Review Detail

I can't say enough great things about Dr. J and the Mayo Clinic. First of all, I met with a couple other surgeons first and they all basically blew it off and told me not to worry about the pectus. But when I first met with Dr. J it felt like a much more comfortable and welcoming atmosphere. She seems to genuinely care about the condition and its effects on patients, which was definitely not a vibe that I got from the other surgeons. As far as the operation itself, I felt like it was a much easier experience than a lot of the experiences I have read on forums. I chose Dr J not only because she is very experienced, especially with adults, but also because of her techniques. She uses shorter bars, more bars to disperse the pressure, and she doesn't use stabilizers. I think all of those were a factor in my easy recovery. I believe I was in the hospital for 5 days. Be ready to work because they have you walking and using a spirometer right away. They are very aggressive with the pain management too, which is almost as important as the procedure itself. Other than the occasional sneeze/cough I can't recall my pain being over a 6 or 7/10. I was running about a month after the procedure and back to lifting weights at 6 weeks. I had my bars in for a little over 4 years. I really barely noticed they were there to be honest. I would've left them in if there weren't concerns of complications down the road. I just had my bars removed a week ago and that also went pretty smoothly. That was an outpatient procedure. I had a hematoma rupture and had to go back to the hospital but other than that it wasn't bad. I'm a little more sore than I expected but the bar removal is not as bad as the initial procedure. Cosmetically the chest looks great. There doesn't seem to be any regression whatsoever, which I was worried about. She wasn't able to fix the rib flaring but she gave me some pretty good leads on companies that make braces. Overall I give my experience an A+ all around!