Far down to the south of the United States sits a country that looms large in plastic surgery. By the number of plastic surgery procedures performed to their history of technique innovations, Brazil is large in both land mass and in their pursuit of beauty.
Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world comprising over 3.2 million square miles. It is so large and occupies so much of South America that is comprises much of its interior and borders with every other South American country with the exception of Chile and Equador. With a population of almost 210 million people that speak almost exclusively Portuguese, it is the largest speaking Portuguese country in the world and theonly one in the Americas.
The role of Brazil in plastic surgery is significant around the world. The shape of the human body is a major beauty issue in a tropical country where the vast majority of the population lives by the Atlantic Ocean. (the heaviest concentration of the Brazilian population is in the southeastern section of the country) A flat abdomen, firm breasts and rounder shaped buttocks dominate what is important to women in this part of the world. That is so significant that the procedure and the term ‘Brazilian Butt Lift’ comes from the Brazilian desire for larger and firmer buttock shapes. Most forms of buttock augmentation that we know today, buttock implants, buttock fat injections and buttock lifts, have their origin from Brazilian plastic surgeons.
According to the Brazilian Society of Plastic Surgery, over 2.1 million plastic surgery procedures are performed per year (surgical and non-surgical) which represents about 10% of the world’s total. There are about 5,500 plastic surgeons in Brazil which makes up almost 15% of all plastic surgeons in the world. Body contouring procedures dominate with near 220,000 liposuction, 185,000 breast augmentation, 120,000 tummy tucks, 115,000 fat grafting and over 50,000 buttock augmentations/reshaping procedures performed every year.
Not to be outdone, men also have a lot of plastic surgery done as well. The Brazilian Society of Plastic Surgery estimates that a man gets some type of plastic surgery in Brazil every two minutes. That would mean roughly 250,000 Brazilian men or 12% of all plastic surgery patients in Brazil are done in males.
Dr. Barry Eppley
Indianapolis, Indiana