The facts and figures about cosmetic surgery provide us with very thought provoking and often amusing facts. If you go through one of them you will be astonished to find the extent of monetary involvement in the sphere of cosmetic surgery. One point stands out clearly and that is people are today more concerned about their looks and how they present themselves before the world. A princely amount of $12.2 billion was what the Americans spent to discover more presentable features on the other side of the mirror. According to an ASPS survey, some 11.5 million cosmetic procedures were performed overall in the United States in 2006. There are many more interesting facts that reflect on the recent trends in the sphere of cosmetic surgery.

The most popular cosmetic surgical procedures: eyelid surgery and rhynoplasty or reshaping of nose. Since the year of 1997, the numbers of nose jobs increased by some 46% and people are often ready to travel 50 miles or more to get plastic surgery, if they do not find a satisfactory plastic surgeon nearer.

Men often hold that having a plastic surgery is a career related decision,. While women seem to be more honest to confess that they need it because they want to look younger.

For women, breast augmentation was proved to be the most popular cosmetic surgical procedure, and some 384,000 women undergone the procedure in the United States in 2006.

Men however found liposuction to be their ideal surgical procedures, with more than 53,000 men taking up the procedure last year.

However, the most interesting trend involves patients increasingly shifting reliance from surgical procedures to minimally invasive procedures. This increasing interest in the non invasive procedures has two important reasons behind them: the first relates to man's instinctive fear of going under knife and second relates to the comparativly far lower cost of non- invasive procedures.

Among several non- surgical cosmetic procedures, both men and women seem to rely most on Botox injection. Some 2.8 million women undergone Botox procedure last year where for men, the number was 300,472.

The trend reflects on the use of other popular non surgical treatments too. Use of hyaluronic acid and other fillers to give a fuller look to the face and to reduce wrinkles has also become very common. The laser hair removal and skin resurfacing are other two non invasive procedures that have become extremely popular. And interestingly, both men and women are getting these treatments in almost equal proportion.

Another interesting trend of cosmetic surgery relates to the age factor. There was a time when, cosmetic surgery was regarded as the monopolized domain of the rich ladies having enough cash to blow off in fancy things. But today, more and more people are opting for cosmetic improvements in an early age and often their decisions are guided by their career ambition. It is mainly the non-invasive procedures like skin peel that people are opting at an early age while reserving the more complicated procedures like face lift for a riper age.

Last but not least, the studies have found out that only third of patients who undergone some form of cosmetic procedure complained of complicated side effects; 80% of them were happy with the outcome.