How many deep plane facelift surgeons are there worldwide?

As of the 2026 audit, DEEPPLANE™ tracks 1235 active deep plane facelift surgeons across 67 countries and 289 cities. The United States leads with 500 practitioners (40.5% of the global total).

Which city has the most deep plane facelift surgeons?

Istanbul, Turkey has the highest concentration of deep plane facelift surgeons with 154 practitioners, followed by New York (70) and Beverly Hills (50).

How many deep plane facelift surgeons are board certified?

519 surgeons in the registry have a verified board certification, of which 34 hold gold-tier multi-source verification. 40 are ABFPRS diplomates and 184 are matched to a US NPI record.

How much peer-reviewed research exists on deep plane facelift?

The audit indexes 312 deep-plane-specific peer-reviewed publications and 264,174 total academic citations across 413 academically active surgeons.

REPORT · 2026 · DEEPPLANE.COM

The State of Deep Plane Facelift 2026

An evidence-based audit of the global deep plane facelift practitioner landscape

Published June 17, 2026 · Full methodology

By the numbers

Active surgeons

1,235

Countries covered

Cities

289

Academically active

413

≥1 indexed paper

Total citations

264,174

Facelift publications

312

deep plane / rhytidectomy DOI-indexed

ABFPRS diplomates

board-certified facial plastic

NPI-matched US

184

HHS NPPES verified

ORCID-linked

141

B/A pairs (curated)

2,371

face-detected, quality-scored

B/A candidates (IG)

3,496

Cloud Vision classified

Gold-tier facts

multi-tier-1 corroborated

Geographic concentration

Top 20 countries by active practitioner count. United States and Turkey together account for roughly 54% of the global deep plane facelift workforce, reflecting both domestic patient demand (US) and a mature medical-tourism corridor (Turkey).

USA

500 (40.5%)

Turkey

170 (13.8%)

Brazil

71 (5.7%)

Canada

45 (3.6%)

36 (2.9%)

South Korea

34 (2.8%)

Germany

28 (2.3%)

Italy

27 (2.2%)

Australia

25 (2%)

France

23 (1.9%)

Colombia

22 (1.8%)

Spain

21 (1.7%)

Egypt

16 (1.3%)

Russia

15 (1.2%)

Mexico

14 (1.1%)

Lebanon

13 (1.1%)

China

13 (1.1%)

Iran

12 (1%)

Chile

12 (1%)

Belgium

10 (0.8%)

Top practitioner cities

City-level concentration matters more than country totals for patients planning destination travel — these cities offer the deepest selection.

Rank	City	Country	Surgeons
1	Istanbul	Turkey	154
2	New York	USA	70
3	Beverly Hills	USA	50
4	São Paulo	Brazil	36
5	Seoul	South Korea	34
6	London	UK	28
7	Toronto	Canada	23
8	Atlanta	USA	19
9	Los Angeles	USA	18
10	Chicago	USA	17
11	Houston	USA	17
12	Newport Beach	USA	16
13	Paris	France	16
14	Cairo	Egypt	15
15	San Francisco	USA	14

Academic output distribution

Hirsch index ("h-index") measures both productivity and citation impact. An h-index of N means the researcher has at least N papers each cited ≥N times. Among DEEPPLANE™'s academically-active cohort (n=413):

h-index 50+

h-index 25-49

h-index 10-24

113

h-index 5-9

108

h-index <5

170

Highest-cited practitioners

Filtered to surgeons with ≥1 facelift-specific peer-reviewed publication (CrossRef-indexed). Ranked by facelift publication count, then h-index. Name-collision false positives (e.g. unrelated researchers sharing a name) are excluded by the relevance gate.

Surgeon	Country	h-index	Facelift papers	All papers	Total citations
Andrew Jacono	USA	26	23	23	2,096
Bryan Mendelson	Australia	38	13	25	4,949
James Zins	USA	45	12	16	7,100
Joe Niamtu	USA	11	12	21	376
Ben Talei	USA	5	10	10	64
Minhee Ryu	South Korea	59	8	8	19,897
Patrick Tonnard	Belgium	26	8	10	3,420
Fred Fedok	USA	25	7	15	2,392
Michele Pascali	Italy	18	7	9	1,175
Rajiv Grover	UK	24	6	9	3,752
Mark Glasgold	USA	18	6	14	1,017
Richard Zoumalan	USA	17	6	8	1,031
Kevin Sadati	USA	4	6	6	61
Chris Surek	USA	3	6	9	138
Robert Glasgold	USA	17	5	13	941
Nabil Fakih	Lebanon	11	5	6	358
Phillip Langsdon	USA	10	5	15	297
Jon Perenack	USA	8	5	14	162
Oren Friedman	USA	31	4	10	3,188
James Grotting	USA	31	4	5	3,644
Allan Wulc	USA	27	4	8	2,289
Ruth Graf	Brazil	23	4	4	1,806
Andrew Trussler	USA	22	4	6	1,412
Renato Saltz	USA	17	4	5	1,121
Hatan Mortada	Saudi Arabia	15	4	8	882

Trust verification ladder

Every fact on a DEEPPLANE™ surgeon profile carries provenance. Multi-source agreement promotes facts up the verification ladder — patients see the verification tier explicitly on each profile.

Gold-tier

Facts corroborated by ≥2 independent tier-1 sources (government registries, official boards).

Verified-tier

1,859

Facts confirmed by at least one tier-1 source OR two tier-2 sources.

Provisional-tier

Single-source facts pending corroboration. Shown only when source is recent and high-confidence.

Methodology

The DEEPPLANE™ practitioner registry is assembled from 9 independent data sources organized into three tiers. Every fact stored in the registry carries the source's canonical URL, a captured-at timestamp, and a SHA-256 hash of the source payload — enabling drift detection across quarterly refreshes.

Tier 1 — Government & Boards

NPI (HHS NPPES)
ABFPRS (American Board of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery)
OIG HHS LEIE (exclusions)

Tier 2 — Academic & Society

OpenAlex (academic graph)
ORCID (researcher identity)
CrossRef (DOI registry)

Tier 3 — Aggregators

Wikidata
Google Places
Instagram (Apify-licensed harvest)

Reconciliation: Multi-tier-1 cross-corroboration. Facts emitted by ≥2 independent tier-1 sources earn gold-tier verification. Sources with hash-fingerprinting enable drift detection across quarterly refreshes.

Coverage: 184 NPI-matched US surgeons, 40 ABFPRS diplomates, 413 academically-active practitioners (≥1 indexed publication).

Read full methodology →

Cite this report

If you reference this report in academic or editorial work, please use:

DEEPPLANE™. (2026). The State of Deep Plane Facelift 2026: A Global Practitioner Audit. DEEPPLANE™.
Retrieved from https://deepplane.com/state-of-deep-plane-2026

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