Thank you for your question. There are 24 specialty boards recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS.org) and the American Board of Cosmetic surgery is NOT one of them. Plastic Surgery is one of the member boards and board certified plastic surgeons are certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery (ABPS). To become a board certified plastic surgeon you must have a minimum of 3 years of general surgery training (most of us have 5 years), be board certified in orthopedic, neurosurgery, ENT or urology and then you can apply for a 2-3 year plastic surgery fellowship. Completing this successfully, you can take your board examinations (written and oral). Once you pass these, you can call yourself board certified plastic surgeon.To become a member of the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery (ABCS), a non ABMS board, you can come from any specialty (preferably a surgical background), including oral surgeons, gynecologists, facial plastic surgeons, dermatologists, general surgeons or almost anybody with an MD after their names. They do not have training programs supervised by ACGME (Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education). So you can see this is quite involved, lengthy and structured. The ABCS has no formal fellowship training established nationally, you can train from one of their members. So basically they train each other.A lot of surgeons claim to be VASER experts, but look at their preop and postop photos before committing to surgery. Most don't understand the power of the technique or have the technical and artistic ability to deliver a sculpted, athletic body or hourglass figure. Hope this helps, good luck in your search.
