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Top 3 Plastic Surgeons

An independent publication on aesthetic and plastic surgery

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Editorial portrait of a woman in her thirties with shoulder-length dark wavy hair, wearing an oatmeal crewneck knit sweater, seated on a pale linen sofa by a tall window with one hand resting flat on her chest over the breastbone, a potted olive tree behind her in soft daylight

The Lead · Procedure Deep-Dive

Costochondritis and Breast Surgery: Why Chest Wall Pain Gets Mistaken for an Implant Problem, How Tietze Syndrome and Slipping Rib Differ, and What a Flare Means Before and After Augmentation, Reduction, or Rib Cartilage Harvest

Costochondritis is inflammation where the ribs meet the breastbone, and it is one of the most common reasons adults show up with chest pain. It sits directly beneath the breast, which means it gets blamed on implants, read as capsular contracture, and occasionally missed when something more serious is going on. It also flares after breast surgery, after rib cartilage is borrowed for a nose, and after weeks of sleeping propped up in a compression bra. This is how to tell it apart from the pain that does mean trouble, what it changes about timing surgery, and what actually helps.

October 23, 2026

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By The Editorial Desk

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16 min

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A woman around fifty with silver hair pulled back loosely, wearing a cream knit sweater, leaning against a wall beside a bright window and a potted olive tree, her fingertips resting at her temple near her hairline

Procedure Deep-Dive

Frontal Fibrosing Alopecia and Cosmetic Surgery: Why a Receding Hairline and Vanishing Eyebrows After Fifty Can Be Scarring Hair Loss, Why Transplants and Hairline Lowering Often Disappoint, What It Means for Facelift and Brow Lift Incisions, and Which Camouflage Holds Up

A woman in her fifties or sixties notices that her forehead seems taller than it used to be, that the hair at her temples has thinned to a few stray strands, and that her outer eyebrows have quietly disappeared. She books a consultation for a hair transplant, a hairline lowering, or a brow lift. In a growing number of these cases the real diagnosis is frontal fibrosing alopecia, a scarring form of hair loss that destroys follicles permanently and can keep advancing for years. Here is how it differs from ordinary thinning, why it has to be diagnosed and quieted before anyone operates near the hairline, what it does to transplants, forehead reduction, and facelift and brow lift incisions, and which forms of camouflage tend to hold up.

October 23, 2026 · 18 min

A man in his mid thirties with short dark hair and a trimmed beard, wearing a gray long-sleeve crew-neck top, sitting with his forearms on his knees beside a bright window and a small olive tree in a woven basket, looking thoughtfully out the window

Procedure Deep-Dive

Psoriasis and Cosmetic Surgery: Why Plaques Can Appear in a Fresh Incision, What to Do About Biologics and Methotrexate Before an Operation, How Scalp, Fold, and Nail Psoriasis Change a Facelift, Tummy Tuck, or Breast Reduction, and When Lasers and Peels Make Things Worse

Psoriasis is common enough that most busy cosmetic practices see it every week, and it is usually written on the intake form and then forgotten. It deserves more attention than that. Injured skin in a person with psoriasis can grow new plaques along an incision line, the drugs that control the disease raise real questions about healing and infection, and the places psoriasis likes to live (the scalp, the folds under the breasts and belly, the nails, the joints) overlap with the places cosmetic surgeons operate. Here is what the Koebner phenomenon means for scars, lasers, and tattoos, how surgeons and dermatologists think about biologics, methotrexate, and other systemic drugs around surgery, how plaque location changes facelift, tummy tuck, and breast reduction planning, and why the timing of an elective operation should follow the skin, not the calendar.

October 23, 2026 · 16 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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