I just spoke with Dr. Field's secretary, Terry West, regarding my case and yes, Dr. Field does fully endoscopic AN removal, including recurrences. In fact, he has just done one recurrence very recently and the woman has no facial paralysis whatsoever. Terry says that Dr. Field has done about 100 endoscopic AN removals, including those during his residency. He has been trained by Dr. Jho in Pittsburgh and he uses the same technoques, i.e., retrosigmoid and retromastoid. Terry does not have formal statistics re: facial nerve paralysis and hearing preservation but in the 3 years she has been there, she cannot recall a single patient with facial paralysis. Hearing preservation is possible but not guaranteed, obviously, that depends on a case. There is an ENT, Dr. Brian Spector., who assists during the surgery. I asked about hearing preservation in case anybody else is interested because I am totally deaf in my affected ear and it is not a consideration for me.
Dr. Field's website is not very informative and does not specifically state that he performs endoscopic AN removals even though he does. Here it is anyway:
www.orlandoneurosurgery.com. His patient coordianator is Terry West, you can e-mail her at
twest@orlandoneurosurgery.com or call at 407-975-0200 ext 8027. She is a very nice and kind lady.
Since Dr. Field was trained by Dr. Jho and uses the same techniques, I am including Dr. Jho's website here because it is much more informative:
http://drjho.com/acoustic_neuroma_surgery.htm.
It aslo looks like Dr. Field works with all insurance companies. I know quite a few people are turned off by SBI's initial fees, so that might be important. I will not post anything here regarding SBI because I feel that we have a lot of info about it from people who have already gone there.
It will probably be a few weeks before my phone consult with Dr. Field, so if anybody wants me to ask him any specific questions regarding statistics, instruments or anything else, e-mail me.
Eve
