Review & community guidelines

Anyone with a verified email address may create an account and post. We require accurate signup details. One person, one account. Sock-puppet accounts created to inflate or sabotage a surgeon's reputation are removed on detection, and the underlying email and device may be banned without notice.

You must be 18 or older to post a review, share photos, or take part in adult discussions about procedures. See section 8 for users under 18.

If you are an employee, contractor, agent, family member, romantic partner, current patient under active treatment, or have any financial relationship with a clinic, you may not post a review about that clinic. You may comment in the community as long as you disclose the relationship in plain language.

Reviews must be based on a real, in-person consultation, procedure, or post-operative visit you personally attended. "My friend told me…" or "I saw on Instagram…" is not a review. Those belong in the community section as a discussion post.

We may ask for proof — an appointment confirmation, an invoice, a referral letter, or matching dates from booking records. We never publish that evidence; it is used only to verify and is deleted after the review is approved or rejected.

If you have only had a free pre-consult and no procedure, say so clearly in the review and mark the visit type accordingly. Pre-consult reviews are welcome but are labelled differently from post-procedure reviews.

Good reviews describe what actually happened: the procedure, approximate cost in your local currency, the consultation experience, the surgical day, the recovery, follow-up care, and your honest assessment of the result so far. Concrete details help future patients far more than emotional generalities.

If your outcome is unfinished — for example, you are six weeks post-op and still swollen — say so. Outcomes change over months and years; an honest "too early to judge final result" is more useful than a premature five-star or one-star verdict.

Negative reviews are welcome when they are accurate and proportionate. Calling out poor hygiene, hidden fees, abusive staff, or a botched outcome is exactly what this platform is for. Calling someone a "butcher", "monster", or accusing them of crimes you cannot prove is not.

You may upload your own pre-operative and post-operative photos. They must be yours, taken by you or on your behalf. Faces and identifying tattoos can and should be blurred — we provide tools to do this. Photos lifted from other patients, from the surgeon's marketing material, or from social media are removed and the account warned.

Do not upload scans, ID cards, passports, bank statements, or full medical records. If you need to support a claim, redact everything except the directly relevant line and send it privately through the report form. We do not publish private documents under any circumstance.

Photos showing graphic surgical wounds, exposed tissue, blood, sutures, or drains are placed behind a sensitive-content blur with a clear opt-in to view. We do not allow images that primarily show genitalia for shock or sexual purposes, even in the context of intimate-area procedures; clinical, non-sexualised post-op imagery is allowed behind the blur.

Describe your own experience. Do not present yourself as a clinician unless you actually are one, and even then, do not give specific medical advice through reviews or community posts. The platform is not a substitute for professional consultation with a qualified, licensed practitioner.

Statements like "this surgeon gave me sepsis" or "this clinic caused permanent nerve damage" are serious clinical allegations. We do not refuse to publish them, but we ask you to describe what happened and what a treating clinician told you, rather than diagnosing on the surgeon's behalf. Where possible, attach the clinical letter or report that supports the claim — privately, through the report form, not as a public upload.

We do not host before/after comparisons that claim a specific medical result the user cannot personally verify. "I am happier with my nose" is fine. "This rhinoplasty corrected my deviated septum and improved my breathing by 40%" needs a clinician to say so.

Strong opinions, frustration, disappointment, and grief are all welcome. Slurs, threats of violence, harassment campaigns, doxxing, sexual content directed at another user, and content that targets a person for their race, religion, gender identity, sexuality, disability, nationality, or migration status are not.

Criticise the work and the experience, not the person's body, family, accent, or appearance. We remove content that crosses that line and we may suspend the account that posted it.

Sarcasm and dark humour are fine in the community section. They land badly inside a review that another patient will read at 2am while trying to decide whether to have surgery. Keep reviews calm and factual; keep jokes for the forum.

You may name the surgeon and the clinic. You may not name nurses, receptionists, anaesthetists, scrub techs, drivers, hosts, translators, or other patients — even if you feel they wronged you. Use their role instead ("the anaesthetist", "the night nurse").

Do not share private messages, voice notes, or videos of staff or other patients without their explicit, written consent. Do not post phone numbers, home addresses, family members' names, children's photos, or any data that lets someone be located in the physical world.

If you appear in a clinic's marketing material and want it taken down, contact the clinic directly. We can publish your review, but we cannot force a third party to remove content they own.

Users under 18 may not create an account, write a review, upload photos, or take part in cosmetic-procedure discussions. Parents and guardians may write a review describing a procedure a minor underwent for reconstructive or medical reasons, but the minor must not be identifiable in any image and their name must not appear.

We take particular care with content that could influence vulnerable readers — for example, posts that romanticise extreme procedures, encourage cosmetic surgery as a fix for an eating disorder or body dysmorphia, or that promote travel for procedures users have not been medically cleared for. Such posts may be removed or accompanied by a safety banner with links to professional support resources.

If you are in distress, please reach out to a qualified mental health professional or a local crisis service. The platform is not, and cannot be, a substitute for that care.

No referral codes, affiliate links, promo codes, "DM me for a discount" posts, off-platform contact details swapped for kickbacks, or links to clinics you are commercially connected to. No copy-paste reviews across multiple surgeons, no review-trading, no incentivised reviews.

Clinics found to be coordinating, paying for, or rewarding reviews are flagged on their profile with a public notice and may be removed from the directory entirely. We treat fake positive reviews and fake negative reviews with the same severity.

If you stand to gain or lose anything based on what someone reads — a discount, a refund, a settlement, a job, a relationship — you have a conflict of interest. Disclose it in the first sentence of your post or do not post.

Journalists, researchers, and creators are welcome but must identify themselves to support@plasticsurgeonsreviews.com before posting investigative content so we can verify the work and protect the people quoted.

Verified surgeons may publicly respond to any review on their profile, once, with a calm, professional reply. Do not reveal protected health information, do not threaten legal action in the response, and do not contact the reviewer outside the platform to pressure them.

Soliciting reviews from patients is allowed. Offering anything of value in exchange for a review — a discount, a free service, a gift, priority booking — is not. Likewise, threatening or penalising a patient for an honest negative review is grounds for immediate suspension and a public note on the profile.

Surgeons may flag reviews they believe are factually incorrect through the dispute form. We will review, contact both parties, and either keep, edit, or remove the content based on evidence. We do not remove reviews because they are unflattering.

Scam Watch is a public safety section. Reports must describe verifiable conduct: a clinic that took payment and never performed surgery, a "surgeon" operating without a license, a clinic operating under multiple shell names to dodge reviews, identity fraud, trafficking, or unsafe practices.

We hold scam reports to a higher evidence bar than ordinary reviews because the consequences for a wrongly accused practitioner can be severe. Expect us to ask for documents — invoices, contracts, communications, official complaints filed with regulators or police — before publishing.

If a report turns out to be retaliatory, false, or weaponised against a personal opponent of the reporter, it is removed and the reporter may be banned from the platform.

The community section is for questions, experiences, advice, and short videos. You may ask anything related to plastic surgery, recovery, costs, travelling for procedures, mental preparation, body image, and the surgeon/clinic experience. You may not use it as a marketplace for procedures, medications, or surgical equipment.

Short videos must be your own footage. No reposting other people's TikToks, no music or footage you do not have the right to use, no graphic surgical footage that should be in a clinician-only channel. Videos of procedures performed on another person require that person's written consent.

You may use the built-in AI Improve tool to polish your own draft for grammar and clarity. The improved version keeps your facts and your voice — that is the whole point of the feature. You may not paste a generative-AI essay you did not write or experience as a real review.

The platform itself may, from time to time, surface helpful summaries, safety prompts, or suggested questions. These are clearly placed inside platform UI elements and not posted as if they came from another user.

Every review and scam report is moderated by a human within 48 hours, usually much faster. Community posts and comments are moderated reactively — that is, they go live immediately and are reviewed when flagged. Our moderators are trained to spot fake reviews, paid campaigns, harassment, off-platform brigading, and clinical claims that exceed what a patient can reasonably attest to.

We use automated tooling to detect duplicate text, suspicious IP clusters, throwaway emails, and known clinic-marketing patterns. Tooling flags content for human review; it does not, by itself, ban anyone.

You can edit your own reviews and posts. Significant factual edits trigger another moderation pass. If your post was removed, you can appeal once via the form in the rejection email and we will reconsider within seven days. We will not enter into ongoing debate about a single decision beyond that.

We remove individual posts when they break a specific rule above. We suspend accounts for repeated rule breaks, harassment, or coordinated activity. We ban accounts for credible threats of violence, sexual content involving minors, doxxing campaigns, identity fraud, and large-scale review manipulation.

Bans apply to the person, not just the account. Creating new accounts to evade a ban is itself a ban-worthy action and may, depending on jurisdiction, be reported to relevant authorities.

Nothing on this platform — reviews, community posts, surgeon profiles, cost guides, scam reports, AI summaries, or any other content — is medical, legal, financial, or psychological advice. Always consult a qualified, licensed professional before making decisions about your care.

We comply with valid legal requests from courts and regulators in the jurisdictions where we operate. If a court orders removal of content, we remove it and post a transparent notice in its place. If you believe content on the platform infringes your rights or breaks the law, submit a notice through /report-content; we triage notices in the order received.

Use the "Report" button on any review, post, comment, profile, or message, or go to /report-content. Tell us which rule you believe was broken and include any context. Reports are reviewed by a human; we do not auto-action takedowns based on report volume alone — that would allow brigades to silence honest reviews.

For urgent safety concerns — credible threats, suspected trafficking, sexual content involving minors — submit a report through /report-content and select "Urgent safety issue" as the reason. Urgent reports are prioritised by our moderators.