Est. MMXXVIIndependent

Top 3 Plastic Surgeons

An independent publication on aesthetic and plastic surgery

Beverly HillsLos AngelesNew YorkMiami
A woman around thirty with shoulder-length dark hair, wearing an oversized taupe knit sweater and cream trousers, seated on a white armchair beside a window with potted plants and a radiator, hands folded over her knee, gazing toward the light

The Lead · Procedure Deep-Dive

Labia Majora Augmentation and Reduction: Why the Outer Labia Deflate or Enlarge With Age, Weight Loss, and Menopause, What Fat Grafting and Filler Can and Cannot Restore, How a Majoraplasty Removes Excess Without Leaving a Gap, and Which Lumps and Swellings Need a Diagnosis Before Any Cosmetic Plan

Most of the public conversation about genital cosmetic surgery is about the inner labia. The outer labia, the labia majora, change too, and they change in both directions: some deflate and wrinkle after menopause, childbirth, or major weight loss, while others carry excess fat and skin that bulges in fitted clothing. The procedures sold for them range from fat grafting and off-label filler to surgical reduction and radiofrequency devices the FDA has warned about. Here is what the labia majora are, why they change, what each option can realistically do, where the complications come from, and why a one-sided swelling or a shrinking, itchy vulva is a diagnosis to make before anyone talks about rejuvenation.

October 18, 2026

·

By The Editorial Desk

·

14 min

Top Stories

See all articles →
A woman in her twenties with dark hair loosely tied back and softly flushed cheeks, wearing an oatmeal knit V-neck sweater, seated beside a bright window in a bare pale room with a grey upholstered chair behind her, looking off toward the light

Procedure Deep-Dive

Nevus of Ota, Hori's Nevus, and Café au Lait Spots: Why Blue-Gray Facial Birthmarks Usually Clear With Lasers While Flat Brown Ones Often Return, Why an Eye Exam Belongs Before the First Session, How Hori's Nevus Gets Mistaken for Melasma, and Which Pigmented Marks Should Be Cut Out Rather Than Lasered

Pigmented birthmarks are not one problem. A slate-blue patch around the eye and cheek, a pair of gray-brown smudges that showed up on both cheekbones in your thirties, a flat coffee-colored oval on the jaw, and a dark mole you were born with all contain the same pigment, but it sits at different depths, in different cells, with different risks. That is why the same laser can erase one of them over a series of sessions, leave another blotchy, and be the wrong tool entirely for the third. Here is how the common types differ, what Q-switched and picosecond lasers can and cannot do, why a nevus of Ota calls for an eye exam, why Hori's nevus is so often treated as melasma by mistake, and when the honest answer is a scalpel and a pathology report.

October 18, 2026 · 16 min

A woman in her twenties with a tousled dark brown bob and bangs and faintly pink cheeks, wearing a plain grey crewneck sweater, seated beside a window ledge in a bare room with warm plaster walls and a wooden bench behind her, gazing toward the soft side light

Procedure Deep-Dive

Hemangioma in Adults: What a Childhood Strawberry Mark Leaves Behind, Why the Fibrofatty Lump, Leftover Vessels, and Loose Skin Rarely Fade on Their Own, Which Lasers and Operations Treat the Residue, and How to Tell a Hemangioma From a Vascular Malformation That Behaves Differently

An infantile hemangioma is the most common tumor of infancy, and the familiar reassurance is that it will go away. It does shrink. But in a large share of children it leaves something behind: a soft fatty bulge, a web of fine vessels, a patch of thin, wrinkled skin, a scar from an ulcer, or a lip or nose tip that grew into a different shape. Adults who were told to wait it out often arrive at a consultation decades later with residue that never resolved. Here is what hemangiomas are, what involution actually leaves, how propranolol changed childhood treatment, what lasers and surgery can do for the residue by location, and why a mark that was there at birth and never shrank is probably not a hemangioma at all.

October 16, 2026 · 18 min

A woman in her late twenties with a short, tousled dark bob, wearing a charcoal crew-neck knit sweater, seated on a wooden bench beside a bare pale wall and a window with brick visible outside, one hand resting on her knee, looking toward the window

Procedure Deep-Dive

Nipple Piercings and Breast Surgery: When the Jewelry Has to Come Out, Why a Piercing Is an Infection Question Next to an Implant, What Augmentation, Lifts, and Reductions Do to the Piercing Track, and Whether and When Re-Piercing Is Reasonable

Nipple piercings are common, and so is breast surgery, but the two meet in a gap in the patient information. Patients are told to remove jewelry on the morning of the operation and little else, when the real questions are whether the piercing is fully healed, whether it is colonized, where the incision will run, and what happens to a piercing track after a lift or a reduction moves the nipple. Here is what a nipple piercing changes about breast augmentation, lifts, reductions, and gynecomastia surgery, how it relates to implant infection risk, and what the evidence does and does not say about re-piercing afterward.

October 16, 2026 · 15 min

The City Guides

Top surgeons, city by city.

Short, considered editorial picks for the cities where aesthetic medicine has the highest concentration of practitioners doing distinct work. We add a city when we have done the reporting, not before.

More from the Journal

The complete archive →

§ 01 · Editorial Standards

Choosing a plastic surgeon is among the few decisions that cannot be appealed. It deserves real reporting, not advertising dressed as a recommendation.

Top 3 Plastic Surgeons is an independent publication covering aesthetic and plastic surgery: the procedures, the advances in technique, and the surgeons doing the most considered work in the field. We report on it. We do not sell placement within it.

We do not accept paid placement, and we do not rank by advertising spend or by the volume of five-star reviews a practice can solicit. Our reporting draws on board records, peer interviews, outcomes data, and direct patient testimony, revisited as the field changes.

§ 05 · The Letter

One letter, every Sunday.

Each issue carries one new surgeon profile, one dispatch from the reporting desk, and an editor's note on whatever question we could not stop thinking about that week. No sponsors. No partner content. No reason to exist except the subject.

Weekly · No cost · Leave at any time