Plastic Surgeon in Seattle...

I have met with Dr. Scott at Providence. He was recommended by my local breast surgeon.

I am also meeting with Dr. Paige at the Polyclinic. Quite a few of the local ladies here have used him and been happy with their reconstruction.

I used Dr Bryan McIntosh who is in Bellevue, near Overlake Hospital, meticulous, excellent work , and able to think outside the box. I had Dr Isik, not as happy, very old fashioned attitude, .....he is the doctor and will tell you what to do. Dr McIntosh is also a very kind person, as well as open minded. Depends on what kind of doctor you want.

Several people on this thread spoke of Dr. Frank Isik. I went to him 10 years ago for implants. I CANNOT recommend him at all. At the first appointment I had asked to look at his notebook of photos of before and after photos of patients and they were really not impressive, However, I decided to have him do my tissue expander because he had been recommended and I had not found anyone else in the area.

He did not give me any choices regarding the tissue expander or the final implant -- gummy bears or saline. He used a very generic-looking saline tissue expander that was to be left in as the final product, no nicely-shaped implant, or "gummy bear" as I wanted. His attitude the whole time I dealt with him was insensitive and hypocritical. Everything that could go wrong, went wrong.

Immediately after the surgery, I discovered that I had an open, unstitched and unhealed hole in the incision. Also, the drain broke right away and I was still putting out a lot of lymphatic fluid but he didn't want to do anything about it. I got an infection with all of the bandaging for the hole in the incision, and then I developed a seroma because of all of the fluid. The tissue expander then started to push out of the incision. I had a half inch of the TE protruding from my chest.

Everytime something went wrong I called his staff about it and they would call back and let me know that he did not want to do anything about the problems. Finally, he decided to surgically take it out, but I had to wait several weeks with a tissue expander hanging a half inch out of my chest, a seroma, and an infection, for him to schedule my surgery. At my removal surgery (one month after the insertion surgery) he said as soon as i healed we would try the TE surgery again. When i contacted him after healing, he flat-out refused to do the TE surgery.

I did not like his attitude toward the whole ordeal and I found him to be dishonest. In the beginning I had asked him if he could also remove the "dog ear" that i had (he IS a plastic surgeon, after all!) and he said he wouldn't do that and he said if i lost weight the dog ear would go away. I ended up during the 10 years from that time, losing 110 lbs., and I still have that @#$% dog ear, same size it was before i lost weight. Dr. isik gets a DEFINITE BOTH THUMBS DOWN FROM ME!!!

I am not surprised, celia088, I had a massive, nasty infection after he (Isik) took out the TE when Ihad been doing fat grafting with him. He was pretty cold about, pretty autocratic. I had three fat grafting sessions with and kept very little of it. I have talkedwith other people who have had fat grafting Brava style with Dr Khouri, and they got much, much better results. He didn't follow Dr Khouri's method even though he supposedly was trained byhim and in one of the Brava trials. I suffered alot, and wound up getting an implant I didn't really want, because I couldn't afford decent, successful care with Khouri in Miami. I really just wanted my own tissue for my breast, not silicone, which was the best of a bad situation. Dr McIntosh helped me make the best result of my bad situation, lots of scaring from the infection, just a mess. Yes Isik, too old for Diep, I think he misses the prestige he got for doing that with a whole staff at uw dancing attendance on his every word.

celia088, sorry you had to deal with such a cold hearted person. His karma will be pretty bad.Did you get reconstructed eventually. ?

No, I wouldn't do DIEP. Was initially going to do DIEP when they chopped my breast off, then I thought I could have a breast without having to have the extremely grueling Diep surgery by getting the fat grafting instead from Isik, because I had wanted a breast out of my own tissue. He didn't follow the process he learned from Khouri at the Miami Breast Center. I knew he didn't have a lot of fat grafting experience, but I hoped he had some idea what he was doing. WRONG, he didn't. Wasted my fat, all because I couldn't afford to go see Khouri, or some other more experienced PS. Pissed me the hell off. I am happy enough with my implant. I am a little worried, because I noticed last night that I have a pin sized area that is on the incision line from the December 3rd nipple reconstruction, that looks slightly open with faint pinkness surrounding it for about a quarter inch diameter. Stressed me out so much I couldn't sleep and cried and got very upset about it last night. I scares me that this just showed up out of the blue almost a month after the surgery, seemingly for no reason. As soon as I noticed this I put Betadine on it and silver sulfidine cream and took this immune boosting herbal supplement, and lots of Vitamin C. I will see Dr McIntosh on Monday or Tuesday about it.

I am sorry you had all those problems and had to have more surgery. Oh myGod, the idea of waking up while they are doing surgery, words fail me. That is so very awful .

I hope you like your new smaller prosthetics. Good luck with your recovery.

My husband had a spot of melanoma on his back that was taken off by Dr Downey. It got infected, he treated it with the wrong antibiotic according to 5 other medical people I know, 2 MD's and 3 ARNP's. All if them really experienced and completely perplexed why he picked that antibiotic. It wound up opening up despite the sutures, wound up healing by secondary intention, with now 6 weeks later still areas of scabs. It really bugs him still. I told him at the time that it was the wrong antibiotic, but my husband is old fashoned and will stick with a doctor no matter what. I wouldn't trust that man to clip my toenails.