In a new interview with Access Hollywood's Shaun Robinson, Dr. Frank Ryan said Heidi's comments to Access' Billy Bush -- that she almost died in recovery -- aren't correct. "I almost died after my procedure," Heidi told Billy on Monday. 'I had too much Demerol like Michael Jackson did and my breathing was five breaths per minute which is like almost dead. [I was] in an aftercare center, there were nurses that were supposed to be tending to me at all times." But that isn't how her doctor remembers it.

"That didn't happen as far as I know," he told Shaun on Tuesday. "Where would she get that information from?" Shaun asked. "I don't know," Dr. Ryan said. Heidi also claimed in her interview with Billy that medical personnel, "had to put oxygen on my face and call my plastic surgeon to come in for an emergency." "So Heidi got that information wrong?" Shaun asked the doctor. "Yeah," Dr. Ryan replies.

"I almost died after my procedure," Montag told Access Hollywood's Billy Bush on Monday. "I had too much Demerol like Michael Jackson did and my breathing was five breaths per minute which is like almost dead. (I was) in an aftercare center, there were nurses that were supposed to be tending to me at all times."

"So thank God, Charles, one of my security guys used to be an EMT, and he was timing my breath on his watch and he called the nurses and they had to put oxygen on my face and called my plastic surgeon to come in for an emergency. So, it was a very traumatic experience for me," she continued.

Two months after the surgery, Montag said she is now starting to regain all of the movement in her face. "I'm starting to move my face more and more," Montag said. '(But,) I feel very plastic .. especially when I first came out, it was so hard for me even to smile and it's still hard for me to chew sometimes. But it's feeling more and more natural everyday because the swelling is going down."

• Buttocks augmentation
• Boob job touch-up
• Nose job touch-up
• Chin reduction
• Liposuction in her neck
• Liposuction in her waist and thighs
• Mini brow lift
• Botox in the forehead
• Fat injections in her cheeks and lips
• Pinning back her ears

It all has to do with the horizontal distance between the eyes and the vertical distance between the eyes and the mouth, says Pamela M. Pallett, a researcher who believes she has identified new "golden ratios" for facial beauty.

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Faces were judged as most attractive when the distance between the eyes was 46 percent of the face's width and when the distance from eyes to mouth was 36 percent of the face's length, according to the study published in the most recent issue of the journal Vision Research.

That means a woman with a face 5 1/2 inches wide from ear to ear and 7 inches long from hairline to chin ideally would boast about 5 1/2 inches of distance between her eyes and another 2 1/2 inches between her pupils and mouth.

Women whose measurements varied from those markers were ranked less attractive, according to the undergraduate college students who participated in the study. The 126 students, mostly women, were asked to compare paired photographs of young, white, female faces with identical facial features but different distances between the eyes and between the eyes and mouth.

Say hello to the nose job tax. To raise money for the health overhaul, Democrats are proposing a new 5% tax on elective cosmetic procedures. The tax was a surprise addition to the sweeping 2,074-page bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid unveiled late Wednesday. It generates $5 billion over a decade for the plan, which is expected to cost $849 billion over a decade.

The tax would fall on the individuals who undergo the procedures. If they don’t pay it when they’re billed for their surgery, then it falls to the provider who performed the procedure. Not all cosmetic surgeries would get taxed. According to the bill, the tax would only apply if the surgery “is not necessary to ameliorate a deformity arising from, or directly related to, a congenital abnormality, a personal injury resulting from an accident or trauma, or disfiguring disease.” It would take effect Jan. 1.

The second time I had plastic surgery I got it done for free. People was covering it and I met a team of doctors that had a publicist who kept adding procedures. The guy who did my LASIK surgery wanted to do a "tune-up" and now I've had five surgeries on my eye. I have partial blindness in one of my eyes, actually. It was very much like Nip/Tuck where they'd be like, "Tell me what you don't like about yourself," and then they'd draw all over you with markers to highlight your "problem" areas. One of the doctors was like, "We can do a little teeny lipo on your upper arms." I said, "Are you sure?" He said yes, so I went along with it.

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Paparazzi get photos of celebrities doing pretty much everything, but they never seem to get pictures of stars after surgery. Why is that?

Oh, there's a whole system you need to know about. First of all, the plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills all have secret celebrity doors. After the surgery, you leave the plastic surgeon's office covered in a sheet that's not unlike a burqa. Your assistant takes you to an upscale hotel where you hide in a dark room of shame until you're better. There are bandaged rich ladies walking around the hallways of the Four Seasons and the Peninsula in Beverly Hills right now. It's not unlike being a war criminal or a terrorist.

Manhattan plastic surgeon Stephen Greenberg saw an opportunity in this growing trend and recently began promoting a "Job Fighter Package" for men and women. "We've probably done no less than 50 to 60 tune-ups since launching the package about five months ago," Greenberg said, noting that not all the "tuneups" have involved surgeries, but also less costly and invasive procedures like cosmetic injectables.

"Men and women in their 40s and 50s are competing with peers 10 to 15 years younger and employers naturally tend to go to a person who looks fresher and younger, despite who is better qualified," Greenberg said, adding that a lot of his patients view the surgery as an investment and are financing it with loans. Plastic surgery loans can involve financing charges of 12 to 19 percent, according to industry experts.

In addition to the perceived competitive advantage from a face lift, some surgeons believe the recession is starting to cause more and more patients to get "work done" for an emotional lift in these dark times. "I think when people are down about the economy, they want to do things to make them feel better," Greenberg said. New York City plastic surgeon Steven Pearlman agreed. "People are fed up and are starting to figure that it's time to live a little. Cosmetic surgery is about investing in yourself. It makes you look good and feel better about yourself, a dozen times a day when you look in the mirror," he said.

A total of $10.3 billion was spent last year on cosmetic procedures, a category that excludes reconstructive surgeries. That's a 9 percent drop from 2007. Cosmetic surgeries fell 9 percent to 1.7 million compared with 2007, according to the Arlington Heights, Ill.-based society. Of that total, breast augmentation dropped 12 percent to 307,000 procedures, and liposuction fell 19 percent.

Tummy tucks tumbled 18 percent to 122,000. But society President Dr. John Canady said in a statement business will recover with the economy and as the children of baby boomers start to consider surgery. He said repeat patients and those who put off more extensive surgery likely bolstered the number of lower-impact, minimally invasive procedures. They grew 5 percent to 10.4 million. Botox injections grew 8 percent to 5 million, while laser hair removal fell 2 percent.

The latest figures from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery show that the number of cosmetic surgical procedures performed on youths 18 or younger more than tripled over a 10-year period, to 205,119 in 2007 from 59,890 in 1997. This includes even more controversial procedures: liposuctions rose to 9,295 from 2,504, and breast augmentations increased nearly sixfold, to 7,882 from 1,326.

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Critics say that with plastic surgery becoming more common, parents are more likely to find themselves having to learn how to say no to a son or daughter with a tarnished self-image who is begging for the same quick surgical fix that the parents themselves may have had.

"Our children are barraged with images of ideal women and men that aren't even real, but computer composites," said Jean Kilbourne, co-author of So Sexy, So Soon, a book on teenagers and pre-teenagers. "These girls and boys can't compete. The truth is, no one can. And it leaves teens feeling more inadequate than ever and a lot of parents unsure as to the right thing to do."

Dr. Frederick Lukash, a plastic surgeon in New York City and Long Island who specializes in treating adolescents, said: "Unlike adults who may elect cosmetic surgery for that 'wow' factor to stand out in a crowd, to be rejuvenated and get noticed, kids have a different mantra. They do it to fit in."

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A recent survey of more than 1,000 girls in the United States ages 8 to 17 sponsored by the Dove Self-Esteem Fund — which has a partnership with the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. and is linked to Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty, a program aimed at changing narrow cultural definitions of beauty — showed that 7 in 10 girls surveyed believed that when it came to issues including beauty and body image they did not "measure up." Only 10 percent found themselves to be "pretty enough."

The economy isn't the only thing that's sagging — so are faces, breasts and bellies as would-be cosmetic surgery patients increasingly opt against costly nips and tucks because of tough financial times. Anecdotal reports and a recent unscientific survey from an industry trade group suggest many cosmetic surgeons have been seeing a drop-off in costly operations, some by as much as 30 percent or more.

Diane Lawyer, a software company manager in Atlanta, said belt-tightening has made her put off getting her eyes done, a procedure that would cost a few thousand dollars. "I just can't justify that right now," she said. Lawyer, 55, has started shopping at a discount grocery, rarely drives to save on gas, and loaned money to help keep her sister out of foreclosure. "I lost $15,000 in the last two weeks on the stock exchange," she said, referring to her dwindling 401K plan.

Dr. Alan Gold, president of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, said that for the past year, sagging business has been the talk of cosmetic surgeons. "Everybody talks about it, nobody really has any numbers, so we polled our membership," said Gold, whose suburban New York office is on Long Island. Of about 700 doctors who responded to the April-May questionnaire, 53 percent said business is down, some by as much as 30 percent.

"A common treatment performed in the past and present is surgical excision of fat to treat a 'herniation of fat' - meaning that the amount of fat in the eye socket does not change but the cover that holds the fat in place, the orbital septum, is weakened or broken and fat slips out," said the study's lead researcher Dr. Sean Darcy, a research associate in the division of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a plastic surgery resident at the University of California, Irvine.

This orbital septum weakening or herniation-of-fat theory is what most plastic surgeons have been taught, Darcy said. "However, our study showed there is actually an increase in fat with age, and it is more likely that the fat increase causes the baggy eyelids rather than a weakened ligament," Darcy said. "There have been no studies to show that the orbital septum weakens."

The researchers looked at detailed MRI images of 40 subjects (17 males and 23 females) between the ages of 12 and 80. The findings showed that the lower eyelid tissue increased with age and that the largest contributor to this size increase was fat increase.

"Our findings may change the way some plastic surgeons treat baggy eyes," said study co-author Dr. Timothy Miller, professor and chief of plastic surgery at the Geffen School. Fat removal should be at least part of the process, the researchers figure.

For the last 5 to 10 years, many plastic and cosmetic surgeons have refused to operate on smokers, especially those seeking a face-lift, tummy tuck, or breast-lift — procedures that require skin to be shifted. "Nicotine causes the tiny blood vessels in the skin to clamp down or constrict, which reduces blood supply to the skin," said Dr. Darshan Shah, a plastic surgeon in Bakersfield, Calif. Complications can include poor wound healing, increased risk of infection, longer-lasting bruises, and raised, red scars.

"Twenty-five years ago, it may have been more acceptable for a patient to have undergone surgical procedures while smoking," said Dr. Patrick McMenamin, the president-elect of the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery. "Nowadays if a doctor knew a patient was smoking and they did flap surgery," he said, referring to an operation where shifting skin is required, "many of us would say that's malpractice."

Plastic and cosmetic surgeons recommend quitting a minimum of two weeks before and after procedures, though some require longer to be extra safe. (Smokers also run the risk of infection and respiratory complications during anesthesia). For instance, Dr. Jeffrey Rosenthal, the chief of plastic surgery at Bridgeport Hospital in Connecticut, mandates six weeks of smoke-free living before eyelid surgery or breast augmentation, and six months to a year before a tummy tuck.

They also take it upon themselves to devise smoking cessation plans, prescribe drugs like Wellbutrin or Chantix and recommend hypnotists or support groups. "Why invest so much money in a cosmetic procedure for enhancement if the patient will not participate and do his or her part to help ensure the best outcome possible?" said Dr. Shirley Madhere, a plastic surgeon in Manhattan.