While some studies might have lumped Beverly Hills in within Los Angeles, since many plastic surgeons located there serve the greater L.A. region, we felt that the sheer volume of surgeons vs. residents in this city was worth pointing out. The ASPS member directory (which doesn't contain all the docs in the area) lists at least 72 plastic surgeons for the city of Beverly Hills alone (which is six square miles in size, by the way). If the population were scaled up to a "per 100,000 people" basis, they would likely have the equivalent of more than 200 plastic surgeons per 100,000 people.
How plastic is your city? Recent numbers may defy your expectations � or, if you live in an area where getting Botox is as common as getting a "mocha ice blended" (with the whipped cream), they might be spot on.
According to the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), Americans spent almost $10.5 billion on cosmetic procedures, $6 billion on surgical procedures and $4.5 billion on nonsurgical procedures in 2009 -- down about 3.4 percent from 2008. We looked at detailed breakdowns of those ASAPS numbers, as well as the latest regional stats and member surgeon directories by city from the largest plastic surgery organization in the world -- the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), which is reported to represent 90 percent of board-certified plastic surgeons in the U.S., then compared them to the most recent available U.S. Census stats to calculate the number of plastic surgeons per capita in cities across America.
We then compared our results with those of several recent studies, which used criteria like the amount of plastic surgeons per capita in 2007, the amount of total surgeons, and the amount of surgeries performed -- just to shed more light on our rankings. The result was our very own list of the most "plastic" cities in the U.S. (Important to note: We expect some margin of error due to missing data. Also, we didn't focus on the type of surgery, be it reconstructive, purely cosmetic or gender-related. Oh, and we did rule out cosmetic dentists -- because in our opinion, teeth whitening doesn't count.)
