I want to email some surgeons...

I am not really sure how to go about it. I have never directly emailed a surgeon before asking about - I don't know, everything? I am not sure if my insurance would cover it, but I am willing to go down the self-pay path. I want to ask so many things that I don't know where to start - how many revisions have you done from lap-band to DS, mortality rate, complication rate, if they feel I am a good candidate? What kind of things have you written?

Can you imagine the pasquillion emails any given surgeon would be getting if they allowed this from people who weren't even their patient yet?  For this very reason, many of them hold regular seminars to share what they have on the procedures and open up for Q&A.  Your best bet is to sign up for one of those seminars and start there..  

Valerie has a valid point.

I will say I emailed an out of state surgeon before I was his patient. (Would have stayed his patient if my insurance had let me go out of state but they were being stupid). And he was very gracious in answering my email.

One of the things I did was ask about his willingness to do the DS on a lightweight and explained my comorbids. After the initial email, I emailed his assistant after that (or talked to her)

Depends on which surgeon and how far away you are located...for many of us, going to a seminar is not an option since we tend to use out of state surgeons.

Liz

When I was looking at adding the switch to my existing vsg,I emailed several of the vetted surgeons from the ds facts.com list. Usually,I went to their web sites and filled out a contact form. I always got a response from a coordinator in their office,never the surgeon himself,except the out of country ones. I got very polite and detailed responses from the out of country surgeons.

The coordinators were able to answer the questions I had. I would suggest this route to you for your initial inquiries.
GL

Hi,

I went to web sites of doctors  I was interested in and filled out contact forms I didn't speak to any surgeons but the office was happy to answer any questions I had. I didnt have any surgeons near me that did the DS and knew I was headed out of state. Best of luck,

Trish

yes, this is not feasible...you need to go to a lecture they hold etc, a surgeon can't answer each person before they are their patient, they are one and the MO are many.  I did get the email of my surgeon (vetted revision) but it came from another surgeon *****ferred me, so i was a direct referral, i was such a complex case i was having a hard time finding a revision surgeon who would take me (I finally talked to Gagner, Roslin and Keshashian)...do your research, ask questions, decide on a couple of surgeons, go to the seminars then pick one

If you are willing to go self-pay, have you considered going out of country? If so, you could e-mail my amazing surgeon, one of the best DS surgeons in the world, Dr. Marchesini in Curitiba, Brazil. His e-mail address is [email protected]. Before you e-mail him, you could check out the files in his yahoo group, http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/DrMarchesini-DS/info. The group isn't super active anymore, but you can still find a ton of information on it. Good luck!

 

 

I would think the very first thing you need to do is contact your insurance company and find out what exactly they will cover. When I contacted CIGNA they were happy to email me their 50 page (!) WLS policy. And even though they said they require a BMI of 50 for a DS, they have agreed to pay based on my BMI of 37, plus my many comorbidities.  Once you know what your insurance is willing to pay (if anything), then you can start looking for surgeons. If it turns out that you don't have WLS benefits, then you won't have so many hoops to jump through ( there will still be some). You'll only need to find a surgeon willing to do the operation.