Complaint Review: Osborne Head And Neck Institute - Los Angeles California

I found Dr. Hamilton at the recommendation of a Doctor on the East coast (that I found out later had never even meet Dr. Hamilton) that I wanted to do the surgery but he did not take my insurance. I had a 5x6mm hole in my septum and to fix this Hamilton sliced my forehead open 5 inches behind the hairline and drilled into my sinuses to feed some sort of scope into my sinus cavity, to procure cartilage. He cut out my entire nasal structure (healthy cartilage of my dorsum, septum and nasal tip) and left my nose a mushy flappy mess. My nose is now shorter from the profile, wider from the front view, I can't breathe out of one side the other side whistles and my bridge has collapsed. Hamilton trimmed my columella and anterior nasal spine.

Because there is much less cartilage and bone in my nose there is no support for my upper lip and it has sunken in where the columella meets the upper lip resulting in trouble talking. One eyebrow is lower than the other, the skin on my forehead is loose. The site around the scar is balding and the top of my head is completely numb. My consultation with Hamilton was very short. He seemed like a nice guy but didn't make eye contact with me or appear to listen when I was explaining about what happened to my nose. The examination of my nose consisted of a camera "scope" that was stuck up my nose to see the perforation, he did not feel my nose with his fingers like other doctors have done. It was my understanding that he was going to put a cartilage graft over the hole and he said he needed to get the cartilage from my sinus cavity.

He then gave me a whole shpeal and said (and this is almost verbatim) "that the best way to get the cartilage he needs, was to make an incision down the center of my face and extract the cartilage. He said if the procedure was done this way the surgery would probably only take 10 minutes but because people don't want scars down the center of their faces he would need to make a small incision (and he held his fingers up about half an inch apart) behind my hairline that I wouldn't even notice." To me a 5+ inch visible scar behind my hairline is not small and I and others notice it. The entire consultation Dr. Hamilton didn't appear to be listening to anything I said. He gave me next to no information of what the surgery entailed and even downplayed what was going to be done. When I walked out of his office I wasn't feeling comfortable with having this doctor do the surgery but I was kind of stuck because there are only a handful of surgeons that specialize in septal perforation and all the other ones where out of state and were not covered by my insurance.

The incision I found out later called the cranial flap is a procedure that Dr. Hamilton invented (there is no insurance code for the procedure) and every Ent and plastic surgeon that has examined me after this was done, are taken aback by such a radical approach. The standard of care for this procedure given the size of the hole which was 5x6mm is to either do nothing, graft a piece of cartilage over the hole, or cover the hole with mucosa, not to cut out the nasal structure and replace it. As I've already said the entire top of my head is numb, one eyebrow is drooping, the scar is visible, the hair around the scar has not returned. In addition, the skin on my forehead feels and looks like its hanging off the skull and the muscles are spasming regularly. I now have chronic migraines and I think it might be because he drilled into my sinus cavity and used a bone substitute filler.

I have structures between my eyebrows under the skin that were not there before and its where my headaches are focused. Hamilton denies, well everything and hasn't given me any info on what he did during the surgery. The post-op notes are vague at best and he lie about everything. The staff at OHN was eqally as bad from calling 6 times just to make any appointment to waiting 3 months for the post-op notes to a just general feeling that everyone in that office (with the exception of the nurse anesthetist, who doesn't work directly for OHN) is miserable. I also got charged for followup care (that I refused to pay) that I was told before had was included with the price of the surgery. They also tried to charge my insurance over $65,000 for a facility fee which is well outside the standards for what you can charge for this type of surgery.