What Plastic Surgery Can’t Do For You

Plastic surgery can fix physical disfigurement or deformities. It can fix physical flaws for individuals who have specific body complaints. It increases self-confidence by resolving physical self-consciousness. After accidents or trauma, plastic surgery can return a patient's appearance to its previous state. It can fix body flaws and enhance physical appearance. Plastic surgery cannot fix a person's life. Plastic surgery is just an alteration of a person's body. It can't get someone a job, make friends for them or resolve body issues that go deeper than a complaint about a specific body part.

Plastic surgery can be a great thing for someone who is otherwise mentally stable, in good health and has reasonable expectations for the outcome of the surgery. It helps people regain their lives after mastectomy or burns. It fixes body flaws so that people can be more confident. Plastic surgery rarely creates perfect results, and plastic surgeons don't promise them. They do their best to create an aesthetically pleasing result for the patient, and work with what the patient has physically. Any patient who expects absolute perfection is not a good candidate for plastic surgery, as results may differ slightly from what they want and leave her just as unhappy as before. Getting plastic surgery to make someone else happy is never a good choice, as the patient should be the one who wants to change his appearance. Doing it for another person will not help the patient's self-esteem.

Plastic surgery is major surgery. Since general anesthesia is required for surgical procedures, the risks of general anesthesia apply. These include nausea, allergic reaction and in rare instances, death. Surgical risks include accidental nicking of nearby organs causing internal bleeding, surgical wound infection and scarring. Choosing an experienced and certified plastic surgeon minimizes the risks of plastic surgery, although risk can never be completely eliminated.  Cosmetic surgeons say unrealistic expectations are now the most common reason for which they refuse to carry out operations on clients, who increasingly arrive for consultations clutching photographs of glamour models, celebrities and even porn stars whose lifestyles they wish to emulate. Doctors say the trend for celebrities to undergo surgery, combined with aggressive marketing from commercial clinics about the ease of lunchtime" surgery, has created a generation of women who think they can transform their lives by going under the knife.

One third of doctors surveyed by the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons said the most common reason to turn down patients was because of their unrealistic expectations, including women who were obsessed with celebrity looks. The next most common reason to reject patients was because they were seeking surgery which would not improve their appearance, such as young women with few wrinkles demanding facelifts. BAAPS Honorary Secretary Rajiv Grover said: More and more we have clients coming in with pictures of celebrities they want to look like, especially for rhinoplasty and breast augmentation, and we are turning increasing numbers of them away. Twenty years ago young girls wanted to be someone in the professional field – a doctor, lawyer, or maybe to work in the City. Now the aspirations seem to be about being a pop star, an actress, a celebrity, and increasingly they think surgery will help them to achieve that.

He said responsible surgeons informed clients that surgery carried risks, took time and could not achieve a guaranteed outcome, let alone model looks. A voluntary code of conduct for cosmetic surgeons asks doctors to take responsibility for explaining to patients the reasonable expectations and results from undertaking the procedure. Private clinics are also told to ensure that their marketing materials safeguard patients from unrealistic expectations as a result of cosmetic surgery. Adam Searle, a London surgeon, said many clients who claimed they wanted the breasts of a supermodel or the nose of a celebrity were actually seeking attention, or a dramatic transformation in their lives. When a girl comes in with 150 images of models in bikinis in glamorous locations, it often turns out that the common thing isn't the shape or size of breasts, but the lifestyle in the photo shoot, he said.

In fact, when you unpick the psychological factors, it becomes clear that the patient may say she wants to be a D-cup but really she wants to be the girl in the lights. Mr Seale, a past president of BAAPS, said he was least comfortable when men pressured wives or girlfriends to become their fantasy women. He said: One of the situations I find most difficult is when a male partner has brought along photographs, often of airbrushed porn queens, and is saying that's what we want. Essentially you are sitting there with them looking at magazines, with discomfort usually oozing out of the woman. It can be a very difficult and delicate job to persuade them against surgery, especially because the chances are the partner will encourage them to go somewhere else.

Nigel Mercer, a fellow surgeon and president of BAAPS, said: People look at Katie Price [otherwise known as Jordan] who has created a business based on the size of her breasts, and they want to copy her in the hope they will attain that celebrity dream. I always tell them giving you a boob job will not make you a celebrity. He said increasingly consultations meant explaining to a woman with a picture of a supermodel or film star whose nose they wanted to copy, that anatomical changes were not so easy attained.

Women will come in with a picture of the supermodel Cindy Crawford and say I want that nose, he said. I have to explain they have a fundamentally different facial structure. I will say to them it can't be done, and I don't think there is anyone on earth who can do it; but there are always unscrupulous surgeons who are not so honest. He urged anyone considering cosmetic surgery to have a consultation with a doctor, warning that some clinics employ sales representatives to carry out initial assessments.