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Need help – advice on Dr’s
Hello, everyone out there. I was wondering if anyone has had a non-mesh surgery/tissue repair with any of the following surgeons and your outcome and experience with them;
Dr William Brown from Fremont , Ca
Dr. Shirin Towfigh from Beverly Hills, CA
Dr David Khang Nguyen Oakland, Ca ( studied with Dr David Chen out of UCLA)
I really could use everyone’s input. I would like to know how your surgery went and would you recommend. Any experiences worth noting and how was their non mesh/tissue only repair technique.Thank you
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12 Replies
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Dr Towfigh,
Thank you for the response. That is the issue with KP I cant qualify experience or review. Dr Nguyen is great and has been so kind and accommodating. I am just nervous because I am having trust issues again with Kaiser from how they handled this entire thing, proving to them since week 4 i was having issues. Now my mesh is adhered to my spermatic cord and Im scared.
Dr Brown has been nothing short of amazing with his knowledge and care. He knows his stuff , but being out of network will cost and I have went to the Kaiser board to ask them to pay so I could get this done now in the age of COVID and they denied my request. Plus its alot of money.
I don’t know where to go.
SFIrishGuy
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Those of use who do tissue repairs and mesh removal are few.
On the West Coast: I do them. I know Dr Brown does them. Dr Nguyen is a new hernia surgery resource for those in the Kaiser Permanente system, which may be why you can’t read much reviews on him. I don’t know how adept he is with tissue repairs.
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Check out Dr. Kevin Petersen in Las Vegas, Nevada. He performs pure tissue repairs and did my bi-lateral repair on 1/24/2019.
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The Shouldice procedure does not remove the mesh. A surgeon performing the Shouldice procedure might remove mesh, but there is nothing specifically “Shouldice” about mesh removal. There is no “Shouldice mesh removal” procedure.
Removing mesh and repairing hernias are really two different specialties.Most surgeons that remove mesh do not “repair” a hernia during the surgery. The hernia is often closed already by the scarring that has occurred from the mesh. I had one direct hernia on my right side, and one supposed lipoma on my left side. Neither side was “repaired” when the mesh was removed and I have had no signs of a recurrence. The scarring and stiffening of all of the tissue around the mesh, and the tissue buildup itself, was enough, apparently. I would imagine that even the healing that occurs after the mesh removal binds the hole closed.
I would separate mesh removal from worries about hernia repair. Find a good mesh removal surgeon first.
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I may be wrong but one thing is to remove the mesh which is the hardest bit and one thing is how you then fix the hernia….Dr.Brown might use shouldice or another procedure based on the hernia and what he finds once in….I am speculating on the many posts he contributed to which I always found useful and helpful
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Good intentions,
One of the issues is I am a hugely active person, exercising everyday so it is hard to moderate for sure. So I am hoping that a shouldice procedure would be a great way to get this poisoned mesh out of me.
Its all about finding the right doctor where I wont lose all my savings as well.
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Good Intentions,
Thank you for the reply. I know it is hard for others and Doctors to correlate the numbing to the surgery but I know it is related. I feel it can be the mesh strangulating my insides somehow or creating pressure against something. I know Alphea, whom responded to this thread as well that it could be a Fascia. I have never heard of a fascia and this has not brought up yet in any doctor visit I have had but will mention this next time I have a doctors visit. Everything in the world is in a state of emergency due to the Covid 19 epidemic so I don’t know if this will delay my journey further.
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To good intentions,
Thank you for taking the time to respond to my thread. You’ve always been very helpful when I’ve actually ask questions on the forms here on Hernia Talk. As you know I have been suffering from a mesh hernia repair back in August 2019 and have been suffering ever sense. Foolishly I trusted the medical system and my hospital before for the right doctor and I don’t wanna make the same mistake twice since I didn’t do my research prior to going in. Right now I’m trying to find the right doctor to do a mash removal and hernia repair so hopefully I can have the pain Lee subside. I have found numerous articles and information on Dr. Brown whom I have an appointment with in two weeks the only thing is that he’s out of network. But I’ll have to work with that moving forward if I choose Dr. Brown. Dr Nguyen has been great and informative to me the only thing is I can’t find information on him online to his qualifications or satisfaction from other patients which is making me a little nervous. I seem to really want to have the feedback from the hernia community so I don’t know if I should move forward.
I still suffer every day from pain in my groin to tingling sensations numbing of my left leg to pain in my left foot. It makes me very nervous since all the doctors I’ve talked to including Dr. Brown can’t seem to find a correlation between a hernia mesh and any loss of feeling in my leg. This is just a scary time for me right now.
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I have the same experience with reduced activity and lower back pain…I think it is probably the fascia that requires movement…is the weakened fascia or the muscles the problem with an hernia? Probably both….the nerves get caught in the problem and you might be seeing just that. I personally would recommend moving even if so slowly….
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I think that Dr. Brown will probably be able to at least determine if your mesh pain can be moderated or eliminated. It might be that the ways that you’ve changed your activities to avoid mesh pain have created the conditions for your leg pain, and that the two are not directly connected. I know that when i was much more active that if I got out of my normal routine new aches and pains would appear for no apparent reason. Getting back to my normal activities would make them go away. One common pain was lower back pain, that actually needed more activity to feel right. It was counter-intuitive but it was real.
I hope that you can make it to see Dr. Brown, with all of the pandemic limitations happening. Good luck.
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To good intentions,
Thank you for taking the time to respond to my thread. You’ve always been very helpful when I’ve actually ask questions on the forms here on Hernia Talk. As you know I have been suffering from a mesh hernia repair back in August 2019 and have been suffering ever sense. Foolishly I trusted the medical system and my hospital before for the right doctor and I don’t wanna make the same mistake twice since I didn’t do my research prior to going in. Right now I’m trying to find the right doctor to do a mash removal and hernia repair so hopefully I can have the pain Lee subside. I have found numerous articles and information on Dr. Brown whom I have an appointment with in two weeks the only thing is that he’s out of network. But I’ll have to work with that moving forward if I choose Dr. Brown. Dr Nguyen has been great and informative to me the only thing is I can’t find information on him online to his qualifications or satisfaction from other patients which is making me a little nervous. I seem to really want to have the feedback from the hernia community so I don’t know if I should move forward.
I still suffer every day from pain in my groin to tingling sensations numbing of my left leg to pain in my left foot. It makes me very nervous since all the doctors I’ve talked to including Dr. Brown can’t seem to find a correlation between a hernia mesh and any loss of feeling in my leg. This is just a scary time for me right now.
Joshua -
If you use the Search function on the upper left of the first page you’ll find many stories about Dr. Brown. I think that Dr. Towfigh generally performs mesh implantations. Her current focus is Ovitex, apparently, a new “bio-mesh”.
I have not heard of Dr. Nguyen and can’t find any information about him on the internet. But Dr. Chen is well-known at the Lichtenstein Institute. The Lichtenstein procedure is a mesh procedure. And, apparently he does mesh removal and mesh implantation, via laparoscopy.
Good luck.
https://connect.uclahealth.org/2019/06/24/revision-bi-lateral-hernia-surgery-with-mesh-removal/
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