Sammamish Face AnswersQuote the claim, then check it

How many years of plastic surgery training have you had?

Counting training years stage by stage

Years mean little without the stages

Plastic surgery training comes in stages, and a single number hides which stage covered what. Ask what each stage covered and how many years it took. A claim like "years of specialized training" is only a claim until the stages are named.

What "extensively trained" leaves out

I quote the claim first. One version is "extensively trained in eyelid surgery." That sentence has no number, no program name and no procedure count in it, so there is nothing to check yet.

Here is what I would ask a consultation to put on paper:

  1. Which residency or fellowship programs, and the start and end year of each.
  2. Whether the training was in plastic surgery, facial plastic surgery or another surgical field.
  3. How much of that training involved eyelid procedures specifically.

For the procedure itself, I read published work to see how the field describes outcomes, such as a retrospective single-center study of transconjunctival blepharoplasty. It does not tell you who trained a particular surgeon. It tells you what questions about technique and results are worth asking. For the search itself, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons post on how to find a plastic surgeon is worth reading next to your list.

The training claim, word for word

  1. Write down the training claim exactly as the practice words it.
  2. Ask for the program names and years, then confirm them with the program or the certifying board.
  3. Read the about page of the American Board of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery so you know what that board says it is before a surgeon names it.
  4. Ask which credentials the surgeon holds, then compare them with The Aesthetic Society's page on qualifications for choosing a plastic surgeon so you know what each one is meant to show.

Training a practice can document

These are a claim reader's questions, not a surgeon's, and they offer no medical advice. Training history is a fact a practice can document, so a good answer to this question comes with names, dates and a way to verify them. If the answer stays general after you ask twice, that is information too.