued.  Caucasians still held a significant percent differences from the ethnicity with the second most procedures.  Hispanics trailed Caucasians by nearly 65% when it came to non-surgical procedures.  These statistics provide good visual representation of which ethnic groups underwent the most and least amounts of cosmetic procedures in 2012. 

American Society of Plastic Surgeons. (2012). 2012 cosmetic demographics. [PDF file].  Available
from http://www.plasticsurgery.org/Documents/news-resources/statistics/2012-Plastic-Surgery-Statistics/full-plastic-surgery-statistics-report.pdf