How To Find The Best Plastic Surgeon For You

If you’re considering any sort of cosmetic surgical procedure, you need to understand one of the biggest choices that all prospective patients must make: choosing a surgeon.

Choosing the right surgeon can be the difference between an amazing life decision, or a tragic outcome. Nobody expects complications during surgery, after all!

So how do you find the best plastic surgeon for you, and what are the factors that you should include in your decision?

How To Choose The Right Plastic Surgeon

Make sure the surgeon is board certified.

Board certified plastic surgeons will be denoted as a fellow of the American college of surgeons, or FACS. In fact, all surgeons who wish to operate a practice must be board certified in this way. Being board-certified indicates that they did their fellowship in surgery, specifically that they did their fellowship in the United States and that they did it in a certain speciality. Look for someone who is board certified in plastic surgery.

To check if a surgeon actually is board certified, you can look them up on the FACS website.

Make sure your surgeon offers the procedure you want.

This may sound obvious, but not all plastic surgeons perform the same procedures. Some don't offer Brazilian butt lifts. Others may only specialize in facial surgeries.

Some surgeons will recommend different procedures than the one you want. Unless they have a good medical reason for it, it may be wise to get a second, third, and fourth opinion!

Of course, there may be a good reason for you to avoid a procedure. Getting multiple opinions will allow you to see if that is actually the case. If most surgeons you see recommend against a procedure, you probably shouldn't get it!

Make sure your surgeon has experience with your desired procedure.

Just like some surgeons don’t offer all procedures, some surgeons specialize in certain procedures that make them much more desirable to work with. If you could choose between someone who has done 100 rhinoplasties or 10,000 rhinoplasties, who would you choose?

To gauge a surgeon’s level of experience in a procedure, ask them the following questions:

1. How did you train in this procedure?
2. How long have you been performing this procedure?
3. How many times have you done the procedure?

Consult several plastic surgeons.

Don’t just stop at one: talk to several in your area (and some outside your area)! You’re not necessarily going to choose the first one you see, and you probably shouldn’t.

There are other reasons you should consult multiple surgeons, such as seeing multiple opinions if you are concerned about the safety of a procedure. You should also shop around: not for price, but for experience and results! With that said, our next tip is to take a look at the results.

Look at the before and afters.

Not all plastic surgeons will perform the same procedure in the same way. Some surgeons have different aesthetic tastes and will perform procedures in a way that produces certain results.
To see if your aesthetic sense matches theirs, take a look at their before and afters. All surgeons will show you pictures of satisfied clients. Study them and see which ones you like.

If you can, confirm with the patients themselves about their results. Truly satisfied patients will rave about their plastic surgeon and the experience they had. This is to make sure the results are indeed legitimate while getting an idea of what getting a procedure with that surgeon is like.