Plastic surgery doesn't actually make you better looking

WOULD you have a facelift if it made you look only three years younger and didn't make you any more attractive? Apparently, that's all surgery does for you.

Actress Lindsay Lohan is widely known for having lip fillers. Picture: Getty Images

WOULD you have a facelift if it made you look only three years younger and didn't make you look any more attractive?

For these are the findings of the first study to investigate how we perceive the success of plastic surgery.

However, they found the more work that was done, the younger patients look - meaning looking ten years younger could top $17,000 for several procedures.

Dr Joshua Zimm, of the Lenox Hill Hospital and Manhattan Eye, Ear &Throat Institute in New York, who led the study, said the explosion in facial surgery has been driven by expectations that patients' looks will improve, despite a lack of objective research in the field.

US actor and Qantas ambassador John Travolta looks the same now as he did here in 2005. Picture: AFP

The study, published in journal JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery, asked 50 independent raters to examine pre-operative and post-operative photographs of 49 patients, including 12 men, who underwent plastic surgery at a private practice in Toronto, Canada.

To minimise bias, none of the raters was shown before and after pictures of the same patient.

Patients ranged in age from 42 to 73 at the time of surgery. The average overall years saved following surgery was 3.1 years, with more years saved as more procedures were carried out.

On attractiveness, scores did not change with surgery.