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Top 3 Plastic Surgeons

An independent publication on aesthetic and plastic surgery

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The Lead · Industry

Constipation After Plastic Surgery: The Complication Nobody Puts in the Consent Form

Constipation after plastic surgery is the most common complication of the first week, and the one least likely to be mentioned before it happens. It is caused by the opioids, the anesthesia, the anti-nausea drugs, the dehydration, and the sudden stillness, in roughly that order, and it turns dangerous when a patient with fresh abdominal sutures or a two-day-old facelift starts straining on the toilet. Here is why it happens, why stool softeners alone do not fix it, what the bowel regimen the pain specialists use actually looks like, when a missed bowel movement becomes an ileus, and the two questions to ask before you fill the pain prescription.

August 25, 2026

By The Editorial Desk

11 min

Spitting Sutures: Why Your Body Is Pushing Out the Stitches, and When It Matters

Weeks after a facelift, a tummy tuck, or a breast lift, a small red bump appears on the incision line, opens, and produces a tiny white or blue thread. Patients assume something has gone wrong. Usually nothing has. A spitting suture is the body extruding a buried absorbable stitch it has decided not to dissolve, and it is one of the most common and least explained events in cosmetic surgery recovery. Here is what the suture materials actually are, why some of them get expelled, what the surgeon should do about it, and how to tell a harmless spit from the infection or dehiscence that occasionally hides behind the same red bump.

August 25, 2026 · 10 min

Industry

Split Earlobe Repair: The Twenty-Minute Operation That Gets Redone More Than It Should

Split earlobe repair is one of the smallest procedures in aesthetic surgery and one of the most casually done. It is a local-anesthetic office case, it takes well under an hour, and it is offered by plastic surgeons, dermatologists, ear-nose-throat surgeons, and, increasingly, whoever is running the med spa. The trouble is in the details: the straight-line closure that leaves a notch, the re-pierce through the fresh scar that tears again, the keloid on the one body site most likely to produce one, and the stretched gauge lobe that is a reconstruction rather than a repair. Here is how the tear happens, why the closure technique matters more than the price, when to pierce again, and who should actually be holding the scalpel.

August 25, 2026 · 13 min

Industry

Breast Reconstruction After Mastectomy: What the Law Guarantees and What the Consult Leaves Out

Since 1998, a federal law has required most health plans that cover a mastectomy to also cover rebuilding the breast, operating on the other side for symmetry, and treating the complications, with no deadline on when the patient decides. A large share of women who undergo mastectomy are never told this, and a large share of those who are told get a single option presented as the only one. Here is what the Women's Health and Cancer Rights Act actually mandates, how implant and tissue-based reconstruction compare on the outcomes that matter over a decade, what radiation does to each, why 'going flat' is a legitimate reconstruction decision and not a failure to make one, and the questions that separate a reconstruction consult from a sales appointment.

August 24, 2026 · 11 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

Constipation After Plastic Surgery: The Complication Nobody Puts in the Consent Form

Spitting Sutures: Why Your Body Is Pushing Out the Stitches, and When It Matters

Split Earlobe Repair: The Twenty-Minute Operation That Gets Redone More Than It Should

Breast Reconstruction After Mastectomy: What the Law Guarantees and What the Consult Leaves Out