TreatmentCenter.CO.UK News

2010-01-01 9:00

All kinds of people from supermarket cashiers to adolescents and men intent on improving their career prospects undergo plastic surgery in Spain, the European country where most cosmetic surgical interventions are performed.

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Source: http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/todaysfeatures/2005/September/todaysfeatures_September1.xml§ion=todaysfeatures

MADRID - For years, E.P., a 27-year-old Spanish geography graduate, had been unhappy with her nose.

After futile attempts at trying to accept herself “for who you are and not your looks”, the young woman decided to go under a surgeon’s knife.

“I did it purely for my image,” she told the daily La Vanguardia. ”It was partially an obsession because people told me I was just as pretty” without an operation.

Cosmetic surgery is no longer just for celebrities.

“The clientele includes unemployed people, domestic employees and country people,” said Fernando Barragan, director of a Madrid clinic.

Some 350,000 cosmetic operations are performed annually in Spain, according to the Spanish plastic surgeons’ association Secpre.

The number of operations has doubled over a decade and grows by about 8 per cent a year.

“We are a Mediterranean country where people spend a lot of time on the street, good weather lasts for months, and everyone wants to show bare skin and look good,” Secpre president Jose Manuel Perez Macias said.

The most popular operations are liposuction, breast augmentation and nose jobs. Other common ones include fixing drooping eyelids, tummy tucks and face-lifts.

Cosmetic surgery is not cheap. A face-lift, for instance, can cost up to 9,000 euros (11,000 dollars) in Spain.

Yet large surgical companies offer payment facilities, and their aggressive publicity promotes the idea that going under the knife is becoming almost as easy and common as going to a hairdresser or cosmetician.

Some Spanish parents even give their daughters liposuctions or nose jobs as graduation presents, according to La Vanguardia.

Increasing interest among men

While 80 per cent of cosmetic surgery patients are women, male interest is increasing. At one Barcelona clinic, the number of male clients grew from 10 to 25 per cent of the total over five years.

Spanish media frequently publish rather uncritical articles about cosmetic surgery, extolling the fame of some surgeons and displaying photographs of spectacular results.

There is less talk about the risks involved. A face-lift, for instance, can cause scarring, infection and nerve paralysis even when performed by a skilled surgeon.

That is not always the case, and Spanish authorities have closed dozens of illegal clinics over the recent years.

Several Spanish women have died during liposuctions. More than 1,000 liposuction patients filed legal complaints in 2002, according to a figure quoted by the daily El Mundo.

Jorge Planas, director of a Barcelona clinic, said 10 to 20 per cent of operations at his clinic were aimed at correcting mistakes made by other surgeons.

Most cosmetic surgeons maintain that only a tiny percentage of the operations go wrong. But even when things go well, the pain suffered by cosmetic surgery patients and by any surgery patients - is ”extremely unpleasant”, a London-based dermatology professor John Hawk said.

The results of a face-lift last from five to 10 years. Some people enter a vicious circle of renewing painful and expensive operations and undergoing new types of surgery.

Yet there is virtually no public debate in Spain about the ethics of doctors who use publicity to attract clients for operations not necessary for their health.

“Aesthetic centres” performing cosmetic surgery “create unrealistic expectations for people who have some little complex with which they could live perfectly well,” complained Carmen Flores, president of the patients’ defence association Adepa.

Many of the advertisements feature young models who have not been operated on, she added.

Such criticism does not deter people on a quest for eternal youth and beauty.

“Cosmetic surgery will stop being a fashion and big business only on the day when (human) cloning is allowed,” psychiatrist Josep Toro quipped.