Year in Review: Most Popular Plastic Surgeries and Emerging Trends

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This is the annual review of what we actually performed at Centre for Surgery — drawn from our own caseload mix rather than from social media speculation or industry forecast pieces. It is a different question from "what is the most-talked-about procedure" or "what is going viral on TikTok"; it is the simpler question of what consultant plastic surgeons in a CQC-regulated London clinic spent their time doing across the year. The answer holds reasonably steady from year to year, with marginal shifts driven by underlying changes in patient demographics, available techniques, and the wider regulatory landscape.

For the wider commentary on UK cosmetic surgery trends, see our companion piece on top trends in cosmetic surgery. This page focuses specifically on what our patient caseload looked like.

The procedures that dominate by volume

Breast augmentation is consistently our highest-volume single procedure, typically accounting for around 25% of our annual caseload. The procedure has remained the most popular cosmetic surgery in the UK across BAAPS audit data for several years.

What has shifted within the breast augmentation caseload is the type of result patients now ask for. Implant size requests have moved noticeably smaller. Anatomical implants, smaller-volume implants in the cc range, and submuscular placement for thin tissue patients have become more common; very large round implants and overly augmented appearances are now distinctly less requested. The conversation at consultation is now more often about how to achieve a result that does not look obviously augmented than about how to maximise visible size.

The technical question that comes up most often in our consultations is implant pocket location (subglandular, dual plane, submuscular) — driven by the patient’s existing tissue thickness, breast shape, and lifestyle considerations rather than by surgeon preference.

A consistently growing portion of our breast caseload is breast lift combined with augmentation — typically accounting for 15-20% of breast cases. The combined procedure addresses two related but distinct problems at once: the volume loss that accompanies pregnancy, breastfeeding, and weight changes, and the position changes (ptosis) that accompany those same factors plus ageing.

Where appropriate, we use a vertical (lollipop) lift technique rather than the older anchor (inverted T) approach. The vertical incision produces less visible scarring and works well for moderate ptosis, though the anchor approach is still appropriate for more significant tissue redundancy. The right technique for an individual patient depends on the degree of ptosis, breast volume, and skin quality — not on a one-size-fits-all preference.

Liposuction typically accounts for around 18% of our annual caseload, performed in two main contexts. The first is liposuction as a standalone procedure for genuine localised stubborn fat in patients with good baseline Lower Body (https://minsterpeptides.co.uk) composition. The second is liposuction as a component of larger procedures — combined with abdominoplasty in lipoabdominoplasty, with breast surgery in mummy makeover, or with breast augmentation to refine the chest wall and axillary region.

Within the liposuction caseload, we have seen growing interest in:

What we continue to emphasise at consultation: liposuction is a contouring procedure, not a weight loss procedure.