"Dr. Benedetto is not a bad guy and I am sure he does care about his patients. He does have a funny way of showing it however and I am sure he loses patients because of his arrogance. The one thing I do feel very strongly about... in my opinion, he is not as confident in his abilities as he might lead you to believe with his attitude. To make a very long story short. I was 524.9 lbs when I originally saw him. His exact words were "You are enormous".. not what you want to hear from someone who is supposed to be helping you.... The bottom line is, he said he would operate if I got down to 450lbs. With the help of the Heart & Wellness center (who were fantastic!) I got down to 453. At my appt with him, he was happy with my loss but instead of immediately putting me on the liquid diet and scheduling me for surgery, he said, "Id like to see you lose another 30 or 40 lbs to make the surgery safer because the larger you are the more risks and I may open you up, not be able to do it and close you up.. do you think you can do that"? In his defense, I said "Yes, I think I can" Well. unfortunately I didn't. I gained weight and lost weight and gained weight and lost weight etc... If he had just put me on the liquid diet, I would have lost half of what he wanted me to in the 2 weeks on that! I take responsibility for putting on weight but I blame his lack of confidence in his skills as a surgeon for not being thrilled I lost 71.1 lbs and scheduling me right there!!! The reason I say this is because fast forward 2 years, and still suffering with my weight and after putting back on all 71.1 lbs I lost with about 10lbs interest, I found a surgeon that didn't even blink about my weight, didn't call me "enormous" and told me, "I am not going to judge you.... I am going to help you get your life back" and did exactly that. He was very confident in his abilities and was very surprised at the run around I had previously experienced. He said "don't worry about waking up in recovery and it not being done.. it will be done".... Now, NONE of this is sour grapes. This is the exact truth or I wouldn't put it in writing on a public board. Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have... especially if you are considering Dr. Benedetto and are north of 400 lbs. If you are lighter than this and do not mind the attitude, I am sure he is fine, but as I said, if you are high risk, don't waste your time. He isn't your man. "
"So far, he has been the most compassionate, honest, non judgmental surgeon I have met. Dr. Lautz and his team have been absolutely wonderful so far and I would not change a thing! I know everybody says their Dr is the best, but apparently they are wrong, because Dr. Lautz is! :) I will update this after my procedure (6 days from now) but I am confident my review will not change....... UPDATE: I am now just about 2 weeks post-op. Things went very smoothly with no complications. Dr. Lautz did his part! Safe, thorough surgery! I feel lucky that he was my surgeon and I would recommend him to ANYONE even considering any of the procedures he performs!"
