I saw Dr. Gelabart at UCLA today and he is by far my favorite Surgeon out of the 3 that are in L.A. A really caring and nice man. Fairly thorough although did not look at my mri's,just saw reports.Asked alot of questions.Kept saying "Interesting" when he was examining me He said that Dr. Jordan usually only refers patients to him that have failed his injections .etc, He saw no arterial and venous symptoms. Suggested I try Facet Block injections or Cervical Epidural just to rule out the disc bulge and stenosis being the cause of my pain before doing Surgery. He does Trasaxilary Rib Resection and partial scalenctomy.He thinks this is the superior way to go. says he has a 90% success rate. Once in a while a patient comes back to get a full scalenectomy. He says the scalpular pain only has about a 50% chance of getting resolved but arm pain is usually better. he didnt know statistics on the shoulder pain (Traps,pec minor) etc because not everyone has that pain so they dont keep track of that. He relys mostly on the scalene block test( They all do) so I would want to repeat that if I decide to proceed with surgery since I think it was questionable weather it worked or not. He didnt think Ahn's Angiogram or angioplasty test was a good idea,or that the MRA was necessary. he was so-so on a Mac or SSEP test.(Has anyone had either of these? Were they helpful in the Diagnosis? Where did you have them done?I'm particulary interested in the Mac,because my pec Minor is really tight.)
He gave me a 3 page doc on TOS which describes all the tests etc. I decided to pay cash because he is out of network on my insurance and he only charged $200 for the visit. it would have been $700 if they billed insurance. If I decided to do surgery, I would have to wait until August anyway when my insurance changes to Blue Cross(keeping fingers crossed this happens)

Dr. Ahn said I had Arterial and Venous symptoms because my veins stuck out of my neck and my pulse on right side was lower. No else has said this,so dont really beleive him. He wants everyone to do an Angiogram/Angioplasty so he can see where the impingement is and decide then which operation to do.He will either do Rib-Resection/Scalenectomy or Pec Minor Tenotomy, so he is the most versatile.I just didnt get a great feeling about him. in a way his approach makes sense,but just seems very invasive especially because I dont have any arterial symptoms. I beleive he is writing a paper on this and like nospam,I dont want to be a guniea pig.

I also saw Dr. Mckenna at Cedars Sinai. He hardly examined me at all. thought my left side pulse was worse than right,but said that test is unreliable.He was the most conservative,said to try more injections,pt etc He takes the whole rib out,no scalenectomy.Didnt feel particularly confident with him. He has some kind of tic that makes him look like he is going to sleep when he is talking to you. also I heard a horror story about a botched surgery from another Dr. Probabl would not go with him.. He is not on my insurance yet either. His visit was $600 through insurance. I will probably end up paying 400 of it.



If I had to choose today I would go with Dr. Gellabart,but luckily I dont. i have been doing PT with Dr Ando(No-spams PT) and I am feeling better overall but have had a couple of flare-ups lately. i am going to give it a few more months and if I still cant go back to work by August or September I will
consider it again. Of course I go back and forth depending on how bad the pain gets.This summer i may check into the Denver Dr's or at least call Dr. Sanders on the phone.

I see Dr. Jordan next week and will discuss the surgeons with him and injections again and see who he recommends for the facet block or epidural. and also make him take a look at my cervical MRI as I didnt have it last time and we want to revisit that.

i still will probably try the neural prolotherapy at Orthohealing if I continue to have flare-ups,before I go with the facet block or epidural. I hate how I have to do these invasive injections just to rule something out. I was also told they could make things worse for the nerves and muscles by Dr. Gart(Pain Dr. at Cedars)