Hi there,

Has anyone had any experiences with Dr. Brown at UCSD?

Thank you!

http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/sh...d.php?t=162293

The post above illustrates the fact that Dr. Brown only does scalenectomies and if he discovers that a rib resection is necessary, he won't do it. He has good reason to do only scalenes, as removing a rib is a much more involved procedure and can lead to many more complications, but often you need both. I wouldn't go with him unless I was positive that I only needed a scalenectomy, and I'm not sure how you could be so sure about that.

Besides that, he was definitely the most thorough and informative surgeon that I have seen for this condition out of my 4 consults in my surgeon-hunt so far. He spent about an hour with me doing tons of different tests on me and spent a very long time staring at my images. Also, his assistant has a very sexy South African accent.

Unless my MRI next week with Dr. Collins explicitly demonstrates that my scalenes are completely and solely causing the problem, I won't have my surgery with Brown. I want my surgeon to go into my body able to perform any TOS procedure that is necessary, and not wake me up afterward with news of needing another surgery for such a routine TOS procedure.

Thank you so much for all of the information. I too found him very thorough. I am going to do a scalene block for further accuracy.

Yes that was my conclusion too when I was looking into surgery. Did you see Dr. Gelabart? Let us know how your Collins mri goes and what it shows. I am considering doing this at some point too if my insurance covers it.

Okay I will. No, I haven't seen Dr. Gelabert yet but I have an appointment scheduled with him for the 8th. Although I know Gelabert has done the most surgeries besides Ahn perhaps, his appt and surgery dates are so far out that I didn't think I would end up choosing him until recently because I really liked Angle. Until this week, I was 99% sure that I would go with Dr. Angle because his appointments/surgery dates aren't too filled up and also he has also done many of these surgeries. In this past week, Angle's assistant has failed me on four different occasions by not returning my calls, answering my questions, or telling me what Angle has said about my case. Also, he e-mailed me himself yesterday telling me he'd give me a call today, which didn't happen. It's too bad because I really liked him but I need to be able to communicate with my surgeon.