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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

ADHD Medication Before Cosmetic Surgery: Whether to Take Your Stimulant on Surgery Morning, Which ADHD Drugs Must Never Be Stopped Abruptly, and the Recovery Problems Nobody Plans For

Millions of adults now take a prescription stimulant or a non-stimulant for ADHD, and almost none of the pre-op instruction sheets written a decade ago mention them. Patients end up guessing: some stop a week early and spend the days before surgery foggy and anxious, some take the usual dose and never tell the anesthesiologist, and a few stop a blood pressure medication prescribed for ADHD without realizing it can rebound. This is what stimulants actually do under anesthesia, why the answer on surgery morning varies by practice, which ADHD drugs are dangerous to stop suddenly, and how to plan a recovery around a brain that already struggles with checklists.

September 28, 2026

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By The Editorial Desk

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16 min

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Procedure Deep-Dive

Breast Reduction Revision: Why a Second Reduction Is a Different Operation, Why Your Old Operative Report Matters More Than Your Photos, and What Can and Cannot Be Fixed

Breast reduction has some of the highest satisfaction rates in plastic surgery, but a meaningful minority of patients eventually want something changed: breasts that grew back, a result that sagged into a boxy shape, asymmetry, wide scars, or a reduction that went too far. A second reduction is not a repeat of the first. The blood supply to the nipple was rearranged the first time, and the surgeon who does not know how is operating partly blind. This is what goes wrong after reduction, what each problem takes to fix, why the original operative report is the single most important document in the consultation, and which complaints have no clean solution at all.

September 28, 2026 · 18 min

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Procedure Deep-Dive

Lip Implants and Permanent Lip Augmentation: Silicone, ePTFE, and Your Own Tissue, Why the Lip Is One of the Hardest Places in the Body to Put an Implant, and When Filler Is Still the Smarter Choice

Lip implants promise what filler cannot: a fuller lip that does not need topping up every six to twelve months. The options include soft solid silicone implants, expanded polytetrafluoroethylene strands, donor tissue, and grafts of the patient's own fat, dermis, or fascia. Each one works for some patients and disappoints others, and the lip itself is the reason. This is what each option is, what goes wrong and how often it tends to get fixed, who is a reasonable candidate, and how to compare a permanent lip with a reversible one before anyone makes an incision.

September 28, 2026 · 13 min

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Procedure Deep-Dive

Breast Implant Massage and "Drop and Fluff": What Displacement Exercises Actually Do, Why One Surgeon Prescribes Them and the Next Forbids Them, and What the Surgical Bra Is For

Few parts of breast augmentation recovery generate more confused late-night searching than implant massage. One surgeon hands out a sheet of displacement exercises to do five times a day. Another tells patients never to push on the implant at all. Meanwhile the internet promises that implants will "drop and fluff" on a schedule. The contradiction is not as random as it looks. It follows from the implant surface, the pocket, the placement plane, and a thin evidence base. This is what breast implant massage is meant to do, what it cannot do, and how to tell normal settling from a problem.

September 27, 2026 · 15 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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