11.6m surgical procedures were estimated to have taken place worldwide in 2013. Photograph: S. Oskar/Corbis Photograph: S. Oskar/ S. Oskar/Corbis

Germany: the world's capital of penis enlargement

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One in five surgeries takes place in Germany, according to data released by plastic surgeons. Find out what other aesthetic operations are popular worldwide

UK cosmetic surgery statistics 2013: which are the most popular?

It seems that spam emails inviting men to try increasing the size of their member would be best targeted to addresses ending in .de.

According to the latest data release by the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ISAPS), there were 2,786 operations estimated to have taken place in Europe’s biggest country - which is more than in any other nation.

The organisation estimates that there were 15,414 of these operations performed worldwide so almost one in five of those seeking to add centimetres to their member were in Germany.

penis enlargement data — *The overall number of operations worldwide is estimated to be 15,414.* Photograph: Datawrapper

It is not a huge amount of men deciding to have an intimate nip and tuck in Germany - it’s roughly eight out of every 100,000 adult males usually resident in the country. However, only Venezuela, where four out of every 100,000 adult males have a penis enlargement operation, comes anywhere near close to the German rate.

It’s worth pointing out here that the figures are not broken down by the nationality of the patient so it’s not necessarily German men or people that live there going for the procedure.

The German Centre for Urology and Phalloplasty Surgery claims to have performed over 6,000 penis enlargements (be warned there are graphic pictures available on the site). They claim to be able to enhance the length of the member by 3-6cm and the girth by 2-3cm. The cost of the operation? €9,600 (including materials and ancillary costs).

The growing trend for penis enlargement was noticed back in 2011 by English language site The Local. They reported the president of the German Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery as saying that the surgery was now the seventh most popular type of aesthetic operation for men in the country.

The ISAPS data is not broken down by gender for each nation so the relative popularity of penile enlargement is not quite clear.

Breast augmentation the most popular surgery worldwide

Taking a broader look at the data, there were more breast enhancement operations than any other surgical procedure worldwide last year. 18% of these took place in the United States.

plastic surgery data — More plastic surgery operations took place in Brazil than any other country Photograph: /ISAPS Photograph: ISAPS

The other procedures that are thought to have taken place over a million times were:

Liposuction (1.6m) - where fat is removed from the body
Eyelid surgery (1.4m) - the removal of fat or skin from around the eye area
Lipostructure/lipofilling (1m) - where parts of fat from the rest of the body are used to reshape the patients body (the count includes stem enhanced lipofilling)

In total, there were an estimated 11.6m aesthetic surgical procedures that took place worldwide in 2013.

South American countries the most likely to have plastic surgery

ISAPS collected the data using survey responses from 1,567 plastic surgeons. They were able to get counts for 96% of the total number of practitioners using national societies worldwide, which allowed them to project total worldwide numbers using these survey responses.

However, 1,567 is still a small sample size and they were only able to provide data breakdowns for the ten countries performing the most plastic surgery.

If you take the total number of procedures and adjust it by the country’s population in 2013 then Venezuela was the place where people were most likely to have had plastic surgery.

If you take a random sample of 1,000 Venezuelans, eight are likely to have had a surgical operation in 2013. Fellow South American countries Brazil and Colombia came second and third respectively for popularity per capita.

In terms of raw numbers, the most operations worldwide took place in this year’s World Cup host Brazil. The largest South American country had 1.5m operations in 2013, which is more than one in ten of all procedures worldwide.

However, when you factor in non-surgical operations such as botox then the US regains the top spot with almost 4m non-surgical and surgical procedures combined compared to 2.1m in runner up Brazil.

Update: 13.30pm The piece was rectified to make clear that it was not necessarily German men having the procedure but the operations took place in Germany.

Hat tip to Clinic Compare