Est. MMXXVIIndependent

Top 3 Plastic Surgeons

An independent publication on aesthetic and plastic surgery

Beverly HillsLos AngelesNew YorkMiami
A man in his sixties with grey hair and a white beard in a navy crewneck sweater, seated at a wooden kitchen table in a bright kitchen with potted plants on the windowsill, holding a plain white weekly pill organizer and studying it carefully, a glass of water and a few loose tablets on the table beside him

The Lead · Procedure Deep-Dive

Blood Thinners Before Cosmetic Surgery: Who Can Safely Pause Eliquis, Warfarin, or Plavix, Who Should Never Stop, Why Bridging Shots Usually Do More Harm Than Good, and the Stent Patients Who Should Simply Wait

Millions of adults take a prescription blood thinner for atrial fibrillation, a past clot, a heart valve, or a coronary stent, and a growing number of them want a facelift, a tummy tuck, or liposuction. The usual instruction, stop the thinner a few days before surgery, is too simple. For some patients a short pause is routine and well studied. For others it is a gamble with a stroke or a stent closing, and the honest answer is that elective surgery should wait or not happen. Here is how blood thinners before cosmetic surgery are actually managed, what the major trials on pausing and bridging found, why antiplatelet drugs after a stent are a separate and stricter problem, when stopping is the wrong move for small procedures, and how the restart is timed so a hematoma and a clot are both kept away.

October 7, 2026

·

By The Editorial Desk

·

15 min

Top Stories

See all articles →
A woman in her early thirties with shoulder-length brown hair, wearing a loose oatmeal knit sweater and cuffed blue straight-leg jeans, standing barefoot on a white-painted wooden floor in a bright, sparsely furnished white room, one hand in her pocket, looking toward a tall window, a woven basket of dried pampas grass beside her

Procedure Deep-Dive

Inner Thigh Liposuction and the Thigh Gap: Why the Space Between Your Legs Is Mostly Decided by Your Pelvis, What Suction Can Realistically Change, Why the Inner Thigh Punishes Overcorrection, and When a Thigh Lift or No Surgery Is the Better Answer

The thigh gap became a social media fixation more than a decade ago and never fully went away. It now shows up in consultation rooms as a request for inner thigh liposuction. The procedure itself is real and useful for a specific problem: a stubborn bulge of fat high on the inner thigh in someone with good skin. But the gap people photograph is mostly a function of hip width, the angle of the thigh bone, and muscle, none of which a cannula touches. Here is what actually determines the space between the thighs, what inner thigh liposuction can and cannot do, why this is one of the least forgiving areas of the body to suction, when a thigh lift, a lipedema evaluation, or simply declining surgery is the honest recommendation, and what recovery really involves.

October 7, 2026 · 15 min

A woman in her sixties with grey hair pulled loosely back, wearing a grey crewneck sweater, seated beside a bright window in a plain room and looking out with a faint smile

Procedure Deep-Dive

Seborrheic Keratoses, Skin Tags, and the Other Barnacles of Aging: What These Benign Growths Actually Are, Which Removal Methods Leave a Mark, Why Freezing Is Riskier on Deeper Skin Tones, and the One Look-Alike That Has to Be Biopsied

By middle age most people have collected a few raised spots that were not there at thirty: waxy brown patches that look pasted on, soft flaps of skin at the neck and underarm, small dark bumps across the cheeks, or yellowish domes on the forehead. Nearly all of them are harmless, none of them will turn into cancer, and all of them can be removed. The questions that matter are which method fits which growth, which ones leave a lighter or darker patch behind, why a quick spray of liquid nitrogen is a different proposition on brown skin than on pale skin, why insurance rarely pays, and why the occasional 'barnacle' that is actually a melanoma is the whole reason a trained eye should look first.

October 7, 2026 · 15 min

A woman in her sixties with short grey hair in an oatmeal knit cardigan over a white t-shirt, seated on a sofa in a softly lit living room, one hand raised to her temple, gazing toward a window with a thoughtful, tired expression, a white mug on a side table beside her

Procedure Deep-Dive

Brain Fog After Anesthesia: Why Patients Feel Slow for Days After Cosmetic Surgery, How Delirium Differs From Ordinary Fog, Who Is Actually at Risk, and the Confusion That Means Call Now

Plenty of patients describe the same thing after a cosmetic operation: words that will not come, a thought that slips away halfway through a sentence, a week of reading the same paragraph three times. Most of it is ordinary brain fog after anesthesia, and most of it fades. But anesthesiologists now separate that fog into distinct conditions with distinct timelines, and one of them, postoperative delirium, is a medical problem rather than a recovery mood. Here is what the anesthetic actually does to the brain and how long it lasts, why the recovery medications often matter more than the anesthetic, who carries real risk, what the research on lasting cognitive change does and does not show, and the specific kind of confusion that should never be waited out.

October 6, 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.

More from the Journal

The complete archive →

§ 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.

Weekly · No cost · Leave at any time