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Top 3 Plastic Surgeons

An independent publication on aesthetic and plastic surgery

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A woman in her early forties with shoulder-length brown hair, in a navy linen shirt, seated upright in a treatment chair in a bright clinic room with a large window, as a clinician in a white coat, seen from behind, examines the area beneath her jaw with a blue-gloved hand

The Lead · Procedure Deep-Dive

Fat-Dissolving Injections Beyond Kybella: Why Deoxycholic Acid Is the Only Injectable the FDA Has Ever Approved to Destroy Fat, What Happened When Lipodissolve Tried to Skip the Trials, and Why a Product Sold as a Cosmetic Should Never Meet a Needle

The phrase fat-dissolving injection now covers one approved drug and a shelf of products that borrowed its reputation. Deoxycholic acid, sold as Kybella, went through two placebo-controlled trials and earned an FDA approval for the fat beneath the chin and nowhere else. Aqualyx, Lemon Bottle, and the phosphatidylcholine cocktails that came before them did not, and the last time an unapproved fat injection swept through American clinics it ended in a state ban and a round of federal warning letters. Here is what the detergent actually does to a fat cell, how the lipodissolve era played out, what is in the vials being sold on social media, and why the harm is the same whether or not the product works.

September 9, 2026

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By The Editorial Desk

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20 min

Top Stories

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A woman in her fifties with silver-streaked dark hair, in a grey sweater, reclines in a pale grey treatment chair with her eyes closed and dark protective goggles pushed up on her forehead, while a clinician in a white coat, seen in profile, holds a plain white laser handpiece in a gloved hand a few inches from her cheek in a bright clinic room with a large window

Procedure Deep-Dive

Ablative vs Non-Ablative Laser Resurfacing: What a CO2 Laser Actually Does to Skin, Why the Fully Ablative Era Ended in Permanently Pale Faces, How a 2004 Paper Invented the Fractional Compromise, and Why a Laser Sold With No Downtime Usually Delivers Not Much Result

Every laser resurfacing consultation comes down to one trade the brochure never states plainly: the amount of skin the laser removes is the amount of result it can deliver, and also the amount of wound the patient has to heal. Fully ablative carbon dioxide resurfacing proved that in the 1990s with results that surgeons still cannot match and a run of permanently pale, demarcated faces that ended the era. A 2004 paper from Boston split the beam into thousands of microscopic columns and created the fractional compromise that every device since has been a variation on. Here is what ablative and non-ablative actually mean at the level of the tissue, what the downtime is for each, why darker skin changes the calculation entirely, and how to read a treatment plan that promises a resurfaced face without a resurfacing wound.

September 9, 2026 · 20 min

A woman in her mid-thirties with dark hair in a low bun, in a soft white robe, seated on the edge of an examination bed in a bright, minimal consultation room with tall windows, listening as a surgeon in navy scrubs, seen from behind and partly out of frame, gestures with an open hand

Procedure Deep-Dive

Round Versus Teardrop Breast Implants: What Shape and Profile Actually Mean, Why Anatomical Implants Nearly Vanished From American Operating Rooms After 2019, and Why Blinded Surgeons Cannot Tell the Two Apart

Every implant consultation reaches the same two words, shape and profile, and most patients leave still unsure what either one decides. Shape is a choice between a round implant and a teardrop that needs a rough shell to stay put; profile is a ratio of projection to width that the chest, not the patient, mostly settles. Here is what the catalog actually describes, why the July 2019 recall emptied the shaped-implant drawer in the United States, what the blinded studies found when surgeons tried to pick the teardrop out of a lineup, and where each choice still earns its place.

September 9, 2026 · 18 min

A woman in her mid-thirties in a white tank top, dark hair pulled back, seated in soft window light in a white clinic room and looking down at a small brown mole on her bare shoulder while a clinician's blue-gloved hand rests beside it

Procedure Deep-Dive

Cosmetic Mole Removal: Shave Versus Excision, Why a Mole Can Grow Back Under a Flat Scar, and Why Every One of Them Belongs in a Pathology Jar Even When It Came Off for Looks

Removing a mole is the smallest operation in aesthetic medicine and the one most often done badly, because it looks too simple to plan. There are two honest ways to take a mole off: shave it flush with the skin and let the wound heal on its own, or cut it out whole and sew the line closed. Each leaves a different scar, each fails in a different way, and the choice between them is decided by the mole, the location, and the patient's skin far more than by preference. Underneath both sits a rule that the retail end of the market has started to skip: whatever comes off goes to a pathologist, because a mole removed for cosmetic reasons is still a pigmented lesion, and the only way to know what it was is to look. This piece covers what a mole actually is and which ones people want gone, what a shave does and why the pigment can return in a form that alarms pathologists, what an excision does and why the scar is three times longer than the mole, why lasers and pens and mail-order acids destroy the one thing that mattered, and where the scar will be worse than the spot it replaced.

September 8, 2026 · 21 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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