GLP-1 patients are changing aesthetic menus. Body lifts and facial fat grafting are growing fastest.

Who this is for

This is for the physician or medical professional who owns a plastic surgery, dermatology or med spa practice now seeing patients on weight-loss drugs, and/or the operations lead who plans its menu, prices and surgery schedule around them.

GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) drugs are the weight-loss and diabetes medications semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Zepbound).

Two things moved at once. More of these patients are booking consultations, and the federal rules on compounded copies of the drugs tightened.

How many patients take GLP-1 drugs, and what do they ask surgeons for?

KFF, a health policy nonprofit, polled 1,350 US adults from October 27 to November 2, 2025. Twelve percent said they were currently taking a GLP-1 drug, and 18% said they had taken one at some point. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.¹

KFF's earlier poll, of 1,479 adults from April 23 to May 1, 2024, put current use at 6%. Current use went from 6% to 12% in about 18 months.^2,1

Use was highest among adults aged 50 to 64, at 22%, and lower among those 65 and older, at 9%. KFF says the lower data point likely reflects Medicare's lack of coverage for drugs prescribed specifically for weight loss.¹

People also stop. In the 2025 poll, 14% of GLP-1 users said they no longer took the drug because of its cost, 13% cited side effects, and 5% said their condition had improved. The polls ask nothing about cosmetic treatment.¹

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) reported that 82% of its member surgeons received consultation requests related to GLP-1 use in 2025. Its member survey also asked which body procedures those requests were for.³

On the face, ASPS members most often reported GLP-1-related consultations for facelifts (71%), neck lifts (64%), eyelid surgery (37%) and brow lifts (19%). The ASPS article gives no sample size for the survey.³

The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (AAFPRS) found that 67% of its surveyed members saw more patients seeking treatment related to rapid weight loss. One in four predicted GLP-1 use could cause a spike in non-surgical treatments. ACUPOLL Precision Research ran that survey online in December 2025, with a select group of AAFPRS members, and the release gives no sample size.⁴

McKinsey surveyed 174 medical spas, dermatology and plastic surgery clinics, and other aesthetics providers in December 2024. Providers said 61% of GLP-1 patients seeking treatment had lost 11% to 30% of their body weight. They said 63% of these patients seeking facial products or procedures were not active users of medical aesthetics services, and about half of that group had never considered aesthetics before losing the weight.⁵

Which body and face procedures grew in 2025?

On the body, the lift procedures grew. ASPS put the rise in plastic surgery procedures at 7% overall for 2025.⁶ In its GLP-1 article, upper body lifts rose 22%, arm lifts 21%, thigh lifts 20%, breast lifts 8%, and lower body lifts 4%.³

Tummy tucks led the consultation list at 88% of surgeons, yet national volume rose only 2%, to 173,251 procedures. ASPS calls that statistically flat and suggests some patients are still weighing timing, recovery or cost.³

The surveys measure the request, and none follows a patient from prescription to operating room. That is how a procedure can draw requests at 88% of surgeons and grow 2% in volume.

On the face, fat grafting grew fastest. ASPS reported facial fat grafting up 39% to 34,117 procedures, the largest percentage increase of any cosmetic surgery procedure in 2025. ASPS members named hyaluronic acid fillers (69%) and fat grafting (49%) as their most common facial rejuvenation techniques, and ASPS notes the rise in fat grafting extended beyond GLP-1 patients.³

AAFPRS members reported a second straight year of 50% growth in fat grafting.⁴

What does the clinical research say about treating and operating on GLP-1 patients?

A 2026 narrative review in Dermatologic Surgery describes the facial changes after medical weight loss as deflated superficial fat compartments, loss of deep support, skeletal resorption, and increased skin laxity. Its authors argue for early collagen-stimulating treatment combined with targeted hyaluronic acid filler. As a narrative review, it draws on earlier studies and reports no new patient outcomes.⁷

A 2026 narrative review in Aesthetic Plastic Surgery says emerging evidence from aesthetic and body-contouring cohorts signals higher wound complication rates in GLP-1 users, including wound dehiscence of 5.19% in semaglutide users against 2.78% in matched controls. It calls prospective aesthetic-specific data limited.⁸

On anesthesia, guidance from five societies, including the American Society of Anesthesiologists, published in October 2024, says GLP-1 therapy may be continued before surgery in patients without an increased risk of delayed gastric emptying and aspiration. It lists the dose-escalation phase, higher doses, weekly dosing, and gastrointestinal symptoms among the factors that raise that risk. It says a liquid diet for at least 24 hours before surgery can be used when there is concern for delayed gastric emptying.⁹

The underlying research is still limited. A 2026 meta-analysis in the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia pooled 10 prospective studies of 300 patients and found GLP-1 drugs prolonged gastric emptying half-time by a mean of 74 minutes, with the certainty of that estimate graded "very low."¹⁰ A 2026 systematic review of 32 articles in Perioperative Medicine found most studies reported more residual gastric contents, while evidence of a rise in regurgitation or aspiration events "remains highly inconsistent."¹¹

So across the pooled studies, stomach emptying slowed by more than an hour on average, and the anesthesia guidance still says the drug may be continued in patients without an increased risk.^10,9

Which procedures a practice offers, and to whom, is the surgeon's clinical call. The surveys show where patient demand sits.

What changed for compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide?

The federal rules changed for one menu line: compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide.

Compounders could copy the brand drugs while those drugs sat on the FDA shortage list. Under section 503A of the federal drug law, a drug is compounded for an individual patient based on a prescription. Under section 503B, outsourcing facilities generally cannot compound from bulk ingredients unless the ingredient is on the 503B bulks list or the drug is in shortage.¹²

The FDA declared the tirzepatide shortage resolved on December 19, 2024¹³, and the semaglutide shortage resolved on February 21, 2025. Its stated grace periods ended March 19, 2025 for outsourcing facilities making tirzepatide, April 22, 2025 for pharmacies and physicians compounding semaglutide under 503A, and May 22, 2025 for outsourcing facilities making semaglutide.¹²

The FDA's compounding page, updated in April 2026, uses semaglutide with vitamin B12 as its example. The agency may consider such a mix essentially a copy of a commercially available drug when it is given the same way and its strengths sit within 10% of the approved products. The FDA says it does not intend to act against a compounder that fills four or fewer prescriptions of such a product in a calendar month.¹²

On April 30, 2026, the FDA proposed excluding semaglutide, tirzepatide, and liraglutide from the 503B bulks list, finding no clinical need for outsourcing facilities to compound them from bulk ingredients. Comments closed June 29, 2026. The proposal is not final.¹⁴

The FDA's Office of Compliance issued 72 compounding-related warning letters in 2025. Fifty-eight addressed misbranded compounded drugs promoted through false or misleading advertising, such as implying equivalence to FDA-approved products.¹⁵ A practice's own ads for a compounded drug carry that exposure.

Guidepoint's Qsight, a sales measurement service, reported GLP-1 drugs on offer at 60% of medspas and 35% of aesthetic physician offices in January 2025. Its deck does not say how many of those sold compounded versions.¹⁶ A month later the FDA declared the semaglutide shortage over.¹²

What are GLP-1 patients already spending, and what can a practice look at?

Many of these patients are already paying for the drug every month. In the 2025 KFF poll, 56% of GLP-1 users said the drugs were difficult to afford, and 55% of insured users said the same.¹ In 2024, 54% of people who had ever taken the drugs said so.²

McKinsey's 2025 article says about 60% of these patients reduced their overall aesthetics spending, while 40% increased it. The article does not say whether patients or providers supplied that split.⁵

Qsight's data points are projections from the practice sales it measures, and they count what patients paid practices for the drugs. It projected that patients spent $1.30 billion on GLP-1 drugs at US medspas and physician offices in 2024, up 75% from $0.74 billion in 2023. Weight-loss and dietary treatments made up 12% of non-surgical patient spending at aesthetic practices in 2024, against 2% in 2021.¹⁷ At practices offering GLP-1 drugs, those sales averaged 15% of monthly non-surgical revenue.¹⁶

The patient's total bill for body contouring or fat grafting lands on a budget already carrying a drug bill. In our reading, that puts staged treatment and financing into the price conversation. In Fractional Aesthetics' own 2026 review of 16 aesthetic practices, payment options were buried or absent on 8 of the 10 practice websites where that could be checked.¹⁸ None of these sources reports what practices charge for a post-weight-loss package.

We sell marketing work, and a campaign aimed at GLP-1 patients is an easy thing for us to propose. The data stop at the consultation request, so they do not show that the prescription produces the booked procedure.

A practice can set the procedures its own GLP-1 patients ask about in consultation beside the national survey data points, with the surgeon deciding what to offer.

Any compounded GLP-1 product on the menu, and any ad for one, can be read against the FDA's current compounding policy.

The practice's website shows a patient whether staged treatment and payment options are easy to find.

About this review

We read the two KFF tracking polls (May 2024, 1,479 adults; November 2025, 1,350 adults), the ASPS article on its 2025 member survey and procedure statistics, the AAFPRS release on its December 2025 member survey, McKinsey's December 2024 survey of 174 providers, two Qsight reports from 2025, four FDA documents on shortages and compounding from 2024 to 2026, one multi-society anesthesia guidance, and four peer-reviewed papers from 2026. The one first-party data point is an anonymous total from Fractional Aesthetics' 2026 review of 16 aesthetic practices.

The ASPS and AAFPRS data points come from member surveys that give no sample size. McKinsey surveyed providers about their patients and did not survey the patients. Qsight's dollar data points are projections from its own sales data. The two facial and body reviews are narrative reviews, and the gastric-emptying meta-analysis grades its certainty very low. The ASPS 2025 statistics page shows its headline, a 7% rise in plastic surgery procedures overall, and keeps the full report behind a member login.

Fractional Aesthetics is a growth strategy practice for aesthetic medical businesses.