The constant discomfort of a genital injury creates a covenant of pain. It is impossible to think about anything else.

The BBL is the fastest growing cosmetic surgery in the world, despite the mounting number of deaths resulting from the procedure. What is driving its astonishing rise?

An internet-famous plastic surgeon faces hard questions, and a lawsuit, after building his brand on his patients’ bodies.

For many trans people, getting gender-affirming surgery can be life saving. But a complicated and quickly expanding system can sometimes leaves patients feeling left behind.

At 18, Katie Stubblefield lost her face. At 21, she became the youngest person in the U.S. to undergo the still experimental procedure to get a new one.

Petra Kvitova’s long road back.

How doctors tried, and failed, to save President Kennedy.

“It looks as though someone has slapped three pounds of wet clay onto his face, where it clings, burying the boy inside. But Sam, the boy behind the mask, peers out from the right eye. It is clear, perfectly formed and a deep, penetrating brown.”

Romantic complications between a surgical coordinator and a brilliant transplant specialist.

"I hadn’t wanted Clara at first, at least no more than any other woman I’d casually slept with. Too bony, too neurotic. Too pale. But when she asked for a ride home from the dinner party where we met, I drove, intrigued at the prospect of UCSF’s top heart-transplant surgeon debasing herself with a med school dropout-turned-cellist."

The aftermath of a back alley operation.

" He was lying in a tub with a gash around his gut that looked badly sewn up and possibly infected. The stitching was so poor that it mirrored the seams on a homemade football done left-handed. Ugly zigzags. The tub was floating full of Pabst and Budweiser cans. No ice, just cans and lukewarm water the color of weak coffee doing the cooling."

The story of a face transplant.

Edna Kelly’s brain goes under the knife.

A medical device company experiments on humans.

How a surgical innovation allowed Dallas Weins to find a new face.

The impact, both on researchers and patients, of a radical treatment.