Stories of failure

[jump.ship]

As for members that are not in North America. My heart goes out to them. They don't seem to be served by their health insurance or the doctors very well.

I am politically quite left, far left really, and I don't know what is more disappointing, that I have to travel thousands of miles AND pay a shit load of money for this surgery or the fact that our universal health care systems in Europe do not produce the kind of surgeon that can pull of these procedures flawlessly.

It's clear that only the private competitive market is producing world class surgeons here.

[merrix]

Yes, some good points coming back from those disagreeing with me.
but I still think you miss the target, at least if the target was to shoot my argumentation down.

I am not saying there are NO good doctors except for the famous, high volume ones. Of course there is. Maybe/probably not so many AS GOOD as them, but still of course some good ones.

But in that very sentence lies the heart of my argumentation.

1: Even if there are some other good ones, I wanted to find THE BEST, not just A GOOD one. There is a difference. And to some it matters, and appartently (as someone wisely pointed out above) to some it doesn't.

2: The problem then is, how do you find the good ones in that group of low-medium volume docs? Yes, you can develop a system/method for interviewing, talking to ex patients etc. I would research my ass off if I went to my local doc. But my point is rather, why go through that hassle of doing all that research when you can just skip all that and go to someone you KNOW is right up there as one of the best in the world? Then you have just taken that whole doc picking issue out of the equation. And substantially reduced your risk.

Evidence is there. The top quartile of docs (when splitting by volume) has a far lower infection rate than all the other three quartiles (between which there are no large differences. Which means that dong a few more than very few doesn't really help. It is not until a doc does A LOT of them that the advantage of lower infection rate really kicks in.
It also means that 75% of all implant surgeries are done by docs with clearly higher infection rates than what those are for the surgeries performed by the remaining 25%.
Why does anybody want to pick their doc from the pool of the 75% with higher infection rates?
Saying that "I do my research" is still to work against the odds. It is trying to find the best among the worst. Instead of just starting out with a pool of good choices and then just pick from them.
And furthermore, the likes of Eid and Kramer have even lower infection rates than the average of their peers in the top quartile. Meaning the top percentile is clearly better than the top quartile. So what we have is an exponentially increasing chance of avoiding infection with higher volume. Not a linear correlation. Exponential.

Money is of course always setting limits for what we can do. As one member from Spain above points out. I am lucky to have the financial means to not bother. I travelled 15,000 km (~10,000 miles) to get to the surgeon I believed had the best chance of giving me a great result and least chance of giving me an infection. I flew business and I stayed three weeks in a Manhattan hotel to be ready for the trip back and to wait and see if there were any complications before I left.
I know everyone cannot do that and I respect that.
But apart from the money reason, I don't buy many other reasons. "Hassle of travelling" is a poor excuse to me. Yes it is a hassle, but some are prepared to take some hassle in life to get what is important to us and some aren't. Simple.

Also agree that people here looking to get implanted are not helped by the advice to go to the top handful docs if they can't for some reason. The discussion on how to help them in ther quest of picking the golden egg from the pool of (mostly) poor ones must run here as well.

My post was not aimed to that. It was aimed at steering those who can towards an easy route to a very high probability of success.

Someone said "All implants cannot be done by Eid, Kramer etc".
No. Not everybody can go to university, get a top job, make more money than the majority either. But is that a reason not to do it? I think for myself, what is best for me? And in this case, as an individual, you CAN go to them. They have no longer waiting times than others. So that's not an excuse.

Good discussion. Keep it up.

[jfruedam]

Oh, how nice for people living in US or with the available resources to travel. Unless they do charity work I guess the rest of us are fucked up then, how encouraging. Just fuck my life.

[Gt1956]

Merrix, no real reason to argue with you. Your system worked pretty good for you, I'm glad for you. But in the big picture, just how many implants can the popular 3 do? There lies one of my points. Even at a 1000 each per year. I just don't see how they can satisfy the need. Thus our healthcare system, however you want to look at it. Isn't keeping up. Btw, I'm fairly happy with the USA healthcare system. But I have worked (since 17) at places that provided good health benefits.
In my mind, the real problem is finding the good quality guys that might be considered a little below the top 3. That isn't an easy task.
Using myself as an example. There is a recent member that was implanted only 30 miles from me. He is very happy & I'm happy for him. I have searched his surgeon's reputation online twice. Both times I found 2 instances of disciplinary action from the state medical people.
#1 appears to be some indiscretion with a female in his practice. Ok, I'm male. While not happy that he showed poor judgement, I could live with it.
#2 he lost his license to prescribe pain meds. The report is a bit vague but the timeline led me to think that it might be associated to #1.
After some serious thought. I crossed his name off of my list. A medical mistake, I feel is worse than a moral mistake.
I think that this guy might have the skill to move into the tier right below the magic 3. Just for me to feel comfortable. I need the disciplinary action a little farther in the past than it is right now. I do believe that people can learn from mistakes, it just takes some time.

[newbie443]

Stories of failure popping up more than usually lately.
Moron docs leaving open holes in the scrotum, destroying urethras, causing unbearable pain by installing too long cylinders, diagnosing with infection and wanting to take the whole thing out when there is no infection, reservoirs in the leg (!), curved penises due to incorrect cylinder length, floppy heads due to too short cylinders, infections.

The list is long.
None of them has been caused by one of the top docs.

While none of the recent postings of problems including infections as you mentioned have been by top doctors all you have to do is go to your doctors web site to see the number and dates of his patients with infection this year. Just because none of the "top" docs patients have not posted threads on this site about problems does not mean it has not happened.

And still, every time I or someone else give the advice to go to one of the best, a shitstorm of replies will say that
"not only the top docs can do this surgery"
"if you fly to X or Y you will overfly a lot of good surgeons"
"there are a lot of low volume doctors who are just as good as the famous ones"
"the high volume docs do not have time to treat you as passionately as the local doc"
Bla, bla, bla.

Well, no, not only the top docs can do the surgery. But since we know they can, and we know a fair percentage of the rest can't, why risk going to someone else and be the unlucky one to find a crap doc?

Yes maybe you overfly a couple of good ones. But you will overfly a couple of idiots as well. And you don't want to take the risk of ending up under their knife. Mostly you will overfly a whole lot of mediocre/average ones, who might get you a decent result at an increased risk compared to the top ones. And why take the risk with any of them?

No, there probably are not many low volume docs as good as the famous ones. Maybe good enough if you settle for average. But not if you want the best possible outcome with the minimal risk of a horror show.

Seems nobody is complaining about the responsiveness and passion of e.g. Eid or Kramer...

Again not recently. But it has happened in the past. I still have the e-mails saved and there is a thread on this site where I received a fix by Jamie the AMS rep in a few days after 3 weeks of contact with my doc saying he could fix the problem in a office visit but refusing to do so.

And as I have linked before, there is research clearly showing the strong correlation between number of surgeries the doc performs and a low infection rate

I understand there will always be poeple who cannot for some reason go to the top docs. Insurance/financial maybe the obvious one.
But stop giving me the crap that the top 2-4 are not better. Because they are.
Finding another one who is good is possible. But it is simply a matter of risk. Going with them eliminates the risk of you choosing the wrong doc. And that is a bloody good start of getting good results from your implant surgery.

Better? Highly likely. Lower infection rate? Again highly likely. But no one is perfect and things happen. All doctors have reoperation rates. And when they do (yes to even the best) then being 1/2 way across the country or around the world cannot be better. That is why I always say to look local for a very good doctor who has the same concerns about infection rate, minimizing or eliminating size loss, and surgical skill. And there have been many of these very good doctors listed on this site. But if after looking local if you cannot find one of this very good doctors then to expand your search.

Friend we are both saying the same thing. Doctor choice is important. I am just adding that local care is important enough to check on. Had I found a very good doc in my area I would not have gone to who I did. I still believe that I made the best choice for me. But before I did so I checked with my local doctors and did my research. And I still believe others should do the same.

I can't help but wonder though if we both would feel as strongly as we do had you been one of your doctors infections or I had not had my problems to try to deal with 1/2 way across the country.

Take care brother.

[merrix]

Yes we are saying the same thing and yet you make it sound like we don’t.
I don’t say even the best is perfect. Nobody ever is.
I don’t say they never have cases of infection.

I am saying they are better. And so do you. Better. Not perfect.
And I am saying they have lower infection rates. Not no infection cases ever. Less.

That is just facts.

What we do with those facts is our choice. If we put higher value in not having to get on a flight or higher value on minimizing risk of getting our dick fucked up is everyone’s decision to make.

My opinion is a lot of people get the priorities wrong. But of course, if people got priorities right all the time, the world would be a very different place, so why would everybody get it right when choosing an implant doc?
Won’t happen.
But maybe I can influence someone to help themselves. I actually know I already did and I will keep trying for yet some time.

Those who have other priorities, set other standards for themselves, will continue to disagree.

[David_R]

Yes, there is a higher risk when you allow a surgeon of lesser repute than the famous ones, but you can lessen that risk considerably by interviewing surgeons and prior patients.

I totally agree, brother! Several/many of us here at FT have had wonderful results so it really is not only 2 choices or nothing.

[oneperson]

I have to insist. Sometimes (many times) is not only a question of priorities, but posibilities.

My absolute priority when I decided to go for implant was not have infections, and keep as much size as I could. But I am limited by money resources. And i simply cannot afford the costs of going for Kramer or Eid. Not even if I take from eating. Simply not enough money in bank, nor chance of get a credit or even in case of getting, I would not be able to pay after.

So I had to go with the best I could afford.

[merrix]

Yes.
That’s what I said.
Money can be an issue which limits our options.

[MK1965]

I just want to add my 2c.
My insurance was not contracted with big 3’s. All of them would be full out of pocket pay. Maybe, insurance would pay a bit for facility if it is in network but still it would cost me a lot.
I had very good implant urologist (doing about 100 per year) who was in network and in my home town so I went with him. He was recommended by one of FT brothers here who was implanted by him 2 years ahead of me.
My implant cost me only $1450 out of pocket.
At consultation, I was told he will go with Titan. I did not have enough information about Titan rigidity and bad flaccid angle and that is what I regret. I would prefer to have AMS LGX but now is to late. He does both.
If my implant ever fails, next one will be AMS.
MK