Finally, a qu
antitative tally of the how much younger plastic surgery makes us look. The New York Times reports on a study, published online in JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery on Thursday, that asked independent viewers to guess the age of people in photos taken before and after cosmetic surgery. The Times reports that 50 people looked at randomly assigned binders of 49 patients, ages 42 to 73, who had been “done” by the same doctor. Patients who had had a nose job or injections of anti-wrinkle medicines like Botox were excluded. The envelope please….The raters guessed patients’ ages before surgery to be about 2.1 years younger, on average, than their chronological age. After surgery, they were said to be 5.2 years younger than their chronological age, for an overall difference of 3.1 years. Also, the raters found changes in attractiveness to be “minimal.”