By Sarah Hodge

With patients looking to make savings at every available opportunity and clinics desperate to get customers through the door, discounted deals and financial incentives are becoming increasingly common in the global cosmetic surgery industry

As the world economy teeters between disaster and recovery there are a couple industries that show few signs of impact. The elective surgeries sector is one of them and earlier this year, media outlets around the world reported on how efficiently the industry performed.

It seems, however, that the economic losses have eventually caught up with the widely accepted practice and now everyone is looking for the right deal to stay afloat and keep customers walking through the doors. The consequences are already affecting doctors and patients and if they are not careful, they could end up changing the way in which the industry operates as a whole.

In the United States alone, more than 13 million cosmetic and plastic surgery procedures were performed last year and according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), this was a five percent increase from 2009. As a representation of thousands of plastic surgeons across the country, the Society serves as a reference for patients on cosmetic procedures. So what was the reason for an increase in the number of plastic surgery patients? The answer is simple, people wanted jobs.

The state of the economy actually served as a catalyst, encouraging more people to seek out and undergo cosmetic procedures. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then employment is the reward for attracting the right employer and plastic surgery has quickly become the new tool to gain a competitive advantage in a stumbling job market.

Men and women found themselves getting tightened, plumped and filled to reduce the signs of aging and avoid getting the axe. Meanwhile, the increasingly popular Botox has gained even more loyal followers and there were reportedly 11.3 million administrations of the FDA approved drug last year.

More.

[Source: Healthcare Global]