head of bariatric surgery ha ha ha

love when you look up a doctors surgery and they have a fancy title , head of bariatric surgery, most of the time there is only one or two doctors in the practice, so the owner calls himself head of surgery , cheif of surgery ect

 and many of these centers are in or near hospitals and use the hospitals name as part of there name , but are not own or run by the hospital, but it makes people think they are

 

 you can't go by names you have to find out how many surgeries the surgeon has done what is his success rate, how many deaths he really had from surgery( never go to a surgeon that never lost a patient means he hasn't done many surgeries)

I disagree with your final statement.  My surgeon has done many surgeries and has no deaths on his record.  The problem with your statement is that you can have a surgeon that only does one particular type of surgery and that surgery can be low risk for death.  

Take a surgeon that only performs the removal of bunyons on feet.  This surgeon can easily rack up thousands of surgeries without any deaths.  With the VSG surgery, there is lower risk of death than even gall bladder removal surgeries.  If you take a surgeon that specializes in these extremely low risk surgeries and that is the only surgery they have ever done, then again they could have done thousands of surgeries without death.  I likely could come up with more examples of surgeons that only do low or very low risk surgeries and many of them and no deaths on their records.  

I do agree that you want to know how many surgeries the surgeon has done but the only relevant statistic is to look at how many of the type that you are having done.  For example take a surgeon that has only bariatric experience in doing lap bands.  He may have done thousands of these without any deaths.  Would I pick him/her for my VSG ... heck no.  A lap band is simply putting in a device without any cutting of the stomach.  Would I want to be this surgeon's first patient to have my stomach cut out as in the VSG ... heck no.

 

I'd love to know where to find that statistic about VSG being lower risk than Gall Bladder surgery! Seeing the stats/study would really make a difference to me.

This particular statistic was provided by Dr. Paul E. Enochs during a seminar I attended.  He works out of Wake Med Hospital in Cary, NC which is a suburb of Raleigh NC.  This statistic came from a study that compared the risks of 4 surgeries.  VSG, RNY, Lap Band, and Gall Bladder (done laparoscopically as well).  Dr. Enochs presented a PowerPoint presentation with these statistics and they weren't a typewritten graphic (as if it is in his opinion or experience) but an actual study that did indicate it was done by an external resource.  As this was shown to me over a year ago I can't give you any more details than this.  The graph showed that of the 4 choices the RNY had the most risk followed by Gall Bladder and then VSG and finally Lap Band.  This of course was about risks of the actual surgery and issues that could appear.  Not down the road issues such as the fact that the Lap Band can twist and turn and slip and otherwise malfunction.

I enjoy my surgeon and have great faith in the abilities God has given him. I've spoken to a few of his pts I know personally but didn't know he was their surgeon until talking
I don't know what the rt right amount of surgeries is but I'll give what I know. He has done over 100 selves including revisions. He's done a bit over 1000 bariatric surgeries...rny, band, fobi, sleeves. He is also a general surgeon. He started up 2 centers...one at Southpoint Hosp and Parma Comm Gen. Both have qualified as Coe and awesome after care progs from what I an tell. He's straight foreword about dos, donts and have tos. He is Dr Craig Eyman, Cleve/Parma, Ohio. No deaths...how would he rate??


T...April 8, sleeve

i find it hard to believe that a general surgeon that has done thousands of surgeries  has never had any die on the table, there are so many things that can go wrong , they can't check for everything , healthy people have heart attacks during surgery, blood clots, odds are that something will go wrong once in a while , the great surgeons  are ready for problems but sometimes things happen that they can't fix

Maybe I should clarify...no bariatric fatalities.
Is that really odd?

My band surg 10 yrs ago is a ventricular surg...board cert bariatric, Coe etc. Very close to same record and he's in his 60s now.

I just wondered how many a surg should have before...

T.