How Patients Vet a Plastic Surgeon Before They Ever Pick Up the Phone
By the time someone books a consultation for a mommy makeover or a facelift, they have spent weeks reading. They have compared before and after galleries across four or five practices, checked reviews on three platforms, watched recovery videos from strangers and asked a private group what to expect. The consultation confirms a decision the research already shaped. Practices that understand that sequence build for it. The rest keep wondering why the consultation calendar stays thin while ad spend climbs. The gallery does the selling Prospective patients treat before and after photographs as the closest thing to evidence they can get. They hunt for a starting point resembling their own body, not for the most dramatic transformation on the page. A dozen curated cases read as a highlight reel. Thousands of cases read as a record. Leo Lapuerta, MD, FACS, a triple board-certified plastic surgeon in the Houston metro, has performed more than 30,000 surgical and non-surgical procedures ov...