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Top 3 Plastic Surgeons

An independent publication on aesthetic and plastic surgery

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The Lead · Industry

Dental Work After Breast Implants: Where the Antibiotic Prophylaxis Habit Came From and What the Evidence Says

A surprising number of women with breast implants are told to take antibiotics before every dental cleaning for the rest of their lives, sometimes by the surgeon, sometimes by the dentist, sometimes by a forum. The instruction was borrowed from heart valve and hip replacement medicine, and those fields abandoned it for most patients more than a decade ago after the evidence failed to show that dental procedures cause implant infections or that pills prevent them. Here is where the habit came from, what the bacteremia data actually shows, why a breast implant is not a knee, and the narrow set of situations in which the question deserves a real conversation instead of a reflexive prescription.

August 29, 2026

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By The Editorial Desk

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9 min

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Industry

Driving and Going Back to Work After Plastic Surgery: What the Impairment Data Actually Says

The two questions every patient asks in the last five minutes of a consultation, when can I drive and when can I go back to work, usually get answered with a number pulled from habit. The evidence behind the numbers is more interesting than the numbers. Anesthesia impairs driving for a full day whether or not you feel it, prescription opioids make you a legally impaired driver in every state, a lap belt sits precisely on an abdominoplasty incision, and the federal leave law most patients assume covers cosmetic surgery specifically does not. Here is how the timelines are actually set, procedure by procedure, and the questions that separate a practice with a plan from one with a pamphlet.

August 29, 2026 · 10 min

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Industry

Hair Shedding Three Months After Surgery: The Complication That Arrives After Everyone Has Stopped Watching

Somewhere around the tenth to fourteenth week after an operation, a portion of patients start finding hair on the pillow, in the drain, and in the shower in quantities they have never seen. By then the incisions are closed, the follow-up visits are done, and the surgeon is the last person they think to call. The shedding has a name, telogen effluvium, a mechanism that has been understood since 1961, and a timeline that almost nobody explains before surgery. Here is what the operation actually does to the hair cycle, why the loss shows up on a delay that makes patients blame the wrong thing, what a real workup looks like, and why most of what is sold to fix it does nothing the calendar was not already going to do.

August 29, 2026 · 14 min

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Industry

Arnica and Bromelain for Bruising After Surgery: What the Trials Show and What the Recovery Kit Sells

Almost every cosmetic practice in Los Angeles sends patients home with arnica, bromelain, or both, and a growing number sell them at the front desk in a branded recovery kit. The evidence behind the habit is thinner than the confidence with which it is dispensed: a handful of small randomized trials, several of them contradictory, a systematic review that called the data inadequate, and a homeopathic product that by definition contains almost none of the plant on its label. Here is what arnica and bromelain have actually been shown to do for bruising after surgery, the difference between the versions that are harmless and the versions that are not, and how to tell whether the kit you were handed is medicine or merchandise.

August 28, 2026 · 10 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.

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§ 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.

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