El Paso is not where most people expect to find one of the world's most closely watched plastic surgeons. But Dr. Frank Agullo has built a practice there that pulls patients from Seattle, Toronto, Mexico City, and everywhere in between, roughly 60 percent of his patient base travels in for surgery. That reach, paired with a body of work that keeps landing him in national press and now in the Top 100, says less about geography and more about a philosophy he has stuck to for over a decade.
Agullo is double board certified, first by the American Board of Surgery in 2008, then by the American Board of Plastic Surgery in 2010. He trained at the Mayo Clinic, holds a Fellowship with the American College of Surgeons, and teaches as a Clinical Associate Professor of Plastic Surgery at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. He has also spent 13 consecutive years on Castle Connolly's list of top doctors. On paper, that is a full career. It is not, in his telling, the point.
"Patients don't come to me for a resume," Agullo said. "They come because they want to look like a rested version of themselves, not like a different person. That distinction has shaped every decision I've made about how I operate and what I recommend."
He calls it preservation, a deliberate counterpoint to the more-is-more instinct that has defined parts of aesthetic surgery for years. In facelifts, that means favoring deep plane technique, which repositions the deeper structural layers of the face rather than just pulling the skin tight. Patients heal faster and the results hold up over time instead of drifting toward that stretched, wind tunnel look. It is a slower, more technical approach, and it is the one Agullo has built his reputation on.
That reputation has traveled well beyond El Paso. Agullo has been quoted as an expert source in Daily Mail, HuffPost, USA Today, and NewBeauty, and he founded the World Association of Gluteal Surgeons, a professional group focused on safety standards for one of the fastest growing and most scrutinized procedures in the field. He also built a public-facing brand, Dr. WorldWide, that now reaches more than 3.5 million followers across Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat, a following he uses less for showmanship and more for the kind of plain spoken patient education that is often missing from the specialty.
Colleagues who work alongside him point to a consistency that is easy to say and hard to actually deliver: the surgeon patients meet in consultation is the same one who operates on them, teaches residents, and still answers direct messages about recovery timelines. That kind of follow through is part of what separates a strong regional practice from one that earns notice on a global stage.
The Top 100 recognition adds to a run of honors that includes Aesthetic Everything's Top Plastic Surgeon of the Decade and Castle Connolly's ongoing top doctor listing, but Agullo is characteristically understated about what it means for the work ahead.
"An award like this is a marker, not a finish line," he said. "The standard I hold myself to is whether a patient who flew in from three states away feels like the trip was worth it. Everything else is a nice reflection of getting that part right, consistently, for a long time."
For a field that moves quickly and rewards the loudest voice in the room, Agullo's approach is almost old fashioned: train relentlessly, publish research, teach the next generation of surgeons, and let the results speak. It is, apparently, a formula that scales from a single exam room in El Paso to a list built to recognize excellence across 100 countries.
Dr. Frank Agullo sees patients at Southwest Plastic Surgery in El Paso, Texas. To schedule a consultation, call (915) 590-7900, text 1-866-814-0038, or book online at agulloplasticsurgery.com. Follow him @RealDrWorldWide on Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat, @Agullo on X, and @AgulloPlasticSurgery on Facebook.