Trusting someone to your body is a hard thing to do--especially when it's not a life and death situation.

The TrustedSurgeons Network has painstakingly conducted extensive research and analysis of plastic surgeons to determine if we ourselves would trust them or not.

We came up with three measureable criteria that we find most important. And while we understand that past success isn't a guarantee of the future (so here's the disclaimer: we can't promise you anything), we can minimize risks by going only to trusted surgeons.

The "genetic makeup" of a trusted surgeon are threefold:

• Education
• Certification
• Track Record

You can read more on these three criteria.

Unlike many other sites that do little or no research, we have a team of "detectives" that actively investigate plastic surgeons. Any lead we're given, we'll look into it. First we verify that the surgeon has adequate plastic surgery education and training.

Then we confirm that he or she is board certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery. We ignore other boards because we find them inadequate. For example, the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery requires only 100 hours of cosmetic surgery procedures. This pales in comparison to a plastic surgery residency which is at minimum 5 years.

Thirdly, we track down the surgeon's records at the state medical board. Any major citations or disciplinary actions on record would immediately disqualify a surgeon from being included in our network.

Of note, our network is constantly updated. Every plastic surgeon listed would be reviewed throughout the year for compliance with our criteria.

We also find the next point very important: we include every trusted plastic surgeon we can find in our network.

We do not charge the surgeon a fee to be listed. Every surgeon we are made aware of is researched. If the surgeon qualifies, he or she would be added to our list within 24 hours from the completion of our research.

If you find a surgeon that is not listed on our site, and you would like us to research the surgeon, you can e-mail us at info@trustedsurgeons.com and we will forward it to our research team.

We thought you'd be interested in the results and statistics of our research.

We started with approximately 14,000 names. We were able to quickly remove more than two-thirds of those names from our list because they lacked the plastic surgery training and board certification.

We were left with 6,439 board certified plastic surgeons.

(While there has been 7,201 plastic surgeons who have been board certified in the U.S., some have retired, stopped practicing, moved, or we simply did not have enough information to conduct further research.)

Of the 6,439 trained and board certified plastic surgeons, 8.5% did not meet our critera for inclusion on the network. A small number are pending further research and investigation.

Overall, the "trusted" rate of those who call themselves a plastic or cosmetic surgeon is only 29.1%.

Look for the TrustedSurgeons verification seal on every plastic surgeon's website you visit.

Unlike other networks that require membership fees, every plastic surgeon who has the education, certification, and track record, are given the seal of verification to display at no charge.

At the surgeon's website, make sure to click on the trusted seal to verify that the surgeon's status have not changed.