SRK's six pack but the easy way

Everyone wants to have SRK’s six pack but the easy way. With cosmetic surgeons ready to fix almost anything. Deepa  Suryanarayan finds out why the beauty business is looking up, up, and up

The words rhinoplasty, abdominoplasty and mentoplasty do not just belong to medical parlance. These phrases — surgical procedures for nose jobs, abdomen and chin treatment respectively — are popular in common talk as well.

It is therefore apt that a conference is being held at Bombay Hospital where plastic surgeons from all over the world have gathered to update their Indian counterparts about the new techniques.

Among the 250 surgeons who are attending the conference is Prof Thomas Biggs, from the Baylor College of Medicine. Biggs believes the popularity of cosmetic surgery is soaring because people of every age want a perfect look. “Regardless of the age or expenditure involved, what they all want is the full-baby look,” he said.

The following figures speak for themselves. In 2002, around 6.9 million cosmetic surgery procedures were performed worldwide; an increase of 228 per cent from 1997.

The figure is estimated to have doubled now.  Dr Satish Arolkar of the Asian Heart Institute, too echoed Prof Biggs about the popularity of plastic surgery.  

The growing demand has given rise to a number of problems as well, the prominent one being the entry of non-qualified people who offer their ‘services’ in lesser time. 

“A lot of people take six-week training course and claim that they can perform all kinds of complex procedures,” said Dr Nitin Mokal, a consultant plastic surgeon. Mokal has performed remedial procedures on patients who had been treated by quacks.

Another problem is the mushrooming of small clinics that offer skin treatment. “Patients have to sign a written agreement which makes the clinic immune in case the treatment fails,” said Dr Ashok Gupta, consultant plastic surgeon at Bombay hospital.

s_deepa@dnaindia.net