LizaJane,

As you may or may not know, Dr. Fabien Bitan did my lumbar fusion in April of 2006. He fused L1 to S1 in two separate surgeries...First he fused the front in an eight hour surgery and then the back in another eight hour surgery. I have no regrets about this surgery...I am not completely pain free LizaJane, but Dr. Bitan is the only surgeon that would agree to help me with the horrible daily pain I lived with and I had seen about 17 of the best, top docs in three states...He is a fantastic doc...with top notch credentials....

I had the cervical spine fused in August of 2005 in Philadelphia. I have begun to have problems with the cervical fusion about a year after the surgery, but the surgeon would never address the situation and always just seemed to ignore my complaints of numbness in the hands and pain in the shoulders and down the arms....Anyway...

I have now asked Dr. Bitan to look at the cervical spine. Dr. Bitan is much, much easier to talk too and while I am not going to say that he never loses his temper...I have not seen it and he never has with me...My surgeon in Philadelphia throws temper tantrums and acts like a child that does not get his own way...I have grown tired of dealing with his outbursts...He is angry too that I allowed Dr. Bitan to do the lumbar fusion. He thought I should only have a spinal cord stimulator....so every time I see him he brings up the lumbar fusion making it very difficult to talk to him and very uncomfortable. The last time I saw him I simply said I was there to talk about the cervical spine...period...


I have a great deal of respect for Dr. Bitan and I think he does for his patients. He invites me to come to look at my films with him and discusses things he sees on the films, pointing out different things. I think if I were you, I would schedule an appointment with Dr. Bitan. You need to have a second opinion...I believe Dr. Bitan to be very honest with me and to date has been right about every thing that is wrong with my spine. You owe it to yourself to see him...He is a top doc as well and has top, top credentials...Check him out....


http://www.bitanmd.com/