United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

Has anyone had any experience with Dr. Belzberg at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore? Any input or experience with this doctor would be greatly appreciated. We have a 3 month old with ROBPI and are looking into every BPI specialist we hear of. Thank you!

Hello,
I have never taken my son to Dr. Belzberg, but I have emailed him about my son. He appears to be very knowledgeable about the BPI injury. He also was very caring in his emails.

My son is now 8 years old soon to be 9. He was mostly seen by Dr. Shenaq who has now past away. So we are looking for a new doctor too. Good Luck in your search,

Our son, Christopher, has been seen by Dr. Belzberg and his team (Dr. Redett - Plastic Surgeon, Dr. Brushart - Orthopedic Surgeon). Dr. Belzberg is a neurosurgeon, unlike Waters, Kozin, Grossman/Price, and Nath who are orthopedic surgeons.

We liked him a lot. He spent over an hour plus with us each time we met with him. He and his team administered the botox treatment on our son when he was 7 months old, and avoided primary nerve surgery. He encourages you to get other opinions and will answer any and all questions you have. Our son recently had ACR surgery with Dr. Kozin, but Belzberg still wants to follow Christopher, even post surgery. We are due to see him in a couple of weeks.

We liked his philosophy - let's try this first, if it doesn't work, then we'll try this and so on. He's not "surgery happy" which is nice since he's a neurosurgeon. He's very up-to-date on the latest medical information on BPI's which comes out of Toronto.

Hope this info helps, and if you have any other questions, feel free to e-mail me.

Adrienne

Seana,

We took our daughter to both Belzberg and Kozin for the first 5 months of her life. I agree with Adrienne regarding Dr. Belzberg: he is extremely knowledgable and up-to-date regarding OBPIs, and is not surgery-happy. He is also, very markedly, not territorial. In fact, during our first visit, he gave us a list of OBPI specialists he feels are excellent in the field, then strongly encouraged us to take Aria to see at least one of them - while we continued to see him - so that we could feel confident she was receiving well-balanced care. We were very impressed that he encouraged us to get second opinions, and it made us feel very comfortable with his care, and when asking him questions.

Ultimately, our family decided to go with Dr. Kozin - and we feel confident we made the right decision for our family. However, our decision to choose Dr. Kozin had everything to do with his personality and philosophy being a better fit with our family's and NOTHING to do with doubting Dr. Belzberg.

Had we decided to stay with Dr. Belzberg, I feel confident that Aria would have received the same excellent care she has received with Dr. Kozin.

Hope this helps with your decision. Whatever you decide, I wish you great success.

mica

"Dr. Belzberg is a neurosurgeon, unlike Waters, Kozin, Grossman/Price, and Nath who are orthopedic surgeons"

Actually, Dr. Nath and Dr. Grossman are board-certified plastic surgeons (Grossman has added qualifications in Hand Surgery). Dr. Waters and Dr. Price are board-certified in orthopaedics and Dr. Kozin is board-certified in orthopaedics with added qualification in Hand Surgery.

There are a lot of different routes to become a BPI specialist. Orthopaedic surgeons and plastic surgeons with training in microsurgery often do the entire range of surgeries available for BPI (sometimes working side-by-side with more specialized associates such as for primary surgery) but neurosurgeons typically are only involved at the primary surgery stage and don't do the range of muscle/tendon and bone surgeries for BPI.

Kate

Dr. Belzberg was the first BPI doctor we contacted.
Although we never met in person, I would recommend him.
In our e-mails, e was very knowledgeable, personable(sp?), and prompt.

Thanks to everyone for your responses. Choosing a doctor feels like such a major decision, so every anecdote helps.