DR. WORLDWIDE GETS SOCIAL
DR. WORLDWIDE GET TO KNOW HIM
Frank Agullo, MD, FACS — known globally as Dr. WorldWide — is a double board-certified plastic surgeon in El Paso, Texas. He is a Clinical Associate Professor of Plastic Surgery at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and Affiliate Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. Specializing in preservation-based aesthetic surgery and the Deep Plane Facelift, he has been named a Castle Connolly Top Doctor for thirteen consecutive years and has a global social following of over 3.5 million across Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat. He is the founder of Southwest Plastic Surgery and Plastic Surgery Studios.
Meet Dr.WWDR. WORLDWIDE GET TO KNOW HIM
Frank Agullo, MD, FACS is the plastic surgeon the world watches. Known globally as Dr. WorldWide, he has built one of the largest followings of any surgeon on the planet (over 3.5 million on Instagram @RealDrWorldWide) by pulling back the curtain on plastic surgery and showing what extraordinary results actually look like. Celebrities, influencers, and patients from across the United States and around the world make the trip to El Paso, Texas, because when you have seen the work up close, there is nowhere else to go. More than 80% of his patients travel from outside El Paso. The practice handles every detail of their journey.
Dr. Agullo is double board-certified, Mayo Clinic fellowship-trained, and a Clinical Associate Professor of Plastic Surgery at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. But credentials only tell part of the story. What sets him apart is a philosophy built on preservation: enhancing, restoring, and elevating what is already there rather than changing who you are. Not cookie cutter. Every plan is molded around the individual patient's desires, their anatomy, their life.
That philosophy drives every decision in the operating room. His Motiva Preserve breast augmentations deliver results that feel as natural as they look. His deep plane and endoscopic deep plane facelifts turn back time without announcing themselves. His Supercharged BBL has been refined, published, and presented on international stages. And his ability to combine face and body procedures in a single operative session is a capability few surgeons in the world can offer safely at his level.
The same philosophy applies outside the OR. Forget synthetic fillers. Dr. Agullo restores volume with regenerative grafts including Alloclae, Lipoderma, exosomes, and platelet-derived growth factors. Recovery is treated as part of the result: lymphatic massages, scar management, and Elixir MD LED light therapy ensure that what happens after surgery is as intentional as what happens during it.
Castle Connolly Top Doctor for eleven consecutive years. Texas Super Doctors Hall of Fame. Best Plastic Surgeon in El Paso for thirteen consecutive years. Aesthetic Everything Top Plastic Surgeon 2026. Founding Vice President and President of the World Association of Gluteal Surgeons, where he helped write the global safety standards for gluteal surgery.
The results are daily. The standard is uncompromising. The philosophy is simple: #MakeItHappen. #HappyIsBeautiful. #StayBeautiful.
#PlasticSurgeryIsMyPassion
GLAMOUR SHOTS
Plastic Surgery is a very personal choice and a unique experience for every individual who chooses to undergo a change, be it a discreet or major surgery. The one thing in common for my patients though is that they experience an inner transformation which ultimately shines through as confidence in themselves. Confident is Beautiful!
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- Posted on: June 27th 2026
- Category: Commentary, Facial Surgery
A surgeon on eyelid surgery, where the scar hides, how eye bags come out from the inside, and why under-eye filler so often becomes the problem it was meant to fix.
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- Posted on: June 27th 2026
- Category: Commentary, Facial Surgery
The eyes are where people notice age first. They are also where the smallest, best-hidden procedures in my whole practice live.
Patients point at the same things. Heavy upper lids. Puffy lower bags. Hollows that read as exhaustion no matter how much they sleep. And, very often, old under-eye filler that simply never went away.
Here is how I talk about the eyes, candidly.
“Heavy, Uneven Upper Lids. Is That a Muscle Problem?”
Usually not. A true lazy eye is a muscle issue, but in most cases both lids line up the same distance from the pupil, which tells me the problem is the fold and the weight of extra skin, not the muscle.
The fix for the upper lid is surprisingly minor. I remove the fold of skin, and the scar sits inside the new crease. When you open your eyes, you do not see it.
“Will Surgery Change the Shape of My Eye?”
No, and this is the worry I hear most. I am only removing the fold. In most cases I do not extend out to the side, I finish right at the crease, and that is what avoids the pulled, changed look. Your crease is already drawn by your own anatomy, so I follow it. The goal is more symmetric, not different. Faces are always a little different side to side, so I make it better, not identical.
What Eye Bags Actually Are
Lower eyelid surgery removes the fat bag. If you keep your face still and roll your eyes up, you will watch the bags pop out more. Those are what come out.
I do it through an incision on the inside of the lid, so there is no scar on the outside and no external stitches. I add a little fat to blend the transition, and I often pair it with Morpheus to tighten the skin.
Hollows Are a Volume Problem, Not a Bag Problem
If the issue is hollowness rather than bags, I add volume with your own fat. The face has essentially no pain, and fat grafting under the eyes is very safe. I do it routinely, on facelifts and on younger faces that simply have less tissue.
It looks a little full at first, because you absorb about thirty to forty percent of grafted fat, so I slightly overfill. As it settles, it looks completely natural, because it is your own tissue.
My Strong Opinion on Under-Eye Filler
I am cautious about filler in that area, and I have seen what it does. Filler under the eyes can hold water and stay puffy for years, and it tends to migrate rather than fully dissolve.
Fat is the safer, more natural way to address true hollowing. If you already have problem filler there, dissolving it is often the first step before we do anything else.
Eyes, At a Glance
| What You See | What It Usually Is | What I Do |
|---|---|---|
| Heavy upper lid | Fold and extra skin | Remove the fold, scar hidden in the crease |
| Puffy lower bag | Fat bag | Remove from the inside, no external scar |
| Hollow, tired shadow | Volume loss | Fat grafting, slightly overfilled |
| Puffy for years | Old migrated filler | Dissolve first, then reassess |
“Will I Have Stitches Across My Lid? Will It Scar?”
Not visible ones. On the upper lid I place the sutures under the skin, so they do not leave the track marks you see in some photos. You might have two or three small ones that fall out on their own. On the lower lid, done from the inside, there are no external stitches at all.
As for keloids, on the eyelids and face they are almost unheard of. Keloids happen on the ears, shoulders, sternum, and joints. On the eyelids, I have never seen one.
What Recovery Is Really Like
The procedure takes under two hours. You are back to normal in three or four days, with some swelling and bruising. If you bruise, it can take up to two weeks, but usually after a week you can cover it with a little makeup. Exercise at four weeks.
To soften any old scars elsewhere, microneedling with PDGF, a growth factor stronger than PRP, works well over a few sessions at the Med Spa. ElixirMD LED therapy can speed the early healing.
Who I Think Should Have It, and Who Should Not
I am as quick to talk a patient out of eyelid surgery as into it. The right candidate can point to one specific thing, heavy upper lids, a lower bag, a tired shadow, rather than asking me to remake the eye. This is refinement, and patients who want transformation are usually asking the wrong procedure for the wrong reason.
The harder conversation is the patient whose tired look is really coming from the cheek dropping or the brow descending. In that face, an eyelid surgery alone chases the symptom. Sometimes the honest answer is a little fat, a brow that needs addressing, or a facelift, and I would rather say that than hand someone a procedure that will not fix what bothers them. Healthy non-smokers heal cleanest, and I am direct about that too.
Why I Work This Way
I am a double board-certified plastic surgeon with a plastic surgery fellowship at the Mayo Clinic, and I teach as a Clinical Associate Professor of Plastic Surgery at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Paul L. Foster School of Medicine. Eyelid work rewards restraint. The goal is for you to look rested, not operated on, and that comes from removing exactly what needs to go and hiding every incision.
See the Patient-Facing Versions
For the patient-facing walkthrough, see the companion post on agulloplasticsurgery.com. For the treatment menu, see the version on swplasticsurgery.com.
Ready to Talk?
If people keep asking why you look tired, your eyes may be the answer. Come in and let me take a look.
Call the office at (915) 590-7900, text 1-866-814-0038, or book online at agulloplasticsurgery.com. #StayBeautiful.
@RealDrWorldWide on Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat, @Agullo on X, or @AgulloPlasticSurgery on Facebook.
- Posted on: June 26th 2026
- Category: Commentary, Hair Restoration
A surgeon’s candid read on traditional Chinese medicine for hair loss: where the evidence is encouraging, the serious liver risk of one popular herb, and why all natural does not mean safe.
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- Posted on: June 26th 2026
- Category: Commentary, Hair Restoration
He shou wu. People take it for their hair, and most of them have no idea it is one of the most reported causes of herbal liver injury in the world.
I get a lot of questions about Chinese medicine for hair. I never dismiss it out of hand, because some of it actually has studies behind it. But the he shou wu story is why I always say the same thing first. All natural does not mean automatically safe. So here is my plain version, the parts that work and the parts to watch.
Before grading any remedy, I want to be precise about what we are even treating. Normal shedding is fifty to a hundred hairs a day. True hair loss is more than that. The hair that grows back comes in thinner, with worse texture and worse density. We call that miniaturization. Here is the part that matters most. A shrunken follicle can still be revived with growth factors, medications, or therapies. A lost follicle cannot be brought back. So any herb that claims to help has to be judged against that line.
So What Is Traditional Chinese Medicine, Really?
It is a compounding of various treatments and diagnostic principles developed in China. Like a lot of Eastern medicine, it treats the body as one connected system and cares a lot about balance across that whole network. Herbs, acupuncture, diet, massage. On hair specifically, the thinking ties hair health to blood circulation and the kidneys. Hair is something you can see, so when it declines, they read that as the person’s vitality declining.
The Herb to Be Careful With
Polygonum multiflorum is a plant used in Chinese medicine to support the health and growth of hair. It can even counteract hair whitening. It acts on three mechanisms at the same time: DHT damage inhibition, cellular protection, and circulatory improvement of the scalp.
Here is the candid part. Most of the studies have been in vitro, which means in the lab, and in animals, and there hasn’t really been a strict comparison against Western medical treatments. There have been some cases of liver damage using this herb. Worldwide, it is one of the most reported causes of herbal liver injury. The risk is higher when using the raw root rather than the processed version. The reaction is really unpredictable. And since this is a dietary supplement, it’s not regulated by the FDA in the same way that traditional medication is.
That is exactly the kind of thing patients need to hear before they order a supplement off the internet because it is natural.
The Ones the Evidence Treats More Kindly
Ginseng is among the most well-known and most extensively researched traditional Chinese medicine herbs. It promotes scalp blood circulation, and the existing research shows promise and encouraging results.
Angelica sinensis was traditionally known as a blood tonic. It is an herb they believe moves blood, or prevents stagnation. Some of the published studies include laboratory research showing anti-inflammatory properties and improved circulatory blood flow.
Scalp acupuncture is the one that interests me most as a surgeon. If we think about it, it almost behaves like microneedling, which we’ve shown scientifically to improve hair growth. It improves the microcirculation of blood flow to the hair follicles.
Scalp massage is perhaps the simplest recommendation, and it has been scientifically proven to work. It improves circulation, which seems to be a recurring theme here, and studies have shown it can increase hair thickness and the number of hairs.
The Recurring Theme
Notice the pattern across the items that hold up. Ginseng, acupuncture, massage, and even the microneedling we do in clinic all improve the same thing, which is scalp circulation. It seems to be a recurring theme, and it is probably why the modern regenerative tools and the older traditions sometimes land in the same place.
The Two Things to Take Away
Well, I think the most important thing to know is that a remedy being all natural does not mean that it is automatically safe. There are dangers, like we spoke about previously with Polygonum multiflorum. And second, the most important thing is to visit a physician for consultation as soon as hair loss begins. This is the time when therapies can be initiated and actually help, and it’s also helpful to rule out any reversible causes.
The Credential Behind the Opinion
Double board-certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery and the American Board of Surgery, American College of Surgeons Fellow, Mayo Clinic plastic surgery fellowship, member of the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery, and Castle Connolly Top Doctor for thirteen consecutive years. I am happy to talk about the traditions seriously, and just as happy to tell you which herb has a liver-injury problem.
Ready to Talk?
If you want a read on what is worth trying and what is worth avoiding for your hair, that is a consultation.
For the patient-facing guide to the hair cycle and the five most common causes, see the companion post on agulloplasticsurgery.com. For the scalp-health and hair-restoration program at the practice, see the version on swplasticsurgery.com.
Call (915) 590-7900, text 1-866-814-0038, or book online at agulloplasticsurgery.com. #StayBeautiful.
@RealDrWorldWide on Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat, @Agullo on X, or @AgulloPlasticSurgery on Facebook.
