Your Guide to Finding the Right San Diego Plastic Surgeon

Years down the road, you’ll forget what you paid and you’ll probably forget the surgeon,

but you’ll be wearing the result every day.

Web Search

DO start at surgery.org or plasticsurgery.org.  WHY?  This automatically limits your search to surgeons who hold themselves to the highest standards of performance and therefore have the highest standards for your care.  Surgery.org and plasticsurgery.org list ONLY surgeons certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery.  Such surgeons devote their entire professional life to aesthetic and reconstructive surgery of the face, breasts, and body.  These doctors have met the highest benchmarks for their education, selection, training, testing and proof of excellence in practice.  Search your geographic area.  View surgeon’s galleries of “before” and “after” photos to understand each surgeon’s specialties and the results you can anticipate from that doctor.  Both surgery.org and plasticsurgery.org allow member surgeons to post actual patient results, so you can compare among doctors in your area.  You can also search for doctors by your location and link to their web address to learn more about each surgeon, including the scope and quality of their work.

Social Media

DON’T search social media.  WHY?  Physicians and physician staff posts on social media have ZERO relationship to surgeon training, qualifications, and results.  Social media allows anyone to post anything, truth or fiction, provided community guidelines aren’t violated.  Patient confidentiality and nudity prohibitions prevent many great outcomes from appearing on social channels.  Before and after photos on social media can be digitally altered without your knowledge. Many of the best aesthetic plastic surgeons do not post on social media at all.  Social media can help guide you among the landscape of practitioners, and some social channels are informative.  However, busy surgeons committed to excellence for each patient are not production companies.  Premium surgeons rarely have a worthwhile social media presence.  Surgical practices that are sales oriented rather than service oriented offer the most populated social channels.

Searching by Procedure

DON’T enter the procedure you want on Google Search.  WHY?  You first get sponsored results, which are doctors who must pay to get patients.  After the sponsored results, you get from top to bottom the practices with the most successful search engine optimization (SEO).  High website position on SEO is a ranking of the doctor’s SEO firm, not the doctor.  High website position on SEO bears little if any relationship to quality of a surgeon’s work.

Searching on AI Applications

DON’T search on AI (Grok, ChatGPT, etc.).  WHY?   AI information is a composite regurgitation of information published on the web, some true and some false, but always incomplete.  The information may or may not apply to you.  Aesthetic procedures are personal, individualized, and great results depend on details of your situation and vision.  AI is unable to rank and assess important elements among professionals, most specifically the doctor who will produce for you the best aesthetic result.

Online Galleries, Reviews, and Consultations

DO schedule one or more office consultations with (a) plastic surgeon(s) who have some good online reviews and whose work you like.  Enter consultation(s) with a clear understanding of the results you want, and express that to the surgeon.  Keep an open mind.  Listen to the doctor for a sense of whether or not he/she agrees with your desired outcome and is confident he/she/they can accomplish it for you.  Avoid doctors whose office staff are not giving you enough time and space to decide for yourself whether or not to proceed.  The consultation should be followed by a price quote and an invitation to schedule.  If you feel pressure to commit to a procedure you are not ready for, the office is more commercial than professional and you should proceed with caution or continue your search.  WHY?  Although these efforts demand an investment of time and energy, you become an educated patient in the process.  Educated patients know what to expect and get the best outcomes.  

The Bottom Line:

DO shop among qualified San Diego plastic surgeons for the best results, DON’T shop by any other criteria.  WHY?  Years down the road, you’ll forget what you paid and you’ll probably forget the surgeon, but you’ll be wearing the result every day.