Will the local community hospital be ok for my Maze?

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Posted by Henry Alken on January 05, 2003 at 16:32:03:

Mike's recent posting about 'the average population differentiates little between doctors' is so true.

I volunteer at two local hospitals here. My fellow volunteers cannot understand why I went all the way to Cleveland, Ohio, for cardiac surgery when I could have gone to XXX Hospital which is only five minutes away. They are totally puzzled. The fact that XXX Hospital did not have a cardiac facility until last year doesn't faze them a bit. They think I was not too bright to go as far away as Cleveland and 'waste all that travel money'. This attitude, which is widespread, completely baffles me.

One of my in-laws, who was in the Army at the time, went to a large Army hospital for a delivery. She chose an obstretician who was very research-oriented, who wrote long technical papers for learned journals and who had one or two PhDs in addition to his MD. After many hours of labor she requested a Caesarian. He declined without giving a reason. Eventually the baby was born vaginally but during the process lost air for nine minutes. The baby was hopelessly Cerebral Palsy - blind, deaf, unable to move, no mental function. He died recently at twenty years old. The army accepted full financial responsiblity for the negligence and incompetence of the learned doctor. This doctor is still practicing in California on unsuspecting women.

Doctors are not all equal. The powers of judgement and decision-making vary widely. A wrong decision at a critical moment can mean walking into a hospital and leaving like Christopher Reeve.

Two weeks ago I had a hernia surgery. I chose the surgeon based on information from two of the nurses in the hospital where he works (they have to take care of surgical mistakes), and also by emailing seven of his former patients and asking them for their opinion and whether they would go back to him again. As a result of choosing carefully I am completely happy with the result.

Mike has obviously done a lot of research and is very knowledgable about the heart. This is what it takes to get a good result - many hours reading on the Internet and asking lots of questions.

Long before I met Dr McCarthy for my Maze at CC, I felt I had known him for years because of all I had read about him from the postings on this board. No way would I pick someone out of the Local Yellow Pages to operate on my heart!

Please excuse the rant. Choose carefully.

Henry

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