European WLS patients

[perforce 243]

I'm looking into providers for my sleeve surgery when I get back home in June. It's likely I will go to Europe to get it done because it's about half the price of the same thing in the UK. Can anyone here tell me where they got their surgery done and who did it.

I was going to go with Christian De Bruyne (through a clinic in Belgium) as he does a session in Birmingham (near where I live) every month, but looking a bit more at his record he doesn't seem to do the sleeve that often (more band and mini-bypass) and I contacted his people to as some questions over a week ago and don't have an email back yet, so I'm thinking twice about it. Some of the wording on the site makes me doubt their aftercare a little, which is why I emailed with questions.

Any information you could give me would be appreciated, there is a Centre of Excellence in the Czech Republic that looks pretty good but I'm just scouting things out now. Thoughts? Opinions?

Edited November 8, 2015 by perforce

[RickM 1,747]

When my wife had he DS ten years ago, the go-to guy for those who couldn't afford US self-pay rates was Dr. Baltasar in Spain. I'm not sure if he is still practicing (he could be retired by now - he's been at it long enough!) but for the VSG, I prefer working with DS experienced surgeons as the VSG is the basis of the DS (with added intestinal rerouting) so they tend to have been doing sleeves a lot longer than the surgeons coming at it from the RNY or band perspective and that usually shows in their results.

Good luck on your search!

[perforce 243]

Interesting, thank you! I'll take a look around. I also didn;t know that about DS surgery so I'll keep that in mind.

[Jenkins 26]

I am booked in with DeBruyne in January. I had a face to face with Frederik from his team and I was pretty happy with the answers to my questions. He told me he has done over 2000 sleeves I think.

I will let you know how it goes!

[perforce 243]

I actually considered DeBruyne, but I changed my mind as I didn't realise he had done that many sleeves. There was some wording on one of his websites that said something to the effect of 'he would do the sleeve if the patient insisted' which kind of put me off? But from the sound of what you're saying it's likely that website was just a little out of date.

I have decided on going to Prague for mine, but please do let me know! I would be interested to hear about your experience.