How the ranking works
Each surgeon is scored out of 100 on public records: facelift research, teaching other surgeons, leadership in the specialty, recognition and the facelift work the practice shows. Every surgeon, featured or not, is scored the same way. Records last read 2026-09-30.
Who can be listed
- Practices in the United States.
- Has their own practice website. A hospital, university or health-system page, a directory listing or a society page does not qualify. An academic surgeon with a practice site on their own domain qualifies, and the list links to that site.
- Group practices are listed. When several surgeons share one practice site and do different operations, the dossier says it is a group practice and names the surgeons the site credits for facelifts, so a patient can ask for the facelift surgeon by name.
- A plastic, facial plastic or oculoplastic surgeon, read from the society profile or the NPI Registry. Board certification is confirmed on each surgeon's dossier.
- Performs facelift or neck lift: a facelift page on the practice site, facelift papers in PubMed, or a facelift teaching role at a meeting.
The five signals
| Signal | Points | What earns points | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Research | 30 | Facelift and neck lift papers in PubMed. Papers since 2016 count double. First and senior authorship add half again. Log scale with a cap. | Facelift research in PubMed |
| Teaching | 25 | Distinct meetings from 2023 on where the surgeon taught a facelift, neck or facial rejuvenation session. Live surgery counts double. | Official meeting programs and faculty pages, listed on meetings |
| Leadership | 15 | President or board member of the AAFPRS, The Aesthetic Society, ASPS or ISAPS; fellowship director. | Society leadership pages |
| Recognition | 10 | Each year on Newsweek's facelift list, 3 points. Newsweek surveyed 20 states in 2024 and 2025 and 25 in 2026; surgeons in other states, Kentucky among them, cannot score here. | Newsweek, 2024 to 2026 |
| Editorial adjustment | ± | The editors can raise or lower a surgeon's score. | facelift.studio editors |
| Published work | 20 | A facelift page on the practice site (5) and a before-and-after gallery that loads (15). | The practice website, read the same way for every surgeon: home page, sitemap, then each page fetched |
Only sources checked for everyone count
A source scores only when it was read the same way for every surgeon on the list. A fact found by researching one surgeon, such as a CV or a lecture list, appears on that surgeon's dossier and adds no points.
Tie breaks
Equal scores are ordered by facelift papers since 2021, then by meetings taught, then by the number of facelift and neck lift pages the practice publishes in its sitemap. The page count breaks ties only and adds no points. A tie that survives all three is ordered by name.
Featured surgeons
Featured surgeons are clients of Medical Advertising Agency, the publisher of facelift.studio, for other services such as managing their practice websites. No one pays for a featured position. It is shown apart from the scored list, and a featured surgeon's score and rank are computed by the same method as every other surgeon's.
What a ranking cannot tell you
The score reads public records. It does not measure complication rates, patient satisfaction or the result any one patient will get. Many excellent surgeons publish little and teach rarely. Use the list to find surgeons to research further, and judge results from their before-and-after photographs and a consultation.
Corrections
A surgeon can correct a record through the contact page with a public source. Records change at the next update.