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Top 3 Plastic Surgeons

An independent publication on aesthetic and plastic surgery

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The Lead · Procedure Deep-Dive

Dimpleplasty: The Twenty-Minute Surgery That Manufactures a Scar on Purpose

Cheek dimple creation has gone from a curiosity in a 1962 surgical journal to a social media staple, sold as a lunchtime procedure with no external incision and a price closer to a filler syringe than a facelift. What the marketing leaves out is the mechanism: a dimple is made by deliberately scarring the underside of the skin to the muscle beneath it, the early result is a hole in the cheek that does not move, and the anatomy in the neighborhood includes the parotid duct and a branch of the facial nerve. Here is what the anatomy literature says a dimple is, what the operation actually does, and the questions that matter more than the price.

September 1, 2026

By The Editorial Desk

11 min

The Dog in the Recovery Bed: What Pets Actually Do to Healing Incisions

Discharge paperwork covers showering, driving, compression garments, and pain pills, and then sends the patient home to a house where a seventy-pound dog sleeps on the bed and a cat treats every warm incision like a heating pad. The pet question almost never comes up in a cosmetic surgery consult, and the evidence says it should: the bacteria that live in a healthy pet's mouth are documented causes of surgical wound infections, and the leash, the litter box, and the midnight jump onto the bed all collide with recovery restrictions nobody thought to apply to an animal. Here is what the infectious disease literature actually shows, and the protocol that survives contact with real life.

September 1, 2026 · 11 min

Industry

Scar Camouflage and Nipple Tattoos: What Medical Tattooing Can Actually Fix, and Who Is Holding the Machine

Medical tattooing sits at the end of plastic surgery's assembly line: the three-dimensional nipple tattoo that finishes a breast reconstruction, and the flesh-tone camouflage work that quiets a pale surgical scar. When it is done well it is the cheapest, least invasive win in the entire field. But the ink is not approved by anyone, the certificates on the studio wall are not regulated by anyone, and the pigment that matches your skin in January will not match it in July. Here is what a needle and pigment can genuinely do for a scar, what they cannot, and how to vet the person doing it.

September 1, 2026 · 11 min

Industry

Coffee Before Cosmetic Surgery: The Withdrawal Headache That Arrives in Recovery, What the Fasting Rules Actually Allow, and Why Caffeine Is Not on the Bleeding Stop List

The pre-operative packet bans ibuprofen, fish oil, and alcohol with great specificity, then says nothing at all about the drug the patient takes every single morning. So the patient guesses. Some quit coffee cold turkey a week out and spend the run-up to surgery with a pounding head. Some sneak a cup the morning of and worry they have ruined the anesthetic. Both are responding to a rule that was never written down, because the honest answers are more specific than the packet wants to be: black coffee is a clear liquid under the anesthesia fasting guidelines, caffeine has no meaningful effect on surgical bleeding, and the headache that shows up in the recovery room a day after the last cup is one of the most common, most preventable, and most misdiagnosed complaints in outpatient surgery.

August 31, 2026 · 12 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.

2 featured · California

Beverly Hills

An editorial guide to the city's aesthetic medicine scene.

3 featured · California

Los Angeles

An editorial guide to the city's plastic surgery scene beyond the Beverly Hills triangle.

3 featured · New York

New York

An editorial guide to the city's plastic surgery establishment.

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

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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Top 3 Plastic Surgeons

Dimpleplasty: The Twenty-Minute Surgery That Manufactures a Scar on Purpose

The Dog in the Recovery Bed: What Pets Actually Do to Healing Incisions

Scar Camouflage and Nipple Tattoos: What Medical Tattooing Can Actually Fix, and Who Is Holding the Machine

Coffee Before Cosmetic Surgery: The Withdrawal Headache That Arrives in Recovery, What the Fasting Rules Actually Allow, and Why Caffeine Is Not on the Bleeding Stop List