- Search CSN:
- Members: Login to search all areas
- Not a member? Click here to search public areas
Northern California Kaiser Permenente da Vinci Program
|
|
Dec 03, 2011 - 10:22 pm
If any one has any experiences to share on their da Vinci at N.Cal Kaiser Permanente please do so on this thread. I'm presently on AS,but soon would be making some tough choices. Currently there are 4 da Vinci Urologists- 2 at Walnut Creek, One at Oakland and one at Santa Clara Kaiser. These are fellowship trained robotic Surgeons, not laparoscopic trained with mini-fellowships (2-5 days) in da Vinci,and some of them have actually crossed the magic 250#. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions. Thanks |
Joined: Mar 2010
I think commented elsewhere in response to a post of yours that I interviewed a couple of NorCal Kaiser daVinci surgeons. They do not do ONLY PCa surgery (they do other types of daVinci surgeries as well) and didn't have enough PCa experience for me to trust them to do an adequate job.
If you talk to any NorCal daVinci surgeons again make sure to ask them specifically how many PCa surgeries they've done, what their success rate has been (and how they define success) and ask for references you can speak to in order to verify the results.
IMHO, 250 is not a magic number. It's the bare minimum. If I ever considered surgery for PCa, which isn't going to happen, I wouldn't let anyone w/less than 1000 PCa surgeries touch me. They are out there, but not at Kaiser.
There was a guy in Florida I contacted a couple of years ago. The cost of the surgery wasn't that high (around $30k if I recall) but it seemed like he just was running a PCa mill cracking out as many PCa surgeries as he could fit in. That really turned me off but I never was that interested in resorting to surgery anyway.
FWIW, if you have to stay w/Kaiser and need treatment, I'd go w/BT before surgery. They have a good track record w/BT at their Roseville facility and BT (despite having it's own problems) offers you a much better possiblity of a "normal" quality of life following treatment than surgery does.
Good luck!
Joined: Sep 2010
Hey rch,
I was operated on by Kaiser in Denver Colorado. The surgeon was also fellowship trained with 250