Editorial Policy

1. Who writes our articles

The articles in our Patient Library and our patient guides are written by the Centre for Surgery clinical team. Every article is written or overseen by a medically qualified member of the team, who is responsible for its accuracy and for making sure it reflects how we treat patients at our Baker Street hospital.

Each article is written and checked by more than one person, so it carries the byline “By the Centre for Surgery clinical team” rather than the name of a single author.

2. Medical review

Before an article is published, it is reviewed by Dr Spyridon Vlachos, a Specialist Plastic Surgeon who has been on the GMC Specialist Register for plastic surgery since 2015 (GMC reference number 7522950). You can check his registration on the GMC medical register.

The medical review checks that the article is accurate, consistent with current evidence and guidance, and clear about risks and limitations as well as benefits. He reviewed the articles in our Patient Library between May and October 2026. His name appears at the top of each article, with the date of his most recent review.

3. Where our information comes from

We base clinical information on peer-reviewed research, which we find through PubMed, and on guidance from official bodies such as the NHS, the General Medical Council and the Care Quality Commission. Where an article rests on a particular study, we name the study in the text and link to it, and we list our references at the end so you can read the original sources.

We give more weight to systematic reviews, large studies and published guidance than to single case reports, and we say so when the evidence on a question is limited or mixed. We are adding references to older articles as we update them, so a few do not have a reference list yet.

4. Keeping articles up to date

Techniques and safety guidance in cosmetic surgery change over time. We update an article when new evidence or guidance changes what we would tell a patient, and when we change how we do things at our hospital. Any change to an article’s medical content is reviewed again by our medical reviewer. The top of each article shows when it was last updated and when it was last medically reviewed.

5. Balance and our interests

Centre for Surgery is a private hospital, and many of our articles describe treatments we offer. We want you to be able to rely on them all the same, so we aim to set out the risks and the recovery as clearly as the benefits, to cover the alternatives, including non-surgical options and not having treatment, and to say when a treatment is unlikely to help. Some articles explain treatments we do not offer, and say so.

We do not promise results. We recommend that you allow at least two weeks between your consultation and agreeing to surgery, so you have time to think it over; our guide to the two-week cooling-off period explains why.

6. Photos and diagrams

Before and after photos in our articles are of patients treated at Centre for Surgery, and you can see more in our before and after gallery. Diagrams and other images are there to explain a point, and do not show a patient’s result.

7. Our articles are not a consultation

Our articles are general information. They cannot tell you whether a treatment is right for you, because that depends on your health, your anatomy and what you want to achieve. That needs a consultation, where a GMC-registered surgeon examines you, explains your options, including the option not to have surgery, and talks you through the risks that apply to you.

If you have a concern about your health, or about symptoms after an operation, contact your surgeon or your GP. If it is urgent, call NHS 111, or 999 in an emergency.

8. Corrections and feedback

If you think something in one of our articles is wrong, unclear or out of date, please tell us. Email contact@centreforsurgery.com with “Article correction” in the subject line and the address of the page. A member of the clinical team will look into it, and if we got something wrong, we will correct the article and update its date.

To raise a concern about your own care rather than an article, please use our complaints policy. We publish our infection, revision and complaint figures each year in our clinical outcomes and patient safety report.