Quote from: Sambollio on April 30, 2021, 11:57:49 PMHey guys, my original plan was to go to UC Irvine and get LL in two years while taking a year off between Uni and med school. Plans changed and my brother, dad and me are buying a house outside of Vegas. The problem is, obviously, that now going to Dr. Shahab M, is less realistic due to distance.
Basically I’d just like as much opinions on Dr.D as possible because looking through some of the older posts, I’m pretty sketchy feeling on him currently. He seems like one of the more controversial docs on here and there isn’t a lot of recent discussion. Thanks to everyone for the help!
First, I don't think you necessarily need to be local to your LL doctor, especially since there are so few doctors doing CLL in the US. Personally, I flew across the country many times to do followups with Dr D and I would have had to do so regardless of which doctor I ended up going with.
Now I may be biased since I got my LL done with Dr. D, but I think he's a good doctor. His academic qualifications are very good, he seems knowledgable, and he has good bedside manner. He's also pretty young, so he's definitely more relatable to me (though of course youth is not really an advantage for doctors). He was actually more concerned about scarring than I was and he made very small incisions on my thighs during surgery compared to what I've seen some others post on the forum. I personally had a pretty good experience with him and have no problems recommending him.
Now there seems to be three controversial points that people on the forum like bringing up about him.
- The first one is that he is exaggerating how many cases he has done. I don't know if this is true or not; it's not like anyone can here can pull out any actual evidence for this other than word of mouth. He didn't have too many diaries on here in 2019, but he did have a lot more cases in 2020. I met multiple patients in the hospital and PT center who had surgery within a week of when I did. So at worse I think this could be a case of "fake it 'til you make it" which would certainly be controversial, but I guess every doctor has to start from somewhere. His CLL patient volume is definitely much higher now than when this thread first started. Also, keep in mind that only a tiny percentage of patients even go on this forum, let alone spend the time to write a diary.
- The second controversial point is that he is advertising CLL significantly compared to other doctors and focused on cosmetic cases vs fixing medical problems. This was one of the points people used to attack Dr. M early on in his career, but now that Dr. M is more established and has a ton of diaries on here, people don't bring it up anymore. However, a few cringeworthy billboards around LA are not on the same level as doing interviews across as many media sites as possible to promote the operation. He has definitely taken CLL advertising to a new level and has potentially increased the number of people who know about this surgery. Personally, I don't think CLL will ever become mainstream because it's too extreme, but people will have varying opinions on this. I don't think his advertising practices affect his skills as a surgeon though.
- The third controversial point seems to be his height. He seems to claim 5'9" to 5'9.5" in various sources people have found online and based on pictures some people claim that he is about 5'6". Having met him many times throughout the lengthening process, I would say he's definitely over 5'8" though maybe not quite 5'9". I was already past 5cm on lengthening before I was confident that I was a bit taller than him. I don't think he is exaggerating his height any more than a normal person would on the Internet. This also doesn't have anything to do with his surgical skills.
Again, I'm just a patient of his, so I don't really know that much more than you do. Before I had my surgery last fall I also read through this thread and all of his past journals. I reached out to a few doctors and ultimately went with him. I don't regret that decision at all.
However, I do want to point out that for LL there are many more important things to consider when you pick a doctor than where they are physically located or how much they cost. You should pick one that you trust and believe will perform the surgery well on you, and who will provide adequate post-operational support for any issues that you run into. Ultimately, no matter who you go with, most of the work for LL still comes from yourself. You'll be the one who has to do all the stretching and PT to stay ahead of the tightness. You will be the one taking your medication to stay ahead of the pain. The base rate at which your body makes bone callus will be the same regardless of which surgeon you go with. How fast you ultimately return to normal is based on the healing speed of your own body.
Which surgeon you go with (as long as it's in the US) is not the only impact on your chances of success with the surgery. Every surgeon who has journals on this forum has had cases of missing things during lengthening and running into issues because of it. While the surgeon having more experience with LL is great, you should also be looking at your own X-rays as well. Each surgeon has a case load of hundreds per year (if you count non-CLL cases) so you yourself are definitely the number one factor in your success with the surgery, given how long this procedure takes. To get the best outcome, be sure that you're ready to push yourself to the max before you do the surgery!
