Top 3 Plastic Surgeons
An independent publication on aesthetic and plastic surgery
The Lead · Industry
The Complaint File on Your Implant: How to Read the FDA's Device Database Before You Consent
Every breast implant, dermal filler, laser, and surgical scaffold used on you has a public complaint record at the FDA, searchable by anyone, and almost nobody in a cosmetic consult will mention it exists. Here is what is actually in the MAUDE database, why office-based aesthetic surgery is structurally under-represented in it, the specific reason the numbers cannot be turned into a risk rate, and how to look up your own device in about twenty minutes.
August 12, 2026
·By The Editorial Desk
·9 min
Top Stories
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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.
More from the Journal
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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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