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Yep. Especially since the cardiac surgery volume is higher than at any other hospital in the area, by far.

Thanks for sharing the story. I can add that, when my surgery was planned last year, Kaiser also had an idea who the surgeon would be. When I got the call to schedule the appointment with the surgeon, I asked about my choices. The explanation was that they first review the cases internally and...

My experience is along the lines of several statements people here already mentioned. More details below. I also had "awake sedation". Could talk to the cardiologist performing the procedure and tell her about my sensations (felt a minor pressure). But standing up afterwards was not quite easy...

Don't know about the "best" approach. But here are a few questions you can ask the surgeon, that are specific to the MVr(R): Number of mitral valve surgeries they are performing per year. (The results tend to be better, if it's at least 25). The odds of repair instead of replacement. (Typically...

The oral supplements of the vitamin seem to be more controlled/repeatable...

Sounds tough. Thanks for the story. Will keep it in mind if I ever need a hernia surgery. (Would not have thought it would be this bad pain-wise.) Here is to that!

I find the story to be disturbing. Sounds like you went in a worried state, which is not great. This is the reason why I'm glad you are happy about your providers, even when my own perception of them may be less rosy. You didn't comment on the outcome. I hope the surgery was successful. After...

I agree to disagree :) We might have different mindsets. (Which is certainly ok!) For me, to compare systems X and Y, I'd need to see a sizable statistics from both. Was there an angiogram ever done (CT or through catherization)? Or was he asymptomatic until the end? AFAIK, stents don't...

I don't think so. For all echos I ever had, it just wasn't the tech's job to interpret the echo scan results. They could be excited by the findings, and they know a fair amount. But it's really the cardiologist's job to assess the results, the degree of the leak, and so on. As an anecdote...

😲 What a story! Really glad you had the correct diagnosis and that you are with us now! As an aside, I didn't know that weakness in the upper legs could be a symptom of heart troubles. I know that things like the jaw pain, left arm numbness, back pain, stomach pain, heartburn, feed edema...

Thanks, the weekly averages are perfectly fine for me. Was wondering about how much of a workout you did. (If indeed the exercise was the sole explanation for the INR difference... in which case I doubt the effect is relevant for the vast majority of people.) It's more than what I've ever run...

Thanks for sharing the story. My interpretation is that the doctor's quality varies everywhere, and your neighbor had a really bad luck with that particular doctor. One could try to contrast the performance of the different systems overall, but would need "real statistics" for it. I'm always...

Interesting data. I'm just curious, what's the different in the typical daily miles run in these years?

It's "vertically integrated" entity, that's both the insurance and the provider. Or at least this is how it looks like from the patient's side. I'm sure internally they have different departments. But as a patient it can be nice to only deal with 1 party instead of 2. Locally it does have a...

Sounds good. Since you are already quite symptomatic, I'd think you are not in the position to wait too long. I'm only second-hand familiar with Stanford, and not at all with Dignity and UCSF. (My surgery was at Kaiser.) One metric is the surgery volume for a given center. The more the better...

Thanks a lot for the information. Just to be sure, did you mean that "Irregular heartbeat has NOT ... had any correlation with infection" ?

Some of which can look quite worrying if one actually reads it. I recall signing a waver before a colonoscopy, when my wife's face changed and she left the room. That looked more worrying to me that the actual procedure. Of course, it turned out that she didn't like the waver language about...

Thanks! It seems quite a lot. I remember seeing statements that they don't want to exceed 5 hours due to the impact from the heart-lung machine usage. It's nice that you had 2 surgeons. Ideally they had different sub-specialties.

It may be hard to get a precise comparison from a personal experience, I'm afraid. An accurate evaluation has to be based on statistics... When looking at my options pre-surgery I did find some cues though: CC has been top-rated for a couple of decades They are so popular that there is this...

Looks like a very extensive surgery. Just out of sheer curiosity, how long did it take?