Dr. Seradge performed 6 surgeries on my right hand/wrist in 3 years & I found a new surgeon because the problem still remains. I went to Dr. S in April 2014 for sharp pain which ended up being a minor tendon problem near my thumb. The surgery went well & I had no further problems in that area.
After this surgery, Dr. S told me he had seen things in my hand that concerned him & I was convinced he needed to do exploratory surgery so we did surgery #2 in May 2014. After this surgery, he showed me pics of the inside of my hand & wrist that he said was arthritis & some deterioration of the bones in my hand. He told me it would get worse and we needed to stabilize the bones.
In June 2014, during surgery #3, he put 2 screws in my wrist & a pin going across my palm to fuse those bones & that would fix the problem.
Approx 1 year later, I returned to Dr. S due to pain in my hand/wrist & was told the pin was working its way out of my hand & that was common & had to be removed. We had surgery #4 in 2015 to remove the pin.
About 1 year later, I started having worse pain & returned to Dr. S. I was told the screws were getting loose & "had to be removed & replaced with 2 rods that would go just above my wrist to midway in my forearm. That was surgery #5 in Oct 2016. I woke up w/2 rods in my wrist/arm, one longer than the other.
In mid Dec 2016, during a routine cast change, I asked the P.A. if it was normal that my 2 middle fingers were not able to bend & were painful. I was told it was not. I informed him & Dr. S that I had a large knot or bump in the palm of my hand & was told it was scar tissue. I told them both it felt hard like the end of the rod but was assured that wasn't possible, that "it was buried much lower in my hand." I was sent for a cat scan & the next week was told it was the first time he had ever seen it happen but the rod had moved from point A where he had inserted it, to point B which was nearly a full inch to the right of point A - on the other side of the knuckle where it had gone in. Dr. S said he wouldn't believe it if he wasn't seeing it with his own eyes. He sent me to his physical therapist & she gave me a hand-massage unit so that I could massage the knot in my palm at home. She also said it was scar tissue & the massage would break it down.
I went back in early Jan 2017 & told Dr. S that my two fingers were getting worse, were still swollen and the pain was horrible if I moved them. He told me, "the fusion is coming along fine, so we will go ahead and remove both rods." Dr. S performed surgery #6 in January 2017 to remove both rods. I woke up to find the longest rod had not been removed but was assured by Dr. S that it "was hammered in so far it will never give you anymore problems." Why hammer it down if the knot was scar tissue?
I returned in March because the knot was still in the palm of my hand, my two fingers were still swollen and still painful when trying to move them. Dr. S said, "We'll just go ahead & remove the last rod." I was upset & sat there while they scheduled the 7th surgery for April 2017. I left and began looking for a new hand surgeon & cancelled surgery #7 with Dr. S.
In May 2017, my new surgeon removed the final rod & he told me after the surgery that the rod was in fact jammed into my large finger's knuckle like I thought & there was very little scar tissue in my palm. When I woke up the knot was gone.
I am now scheduled for surgery #8 (#2 for the new surgeon) to have a permanent plate and screws put in my wrist. Dr. S removed parts of 4 bones in my wrist when he put the rods in and they never fused together and that's why I need this surgery #8. It has been nearly a year since that rod removal but my longest finger is still unable to move as it had before although it has improved some.
I've never written a review on a doctor before and I have tried my best to stick to just the facts in this review and let the readers come to their own conclusions.