LOS ANGELES: Think you've seen it all when it comes to cosmetic surgery? Look more closely. Eyelash transplant surgery wants to become the new must-have procedure for women - and the occasional man - convinced that beauty is not so much in the eye of the beholder as in front of the eye itself.

Using procedures pioneered by the hair loss industry for balding men, surgeons are using "plug and sew" techniques to give women long, sweeping lashes once achieved only by glued on extensions and thick lashings of mascara.

And just like human hair - for that is the origin - these lashes just keep on growing."Longer, thicker lashes are an ubiquitous sign of beauty. Eyelash transplantation does for the eyes what breast augmentation does for the figure," said Dr Alan Bauman, a leading proponent of eyelash transplants.

"This is a brand new procedure for the general public (and) it is going to explode," Bauman told Reuters during what was billed as the world's first live eyelash surgery workshop for about 40 surgeons from around the world.

Under the procedure, a small incision is made at the back of the scalp to remove 30 or 40 hair follicles which are carefully sewn one by one onto the patient's eyelids.

Only light sedation and local anesthetics are used and the cost is around $3,000 an eye. The technique was first confined to patients who had suffered burns or congenital malformations of the eye.

But word spread and about 80% are now done for cosmetic reasons. For many women, eyelash surgery is simply an extra item on the vast nip tuck menu that has lost its old taboos.