Quote from: SamSparks on July 13, 2015, 07:44:22 AM
I agree but you can't overvalue the expertise that comes from experience. I'm sure Dechamps will be, if hes not already, one of the best ffs surgeons in the world. But I don't want to wait 10 years for him to go through 500 patients you know. I could be misunderstanding how long it takes someone to "get good" at surgeries like these. I just wish there was more informaiton. There only case iv seen from him was that one blonde girl from here and she didn't post befores... only afters so idk what to glean from that. I'd really like to consider him though because I like that he has training (residency) specifically in jaw surgeries (outside of ffs patients) and obviously he can do a forehead reconstruction or Dr. O wouldn't be supporting his skills... you would hope anyway. All the other ffs surgeons have more experience and more patients to look at results from though.
The pictures you refer to from the blond girl - - are pretty convincing - - even without the before pictures and her comments are rather favorable. And unsolicited. And not cherry picked like a lot of pictures on Drs web sites. Also, I think there are some before pics somewhere on the net.
From his web site, Dr O's FFS protege does routinely do some rather extensive jaw surgeries on non FFS patients. Correcting shape and large over and under bites, and even moving both the upper and lower jaws at the same time. It looks like he uses digital virtual surgery to plan the details for those operations. Apparently, the policy is not to put up patient pictures on his web site. I guess there are pro and con arguments about that. And it can frustrate some of us. However, I would expect that he may be able to provide before and after pictures of jaw surgeries during face to face consultations.
And you are right. It is often a mistake to fail to properly value experience and without a teacher, it can surely take hundreds of patients to learn how to do those surgeries with consistently good results. That is a problem if you are trying to do that on your own - - with nobody to look over your shoulder and share all of their previous errors and mistakes. Which is basically what every other FFS surgeon in world is currently trying to do. Of course Dr. O did that 30 years ago and overcame that steep learning curve 20 or 25 years ago - - and, thankfully, he has now shared that hard earned experience with a hyper well trained successor.