If you have ever talked to a group of men who have had surgery for prostate cancer, you may have heard some stories that just break your heart. We have. The stories are very disconcerting for all of us here at the International Robotic institute for prostate cancer in Miami, because we have helped thousands of patients defeat prostate cancer. We know that the complications from surgery to remove the prostate – a radical prostatectomy, performed either in open surgery or in laparoscopic form using a robot – ought to be minimal. But often, they are devastating.
A bad surgeon can ruin your life.
We encourage you to listen to this advice with an open heart:
Find the best surgeon you can. Get it done right.
Radical prostatectomy is a very difficult operation. It takes not only skill, but the kind of expertise you get only after being involved in a lot of procedures, first from the sidelines as a doctor in with years of professional training, and then mastering the craft of prostate cancer surgery under the Supervision of an expert surgeon.
Only the top rated prostate cancer surgeons in the world specifically focus on the prostate. Usually this is all the surgeon focuses on and they perform thousands and thousands of these cases.
You certainly don’t want to have your prostate procedure performed under someone in training or with little experience.
Another key factor, since there are so many poor surgeons out in the field practicing medicine, you cannot trust what you read on the Internet or from the hospitals marketing propaganda.
Our goal is to weed out the bad surgeons, so they stop doing procedures they aren’t skilled enough to do.
As for you, well, this is your one shot at this. Do your due diligence. How can you find the right surgeon? We have created a prostate cancer surgery checklist with some of the best experts in the field. We encourage you to take all of these things into consideration before you decide to undergo prostate cancer surgery:
Find a high-volume surgeon that does a lot of these procedures. An added benefit here is that if they do a lot of these, and do them well, then everyone is going to be better at helping you. The nurses know how to take care of recovering radical prostatectomy patients, and there is a wing or set of beds just for those men – and not also Patients who have undergone an appendectomy or hysterectomy, where the postoperative needs are completely different. How do you find a high-volume center?
Look for a place where different specialties work together. Top surgeons have centers with multidisciplinary teams – experts from different specialties including urology, radiation oncology, medical oncology, and pathology – working together on prostate cancer patients. Prostate cancer is a complicated disease with a wide spectrum of presentations and pathologies, and there is no “one-size-fits-all” answer for every patient. If your approach is multidisciplinary, then you have the wonderful benefit of getting opinions from a team of experts, not just one physician. This will ensure the approach is more thorough and also more thoughtful.
Ask the surgeon about results: Does he or she keep results? For how many years? The best surgeons, like Dr. Sanjay Razdan follow their patients for life Dr Razdan has followed his Robotic Prostatectomy patients for over 20 years after their prostatectomy, this enables him to ascertain whether the PSA is still undetectable, whether there was any incontinence, whether erections returned on their own or with the help of medications or other treatments.
Then double-check. “To be honest, in Dr Razdan’s experience, some surgeons lie and it’s hard to determine when someone is not being honest. The most important factor is the reputation of the surgeon. One thing that helps is asking the surgeon to provide you with names of his or her patients who have agreed to speak to other patients about their experience. This is extremely important, and will demonstrate that the surgeon has patients that are very happy, takes the time to put this together and understands the importance. of a large support network to help a cancer patient decide what’s best for him.” Dr Razdan is the world’s leader in putting up hundreds of actual unedited video testimonials of his patients who have undergone robotic prostatectomy with him. You can thus hear it from the “horse’s mouth” so to say, what recovery was really like. This in itself speaks volumes about his expertise and integrity while reporting his surgical outcomes.
How many radical prostatectomies has the surgeon done? The answer should be in the thousands! If it’s something like “several,” do not walk away – RUN!
Ask more than one doctor to recommend the best prostate surgeon in your area. (Note: Many doctors are in group practices, and will try and recommend that you go see the specialist in that group practice. This is why it’s good to ask different doctors in different practices.)
And last but not least, don’t be concerned about your doctor getting offended with you asking as many questions as needed or buy even seeking a second opinion. Asking questions or seeking a second opinion should not make you feel intimidated, and it’s very common and always recommended. If the situation were reversed, do you think your doctor would not make every effort to find the best possible surgeon?
Remember, It’s your prostate, it’s your recovery, it’s your life. You don’t want to be one of those guys saying afterward, “My surgeon was not very good.”
YOU HAVE ONLY ONE PROSTATE and YOU WILL GET JUST ONE CHANCE TO DO IT RIGHT!