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Anyone know how good Kaiser Permanente is w/ esophagectomy?

Posted by mcdonsco @mcdonsco, May 19 4:45pm

I keep reading here about people going to very specific nationally recognized hospitals & treatment centers for their esophagectomy surgeries and it's starting to concern me that maybe I should be figuring out how to do the same?

My insurance / health care is all through Kaiser Permanente here in portland oregon and that's where I'm (so far) going to have the surgery.

But, does kaiser have a good track record for this? Are they "high volume" for this type of surgery?

Any/all info / experience with this would be greatly appreciated.

Interested in more discussions like this? Go to the Esophageal Cancer Support Group.

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portalwiz | @portalwiz | May 20 6:29am

I had a minimally invasive ivor-Lewis esophagectomy at Kaiser Permanente in Southern California in October 2024. (Age 72, female, good health except for T1a cancer diagnosis). I traveled to Kaiser West LA to be treated by thoracic surgeon Dr Abinobi. I was told he did about 15 of these surgeries a year. My outcome was excellent. After 9 days in the hospital I went home. I resumed my daily tasks after a month. Follow up care at my local Kaiser has been excellent.

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mcdonsco | @mcdonsco | May 20 10:17am
In reply to @portalwiz "I had a minimally invasive ivor-Lewis esophagectomy at Kaiser Permanente in Southern California in October 2024...." + (show)
Profile picture for portalwiz @portalwiz

I had a minimally invasive ivor-Lewis esophagectomy at Kaiser Permanente in Southern California in October 2024. (Age 72, female, good health except for T1a cancer diagnosis). I traveled to Kaiser West LA to be treated by thoracic surgeon Dr Abinobi. I was told he did about 15 of these surgeries a year. My outcome was excellent. After 9 days in the hospital I went home. I resumed my daily tasks after a month. Follow up care at my local Kaiser has been excellent.

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@portalwiz that's good to hear! Thank you and glad you're doing well!

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gpit | @gpit | May 20 2:15pm

I had Ivor Lewis at Riverbend in Springfield 9 months ago. Went home after 6 days, feeding tube for a month or so, have 0 issues swallowing but some issues with the volume of food at one time...still have numbness on right side where my lung was deflated, but it has improved since post-op... so far so good... I still show cancer with Signatera testing but no evidence of disease with CT and PET scan

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