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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 seen from behind, standing before tall sash windows in a quiet room with pale plaster walls and a wooden floor, wearing a fitted black linen sleeveless top with her dark hair pinned up, one hand resting on the back of her neck, a small potted plant on the sill, in soft daylight across her shoulders and upper back

The Lead · Procedure Deep-Dive

Bra Roll Liposuction: The Fold the Bra Band Draws, the Most Fibrous Fat the Cannula Meets, and the Roll That Only a Scar Removes

The bra roll, the fullness that spills above and below the band at the side of the chest and across the upper back, is the deposit women photograph from behind and ask about most, and it is three different problems wearing one name: a pad of fat, a fold of skin, and a line the bra itself presses into whatever is there. It is also the most fibrous fat on the body, slower and harder to remove than the thigh or the abdomen, and it sits over ribs, a shoulder blade, and a spine that all show through if the cannula goes too far. Here is what the roll is made of and how to tell fat from skin from glandular tissue, why the back fights the cannula, how the operation is marked and where it stops, when the honest answer is an excision hidden under the bra line, and what the one device cleared for this site actually does.

September 4, 2026

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By The Editorial Desk

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24 min

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A surgeon in blue scrubs and gloves drawing purple preoperative marking lines, including a dashed vertical midline and a low curved horizontal line, on the abdomen of a patient standing in a bright consultation room

Procedure Deep-Dive

The Fleur-de-Lis Tummy Tuck: The Second Scar Nobody Wants, the Skin a Standard Abdominoplasty Cannot Reach, and the Corner Where the Wound Comes Apart

A standard tummy tuck pulls skin down. It cannot pull skin in. The patient who has lost a hundred pounds, whose abdomen hangs in folds from the ribs as well as from the waist, is left with a choice the brochures skip: accept an upper abdomen the horizontal scar cannot fix, or accept a second scar running up the midline to the breastbone. That operation is the fleur-de-lis abdominoplasty. Here is what it removes that the standard operation cannot, who actually needs it, how the two excisions are sequenced so the wound can still close, why the corner where the scars meet is the place it fails, and what the belt, the high-lateral-tension tuck, and the GLP-1 waiting room have changed about the decision.

September 4, 2026 · 22 min

A woman in her late twenties with olive skin and loose dark curly hair, seen in profile beside a tall paned window in a quiet room with weathered plaster walls, wearing an olive ribbed top with one hand resting at her jaw, soft daylight falling across the bridge and tip of her nose

Procedure Deep-Dive

Tip Plasty: The Rhinoplasty That Leaves the Bridge Alone, the Tripod That Decides Whether It Works, and the Year the Tip Takes to Settle

Tip plasty, the tip-only rhinoplasty, is sold as the smaller operation: no broken bones, no splint across the bridge, a shorter recovery, a lower price, and a nose that is still recognizably yours with a finer point on it. For the right nose it is exactly that. For the wrong nose it is the first half of a rhinoplasty, because the tip and the bridge are read together by every eye that looks at a face, and moving one changes how the other appears. Here is what the tip is made of and the three-legged structure that holds it up, why a tip-only plan so often turns into a full one on the operating table or a year later, what the operation actually does with sutures, trims, and grafts, who the operation suits and whose skin defeats it, and why the tip is the last part of any nose to stop swelling.

September 4, 2026 · 25 min

A woman in her late twenties seated on a wooden stool beside a frosted window in three-quarter profile, hands clasped, cream knit sweater, linen backdrop, soft daylight across the nose and cheek

Procedure Deep-Dive

Alar Base Reduction: Two Millimeters at the Nostril, a Scar That Lives in a Crease, and the One Part of a Nose Job That Cannot Be Put Back

Alar base reduction, the narrowing of the nostrils by removing small wedges of tissue where the nose meets the cheek, is the shortest step in rhinoplasty and the one with the least margin. Patients ask for it by name, often after being told their nose is too wide by a rule of proportion that was measured on one population, and it is done in a few minutes at the end of an operation that has just changed everything the nostrils are attached to. The excision is counted in millimeters, the scar sits either just above a crease or inside it and looks entirely different in each case, and tissue removed from the alar base is the one thing in rhinoplasty that no revision reliably returns. Here is how flare and width differ, what the anthropometry actually says about normal, how the excisions and the cinch suture work, why the base is cut last, and what the injectable menu cannot do.

September 3, 2026 · 17 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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