What 2025 reveals about how a small country approaches beauty, safety, and ethics
When people talk about leaders in aesthetic medicine, the same countries tend to dominate the conversation: the United States, Brazil, South Korea. Belgium is rarely mentioned. Not because it lacks expertise — but because it does not market itself loudly.
Yet a close analysis of scientific publications from 2025 tells a different story.
Belgium, a country of just over 11 million inhabitants, produced more peer-reviewed research in aesthetic medicine per capita than France or the Netherlands. More importantly, the nature of that research reveals a distinctive and quietly mature way of practicing aesthetic medicine — one that places safety, psychology, and ethical boundaries at the center of innovation.
This is not a story about volume or visibility.
It is a story about how aesthetic medicine is practiced when responsibility matters as much as results.
A small country, a disproportionate research footprint
In 2025, Belgian researchers published 57 peer-reviewed aesthetic medicine papers. France published 159. The Netherlands published 45.
At first glance, France appears dominant. But population context changes the picture entirely.
When adjusted per million inhabitants, Belgium produced almost twice as many aesthetic medicine publications as either of its neighbors. This pattern remained consistent across databases (PubMed and OpenAlex) and filtering methods.
Belgium does not publish more because it is larger or louder.
It publishes more because research is tightly interwoven with everyday clinical practice.
Three neighboring countries, distinct research profiles
Looking at Belgium, France, and the Netherlands side by side reveals important differences in how aesthetic medicine research is structured across Europe — particularly in the balance between surgery and injectable treatments.
Belgium: dual strength in surgery and injectables, with a safety lens
Belgian publications show a strong dual focus on aesthetic surgery (47%) and injectable treatments (33%), reflecting a research landscape that addresses both procedural complexity and non-surgical practice. Compared with France, Belgium places a markedly greater emphasis on injectables research.
Beyond category distribution, Belgian researchers consistently focus on safety, complications, and patient selection — asking difficult but necessary questions:
Who is an appropriate candidate? What vulnerabilities go unnoticed? How do complications arise — and how should they be managed transparently?
France: academic continuity with a surgical emphasis
France produces a large volume of aesthetic medicine research through established academic centers. Its publications lean more heavily toward surgical techniques and traditional academic themes, while injectables represent a much smaller share (16%) of aesthetic medicine output.
This profile reflects a strong institutional and surgical tradition, but contrasts with the more balanced surgery–injectables research seen in Belgium and the Netherlands.
The Netherlands: injectables and surgery in equal measure
Dutch research shows a balanced focus between injectable treatments (36%) and aesthetic surgery (36%), making the Netherlands the most injectable-focused country among the three analyzed. In this respect, the Netherlands aligns closely with Belgium and differs clearly from France.
This balance reflects a healthcare culture that integrates injectables as a central component of aesthetic practice, alongside surgical approaches.
These differences do not imply isolation. On the contrary, Belgian, French, and Dutch researchers collaborate extensively. Many 2025 publications are the result of cross-border teams, shared datasets, and joint methodological frameworks. What distinguishes each country is not who they work with — but how research emphasis is distributed across aesthetic medicine domains.
Belgium’s defining trait: studying what others avoid
What stands out most in Belgian research is not only what is studied, but what many fields tend to avoid.
The psychological reality behind aesthetic procedures
One of the most striking Belgian studies of 2025 examined psychiatric conditions in patients seeking aesthetic surgery. The findings were quietly unsettling.
More than half of evaluated patients showed signs of a psychiatric disorder — yet only a minority had any documented diagnosis in their medical records. Depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and suicidal ideation appeared far more frequently than expected.
This research does not stigmatize patients.
It does something more important: it reminds clinicians that aesthetic medicine is not purely anatomical. It is also psychological, emotional, and deeply human.
Belgium is among the few countries publishing openly on this subject — not to discourage aesthetic procedures, but to practice them more responsibly.
Social media, ideals, and invisible pressure
Another Belgian study explored how social media and pornography influence perceptions of breast aesthetics. Nearly half of surveyed women expressed a desire for larger breasts than their own, and digital exposure correlated strongly with those preferences.
This is not moral judgment.
It is context.
For clinicians, understanding where aesthetic ideals originate is essential to managing expectations — and to recognizing when a request may be driven more by external pressure than by personal desire.
Artificial intelligence: collaboration, ambition, and clear limits
Artificial intelligence is entering aesthetic medicine rapidly, often accompanied by exaggerated promises. Researchers involving Belgian expertise approached this evolution differently: by testing AI under real clinical constraints, rather than celebrating its potential.
A 2025 evaluation of AI chatbots for facial injection planning, led by French academic teams and involving Belgian researchers from the University of Mons alongside international collaborators, focused on safety rather than technological demonstration.
Even the best-performing AI systems produced unsafe recommendations: dosing errors, missed contraindications, and injection strategies carrying serious risk. Vision-based models failed entirely when asked to annotate injection points.
The conclusion was unequivocal:
AI is not ready for unsupervised use in aesthetic injection planning.
At the same time, Belgian-involved research demonstrated where AI does work. In large-volume liposuction, machine-learning models accurately predicted blood loss, helping surgeons anticipate risk and improve safety.
The contrast is telling.
Belgium is not anti-AI. It is anti-uncritical AI.
Ethics as structure, not marketing
Belgium’s research culture exists within a broader professional framework that places firm ethical boundaries on aesthetic practice.
National professional codes prohibit before-and-after advertising, claims of being “the best,” surgeon rankings, and promotional exploitation of patient insecurity. These rules limit marketing — but they protect trust.
Importantly, these principles often carry into cross-border research collaborations, particularly when studies touch on patient vulnerability, consent, or emerging technologies. In this sense, Belgium’s ethical stance does not isolate it from Europe — it frequently acts as a reference point within shared scientific work.
At iGlowly, we value this approach openly. Not because it restricts beauty, but because it protects patients from being reduced to products.
Ethics, here, are not constraints.
They are guardrails.
Why this matters beyond Belgium
Aesthetic medicine is becoming more global, more digital, and more commercial. At the same time, patients are younger, more exposed, and often more psychologically fragile.
The 2025 research landscape suggests that Belgium offers a distinct European model:
– Complications are studied, not hidden
– Psychological factors are examined, not dismissed
– Technology is tested critically, not idealized
– Collaboration is encouraged, but boundaries are respected
Belgium does not dominate by spectacle.
It contributes through depth, restraint, and responsibility.
A quiet leadership
Belgium does not lead aesthetic medicine through visibility or branding. It leads in something less glamorous but far more consequential: maturity.
In 2025, Belgian research showed that aesthetic medicine can be innovative without being reckless, ethical without being paternalistic, and scientific without losing sight of the person behind every procedure.
In a field increasingly shaped by algorithms, images, and pressure to conform, that quiet leadership matters.
How this research was conducted
This analysis is based on a systematic review of 2025 peer-reviewed publications indexed in PubMed and OpenAlex by Jan 17 2026. Identical keyword strategies, topic filters, and country-affiliation criteria were applied to Belgium, France, and the Netherlands.
Raw results were manually reviewed to exclude non-aesthetic content (reconstructive surgery, medical botulinum indications, dermatologic disease treatment, dental procedures, and non-clinical research). Duplicate records across databases were removed, and additional relevant publications identified through cross-database comparison were included when they met the same criteria.
Because publication databases differ in coverage and indexing delays, absolute publication counts may evolve. However, the comparative patterns observed — particularly per-capita output and thematic distribution — remained consistent across methods, supporting the robustness of the findings.