>Judging by the vigor with which they advertise, I suspect cosmetic
>surgery is not all that lucrative. This is a wild guess, but the
>attraction may be the opposite: surgeons who don't make it in more
>lucrative fields go into cosmetic surgery in desperation, and like
>other fields in which the stars get tremendous salaries (pro
>football) the run of the mill do quite poorly.
Plastic surgeons appear to be the best paid medical professionals (though the following figures are a bit old): "The top earners (gross income) in 1999 were plastic surgeons -- each of whom earned nearly half a million dollars -- followed closely by neurosurgeons" (Fred Charatan, "US Doctors' Incomes Fell in 1999 ," <em>British Medical Journal</em> <a href="http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0999/is_7272_321/ai_68272867">November 25, 2000</a>).
The reason why cosmetic surgery is aggressively advertised is that it is a medical service for which advertising is probably the most crucial for market creation. "The top five reconstructive plastic surgery procedures in 2003 were tumor removal, laceration repair, scar revision, hand surgery, and breast reduction -- also stable with 2002" (<a href="http://www.plasticsurgery.org/public_education/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm&PageID=13619">"2003 Quick Facts: Cosmetic and Reconstructive Plastic Surgery"</a>). It is doubtful that more aggressive advertising for reconstructive surgery will create a dramatically larger demand for tumor removal, laceration repair, scar revision, and hand surgery -- after all, people have to have tumors, lacerations, scars, and hand injuries to begin with before advertising can work on them. Effective advertising for cosmetic surgery, in contrast, can create a big market for it and make it bigger year after year: e.g., "Botox injection was the overall top cosmetic plastic surgery procedure with more than 2.8 million procedures performed in 2003, up 157 percent from 2002 and up 267 percent from 2000"; "Breast augmentations increased 7 percent from 2002 and 20 percent from 2000"; and "Buttock lifts increased 74 percent from 2002 -- the most significant increase in surgical procedures" (<a href="http://www.plasticsurgery.org/public_education/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm&PageID=13619">"2003 Quick Facts: Cosmetic and Reconstructive Plastic Surgery"</a>).
Today, more cosmetic plastic surgery procedures are being performed than reconstructive plastic surgery procedures: "More than 8.7 million cosmetic plastic surgery procedures were performed in 2003, up 33 percent from 2002"; and "More than 6.2 million people had reconstructive plastic surgery procedures in 2003; keeping in line with 2002, the number of reconstructive plastic surgery procedures remained stable" (<a href="http://www.plasticsurgery.org/public_education/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm&PageID=13619">"2003 Quick Facts: Cosmetic and Reconstructive Plastic Surgery"</a>).
The sort of cosmetic plastic surgery procedures mentioned in <em>The New Yorker</em> article regarding the little known benefit for US military personnels and their dependents -- liposuction, breast augmentation, and facelift -- are among the five most popular cosmetic surgical procedures (<a href="http://www.plasticsurgery.org/public_education/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm&PageID=13619">"2003 Quick Facts: Cosmetic and Reconstructive Plastic Surgery"</a>). -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>