Plastic surgery has become a multibillion pound industry as individuals strive to look a particular way. Several people want chemicals and silicone injected into their body to make them feel 'happy' or 'secure', but in some cases people have gone to extremes to achieve this. So plastic surgery; a beneficial enhancement or dangerous and vain?.
Plastic surgery focuses on repairing and reconstructing abnormal structures of the body caused by birth defects, developmental abnormalities, trauma, infection, tumours or disease. Although cosmetic surgery is a type of plastic surgery that alters someone's appearance, it is carried out to change a healthy person's appearance to achieve what they feel is a more desirable look. While this can have a positive impact on self-esteem, there is no physical or medical reason to have the procedure.
People with life threatening burns have been strongly advised to have skin substitutions or skin grafts as they have been phenomenal for patients. As we all know, Katie Piper, - a former model, had sulphuric acid thrown in her face resulting in severe burns and being left blind in one eye. After numerous operations surgeons were able to rebuild her face by completely removing the skin off Piper's face, and replacing it with a skin substitute, Matriderm, to build the foundations for a skin graft. By February 2012, Piper revealed she had undergone 109 medical operations in the four years since the acid attack. On this occasion, plastic and cosmetic surgery has proven to be very successful, leading Piper to rebuild her life, restore her self-esteem and also carve out a career in the media. .
The amount of people having cosmetic surgery is increasing quite considerably. In 2004, roughly 241,000 cosmetic procedures were performed on patients 18 years old or younger. The most common procedures were nose reshaping (rhinoplasty), liposuction, tummy tucks (abdominoplasty) and breast augmentations.