A recent study at the University of Michigan has found that age is a better predictor of satisfaction with plastic surgery than outlook. In other words, whether you tend to be positive or negative, optimistic or pessimistic, if you’re older, you’re happier with your results (sorry, Heidi Montag!).
The short study involved 51 patients who had plastic surgery procedures between 2007 and 2008. Those older than 53 years of age were more satisfied with their procedures’ results than those who are younger. Further, patients who were being treated for depression were happier than those who were not depressed (or at least weren’t being treated for depression).
Why? Perhaps those older among us have more realistic expectations.
According to the researchers, “…it will be interesting to design larger scale studies to examine the potential associations between perceived surgical outcomes and sex, education, marital status, depression and/or inclination toward optimism/pessimism.”
Also according to the researchers, “The ability to preoperatively identify patient characteristics (psychological, social or demographic) that might impact the subjective perception of surgical outcome and predict dissatisfaction with facial plastic surgery could be highly useful to surgeons.”
