Some of Li's patients also fail to realize the risks associated with plastic surgeries. He said he often had to persuade patients who want to go home only hours after a major plastic surgery to stay at the hospital longer. "I tell them that this is surgery, not doing your hair," Li said.

Besides unqualified practitioners, problematic materials and prostheses used in surgeries are also causing beauty seekers lifetime regrets.

In April 2006, the State Food and Drug Administration banned the production, sale and use of Aomeiding, a gel injected into the breast for augmentation purposes produced by a Chinese company, after it had been used on more than 300,000 women around China.

The administration found that more than 8 percent of users reported harmful reactions, which ranged from pain caused by the gel moving to other parts of the body to cases of women having to have breasts removed.

Psychological problems

"Being anxious and insecure people nowadays are trying to seek quick ways to success and many believe plastic surgery is one of the most convenient paths to success," said Xu Kaiwen with the Psychological Counseling Center at Peking University. "It's actually self-denial. Most of them do not recognize that they actually need psychological help."

Xu suggests that people should be evaluated by psychologists before opting for plastic surgery, though this safeguard is always ignored given the commercial incentive for immediate surgery.

An even more extreme case of plastic surgery addiction reported in the media recently is a woman in her 20s from Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province, who, starting at the age of 16, spent over 4 million yuan ($634,900) on more than 200 plastic surgery procedures in beauty saloons. Born into a wealthy family, the woman never worked and once spent a whole year in the Republic of Korea to undergo a series of operations.

Unsatisfied with the results of previous surgeries, she chose to have more and more reconstructive procedures, which resulted in constant pain. During a check-up in March, doctors found that almost every part of her body had been operated upon, and some surgeries, such as wrinkle treatment, were inappropriate for her age. Doctors said that it would take two to three years of treatment for her body to recover while the full recovery of her breasts and heel bones is impossible.

Fei Junfeng, a professor at the Psychological Health Education and Research Center of Nanjing University, said that plastic surgery addicts tend to be extremely concerned about their image in the eyes of others, and often worry about the surroundings.

Many addicts keep coming back to doctors to fix so-called "failures." "I have patients who started the conversation by telling me her eyelids had been ruined by her last surgeon even though I couldn't see anything wrong with her eyelids," said Wang, the plastic surgeon in Beijing.

Cui Qing, a public relations manager of Wang's hospital, said that in the hospital doctors don't operate on beauty seekers who are uncertain about what they need and ask doctors to recommend a surgery.

"All a surgeon can change is the appearance. They cannot add confidence to people who have zero confidence in themselves," Cui said.

Facts and Figures:

- In 2010, the revenue of China's plastic surgery industry reached 300 billion yuan ($47.6 billion) and more than 20 million people worked for this industry, which had a projected annual growth rate of more than 40 percent.

- In 2010, China ranked third in the world in terms of the number of cosmetic procedures performed, after the United States and Brazil.

- In 2010, a total of 588,880 surgical cosmetic procedures and 1.265 million non-surgical cosmetic procedures were performed in China.

- In 2010, the five most common surgical cosmetic procedures in China were lipoplasty, rhinoplasty, blepharoplasty, breast augmentation and abdominoplasty. Meanwhile, the five most common non-surgical cosmetic procedures were botox dysport, hyaluronic acid injection, laser hair removal, autologous fat injection and intense pulsed light laser treatment.

- The China Consumers' Association received an average of 20,000 complaints related to cosmetic procedures annually over the last decade.

(Sources: CNR and International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons)

 Email at lili@bjreview.com