Dr. Hugh Houston

OK Dr. Hugh Houston, M.D.is in the running has a surgeon for DS.  My only problem is that he is out of state and I live in Georgia. A plus is that I believe he do surgery lap instead of open.  I was wondering how everyone experience was with this Dr.  Please tell me the good, the bad, problems if you had any.  Let me know if you were a out of state patient.  I want all of you to know that you are very helpful  in my planning to have a successful surgery to start my new life.

Morning,
 I live in  Al but work at Centennial Med Ctr.  where Dr Houston is. He has always had a good rep. around the hospital and the community. (I have asked around about thim). I could find no one to say anything bad about any of the md's in the office.

Dr. Houston has perfomed surgery on quite a few ladies from GA.  I won't pretend to speak for them, but from all their posts, I think they were pleased.  In fact, I think some of them tried to lure him to Atlanta.  That would start a TN/GA mini-war. LOL  If the GA peeps don't respond here soon, you may want to post on the GA board.

I really respect the man.  He is very skilled and has a pretty good sense of humor.  He cares about his patients as people.  He does the four major WLS (band, DS, RNY, and sleeve) and does all of them well.  Word of warning from a DS patient:  he does not easily agree to any request for a DS.  It has the most malabsorption and he wants to make sure his patients know the importance of post-op follow up and supplementation. If you are thinking of the DS, be sure you've done your research before you see him.  He'll want solid reasons from you and assurance that you understand the importance of post-op care.

Best wishes whatever you decide. 

I have posted on the Georgia side and got a lot of positive feed back.  I am starting to research Bougie size and channel length.  Thanks for information.

OK, I visited the GA board and saw you got lots of great advice from LaShelle.  Just thought I'd share what I heard about Dr. Houston only doing the DS one day a week.  Although I heard this as an unstantiated rumor, it makes sense.  Well, it makes sense if you look at the hospital's point of view.  The DS takes longer to do.  Centennial has so many operating suites.  Centennial is a for-profit hospital.  If they can charge for 4 RNY's or 2 DS's per day, what makes sense to their bottom line?  It is a sad reality that $$$ make decisions.  Healthcare should be for people, not for profit.  However, it is what it is.  Even not-for-profit hospitals have to use their resources wisely.  If there is any truth to this, it is not anything over which Dr. Houston (or any surgeon) has much control.  I think Dr. Houston is worth waiting for.

I live here in the Nashville Area so I am not sure what it is like to work with Dr. Houston from out of town - but I do remember when Izzy was having some issues - he was always on the phone talking to the doctors at the hospital she as at (not that they listened.. .LOL).   I see you are now researching common channel and bougie size.   I think he has been doing a 40 bougie and a 100 common channel now i think(I have not asked him) but I think he would change that if you gave hm solid reasons.   i had a 34 bougie and had some great restriction but  my starting BMI was over 60 so that could have had something to do with him making it so small.  I also have a 100 common channel - I really like the mix of these two numbers for me .