What do patients want out of cosmetic plastic surgery?

There are two (and, at least in East Asia, three) fundamental reasons most people seek cosmetic surgery. In non-Asian patients, the first and most common reason is for rejuvenation to undo the visible effects of normal aging. Such operations are designed to restore the patient's appearance to more resemble the way it looked ten or twenty years earlier. A good example of rejuvenation plastic surgery is facelift.

Less commonly (but by no means rarely), non-Asian patients request surgical modification of an existing anatomical feature to a new shape that never existed previously and has nothing to do with the aging process. In the West, the most common examples of such body modification surgery are breast augmentation in young women and rhinoplasty nose reshaping in young men.

With the major exception of face lift, most of the procedures discussed on this Asian plastic surgery website fall into the second category. Therein lies the biggest distinction between Asian and non-Asian plastic surgery patients:

Most patients of Asian descent are relatively younger men and women seeking fundamental structural reinvention rather than age-defying rejuvenation. Plastic surgery is seen more as a way to override genetics and take control of the body's shape.

There are two additional group distinctions that can also be made among Asian patients requesting plastic surgery: those seeking to improve on an existing feature they feel may be distracting or unattractive and those who are more interested in markedly altering or even eradicating what are really no more than normal ethnic characteristics.

In reality, many patients fail to fit neatly into either group but rather fall somewhere in between the two along a very wide continuum. Interestingly, Asian patients in Western countries tend, in general, to seek more conservative modification while Asian patients in the Orient often seek more extreme modification, a controversial process best known as "Westernization."

Most patients and essentially all plastic surgeons pay at least "lip service" to the concept of undertaking all Asian plastic surgery with special care to preserve ethnic identity. And while most really do feel this way, some clearly don't but feel reluctant to talk about it openly because of public condemnation by a small but vocal minority vehemently opposed to such practes.

The third major motivating factor for undergoing plastic surgery is to increase future employment and earnings prospects, or, in other words, as an investment in one's career. While a powerful motivator in East Asia where this concept is heavily promoted by local plastic surgeons, the only careful study of this premise suggests that having cosmetic surgery is, from a financial point of view, a bad investment.

In essence, choosing to undergo any sort of elective surgery to reshape one's natural face and body is a highly personal decision undertaken for a variety of reasons.

Within the privacy of the consultation suite, patients and surgeons should confront one another freely and honestly with no hesitation about expressing their own true opinions and preferences. There is nothing moral or immoral about undergoing cosmetic surgery.

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> Patient Motivation, Preferences, and Goals