About the Aesthetic Society:

The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS) was founded in 1967 when cosmetic surgery was only beginning to be recognized as the important subspecialty it is today. Founded on a mission of education, we are now widely recognized at the leader in cosmetic surgery research, education, and procedural advances.

United States membership to the Aesthetic Society is restricted to American Board of Plastic Surgery certified physicians who meet a minimum number of surgical procedures performed and commit to a minimum number of continuing medical education hours. New members must be sponsored by an existing ASAPS member.

Of course cosmetic procedures surgical and nonsurgical are performed by a variety of physicians. For that reason, we rely on physicians from many different specialties when we compile our annual statistics. We thank these clinicians for their contributions to our survey.

About the Aesthetic Society Statistics:

The Aesthetic Society has been collecting procedural statistics since 1997, allowing media professionals, industry and other interested parties the opportunity to trend the most popular cosmetic procedures. This year, we added silicone breast implants to our list of procedures in order to trend their market acceptance in the devices are approved by the FDA.

2006 marks the ninth consecutive year that multi-specialty data has been collected on these procedures.

To collect the data, more than 14,000 surveys were sent to board certified surgeons and physicians in the following specialties:

• Plastic Surgery
  
  
• Dermatology
  
  
• Otolaryngology

Final figures are projected to reflect nationwide statistics. The survey portion of this research has a standard error of +/- 3.91% at a 95% level of confidence.