Hi Beth,

In my opinion for what it's worth there are a few options that you need to consider when deciding upon which doctor to choose..........
1. Where you live--- hopefully you live close to a medical center with access to competent physicians.

2. A doctor who knows about TOS----these are generally vascular surgeons, chronic pain physicians or any really well educated doctor....... although this is sometimes difficult to find. We tend to educate them about TOS...... especially if they are a lone doctor in a clinic with no other physician to help educate each other...... is imperative that physicians actually read medical journal articles and this is not often the case..... anyway getting off topic here sorry....

3. You will need testing done. As stated earlier access to medical testing is imperative. There are many postings as to which testings should be done to determine your diagnosis. I'm not going to go into exceptional detail here but I will note the tests that I have had done to diagnose my TOS.... [I developed my TOS after lifting a patient up from a toilet that was too heavy and injuring my neck, back, shoulder and arm. (I am a nurse--- or was five years ago until my injury)]
my testing includes------ head and neck MRI
EMG----probably about four of them all normal
chest x-ray--- which found cervical ribs
(didn't help much-- as this makes the brachial plexus space smaller)
bilateral Doppler ultrasound of the brachial plexus
veinogram

All of this eventually led to the first rib resection as I was diagnosed with vascular thoracic outlet syndrome.... I do however have neurological symptoms as well... I don't regret having my surgery I had six months completely pain-free until my physiotherapist pushed me so far that all of my symptoms came back....so I am just the same as I was presurgery.....don't know what can happen now managing life on drugs until I figure out what to do.....may not do anything may have to live this way

such is life

I hope this helps you although my best advice to you is to listen to what everybody has to say and take bits and pieces from that and decide what's best for you. You are in control of your diagnosis and you are the one who says yes or no to what happens.

However it is in your best interest to take the advice of physicians............... unless they were putting you in pain !!!!
never ever ever let a physician put you into a position (physically) during an exam that causes you pain! If you do this it may cause you more physical harm and more nerve damage if you are neurologically impaired......always keep your comfort in mind....and the fact that you are in control.

If you need any medical articles pertaining to this please let me knowI have many many many articles and can you e-mail them to you in a PDF form so that you can print them out and take them to your doctor should you need to convince them of diagnosis!!!!!!

Please feel free to private message me if you want more conversation or post hereI will check up and see if you need anything else. However the advice that you get from other posters may be more than enough to cover what you are looking for

there are so many people here with so much knowledge it is frightening.

I think if you got us all in a room together it would scare the hell out of all doctors who are looking after us

take care and best of luck!!

Victoria