Thomas's Posts

Nice trip! Cool thoughtful daughter too. You're young and will heal well. Hopeful that you will be a candidate for the ROSS. A surgeon that does a higher volume of these surgeries is more likely to say yes, so please take that into consideration, even if it means travelling a bit. You can speak to others on this site that have travelled interstate for the ROSS procedure and can give you advice. Godspeed.

Thomas, can you go out of state with your insurance? I know it seems far away but we have heart warriors that went to Mt Sinai in NYC, Wash State and Southern CA for their ROSS surgeries that are nationally ranked. Just wanting you to get the best surgery and type of surgery possible. Don't give up; others have had this challenge with their insurance company coverage requirements before and somehow got to where they wanted to be.

OK, so I talked to my Ross surgeon and he thinks that I am a good candidate for the procedure. He said that he has done 49 or 50 procedures in the last 6-7 years at UW Madison, and he is the chief Ross surgeon there. He also said that he trained under Ismail El-Hamamsy, which to me is encouraging. Any thoughts on him having enough experience. I feel confident in him and think that I'll decide to go ahead with the procedure. Should I be posting this elsewhere to get other members responses? Thanks everyone

Thomas, for sure, I would send a note to some of the ROSS warriors on this website. Timothy Andre, on this site, had his ROSS procedure at Mt. Sinai in NYC this year, where a lot of ROSS procedures are performed and el-H. is a ROSS surgeon. Timothy is super nice. Glad that your potential surgeon has done 50 ROSS procedures; it is good to know, as well, the outcome stats. They are required to track them. e.g, how many of the 50 had readmissions, went to the ER, mortality etc.