Cardiologist at Integrity

[purplebeads]

Has anyone used or heard of Dr. Jose Pascual Salas Llamas, a cardiologist @ Integrity?

[Intercasa]

Yes, qualified and has a masters degree in cardiology. I know him personally, havent seen him in ages.

[daisy2013]

Go too Quality care, excellent cardiologist Dr. Briseño

[CHILLIN]

Dr. Briseño is a second generation heart surgeon, as well as a Cardiologist. He attended four years in Mexico City at the only medical school in Mexico which specializes in Cardiology.

[Kyle]

I second Dr. Briseno

[Floradude]

A cardiologist is a Medical Doctor (MD) who did an additional Residency (several years) in Cardiology and then took an exam to become Board Certified (this is in the US).

What is a Masters degree in Cardiology?

[Semalu]

A cardiologist is a Medical Doctor (MD) who did an additional Residency (several years) in Cardiology and then took an exam to become Board Certified (this is in the US).

What is a Masters degree in Cardiology?

Just Mexico's way of doing pretty much the same thing....

[757]

I have had wonderful cardiologists at a specialty heart hospitals in the US.

Dr. Jose Pascual Salas Llamas is an interventional cardiologist.

He implanted my pacemaker, placed a stent and treated my congestive heart failure two times.

I would recommend him and his team over any I have experienced in the US.

[RVGRINGO]

Dr. Briseño is also an intervention specialist and has placed several of my 8 stents and saved my bacon a couple of times; most recently when I threw a clot on the table, during a procedure. That is usually fatal and my wife was not assigned a room for us. However, Dr. Briseño and his father managed to aspirate the clot and keep me from finishing the “dead man dance“ which had begun. Som many hours later, I was still alive and moved to a hospital room. I still carry his phone number. He is the only cardiologist who ever told me how to treat myself when experiencing a heart attack and trying to get to the hospital; and it worked.

[sm1mex]

Dr. Briseño is my cardiologist and fixed me ! Blood pressure perfect and no more run away heart problem.

[Dr.Santiago]

https://youtu.be/yo1oAxF7YO4 - Dr. Atul Gawande's Full Lecture

If you are resorting to this web forum for opinions on whether or not to see a particular doctor or not or if you should follow his/her professional advice this may help. This is an excerpt from the a lecture by best-selling author and surgeon, Dr. Atul Gawande.

I personally recommend that non-urgent diagnoses be made by an objective physician or diagnostic institute.

If you need a second opinion on a cardiac recommendation you've gotten from any cardiologist (i.e. implantation of a pacemaker or stent placement) I recommend getting one from Dr. Ayax Sobrino who is on staff at PUERTA DE HIERRO SUR.

http://www.cardiologosguadalajara.com.mx/dr-ayax-sobrino/ <--- LINK TO DR. SOBRINO's WEB PAGE

He is exclusively a EXCELLENT diagnostician and was trained in Canada, speaks fluent ENGLISH & FRENCH. Follows current U.S./Canadian standards of care AND HE DOES NOT IMPLANT pacemakers or stents.

The previously mentioned cardiologists in this thread have more or less the same educational background. They both did their interventional cardiac training at the same school in Spain, and their recommendations are more in line with the european school of thought. Not wrong per se, but it tends not to follow the 3 principles we are taught in the U.S. when it comes to diagnostics & treatment:

1. Cheap before Expensive

2. Simple before Complicated

3. Non-invasive before Invasive.

Anyway please read the except below. I hope this helps and more or less informs the public on how to use recommendations like the ones on this type of forum when it comes to medical care.

[b]EDITH RICHMAN: My name is Edith Richman and I’m originally from New York and have
had very similar experiences that you’ve talked about. How do I know when I go to a doctor that
he has good diagnostic skills to determine what I need in medicine?

ATUL GAWANDE: You can’t right now. Even when we needed to find doctors for my own
son, for my wife, for other people in our family, you ask around co… to colleagues, you find out
about reputation. You very rarely have much data to go on. Now it’s starting to change. You can
go online these days and look up whether your doctor has been arrested under any kind of
criminal prosecution and whether they have an active licence. Alright, it’s a useful bar. You
know you can go also now and find out if there are any kind of patient complaints, but I never
know what to make of people who are simply cranky and any more than I know what to do with
all the people complaining about the hotels that I look at online. And so you know we’re kind of
in between those worlds without a real adequate window in.

EDITH RICHMAN: Well I have rejected a lot of what doctors have told me and, you know
what, I was right.

SUE LAWLEY: I mean this is the depressing message that’s coming across here really. We’ve
been taught not to trust our politicians and our bankers, and now you’re saying we can’t trust our
doctors.

ATUL GAWANDE: Here’s the reality. You are far better off putting yourselves in the hands of
a medical profession than not. You know we’ve had a century of incredible progress; we’ve
added many years to people’s lives and even more quality and productivity to people’s lives.
And yet there is a wide variation in the results that people get. It’s not that that kid in Maine
couldn’t trust their doctor; it’s they didn’t have a system that could assure that that child in
Maine had the same chances that my son had.

[bmh]

Sorry but when it comes to cost the Europeans are lower than the US.

The European do not recommend invasive versus non invasive

They also go for simple rather than complicated and non invasive rather than invasive as many of the systems in Europe are State controlled.

By the way one of the Dr recommended got my husband out of a pacemaker another Dr who was not mentioned recommended .

It seems to me that many pacemakers are recommended down here and I wonder how many are really necessary. I know that my husband did not get a pacemaker and has no problems.

[SunshineyDay]

Alot of surgeries are recommended here. Are they really necessary?

[bmh]

I know of two that were not.

[Kiko]

There is a sayin' in the US south, 'shooting fish in a barrel',.

If some of these local 'specialists' are so good, then you would think that they would have plenty of rich patients in Guadalajara and would rather spend their free time at the Guadalajara Country Club instead of driving to lakeside for a 600 peso appt, right??

A lesser skilled surgeon is more apt to office at lakeside because he cannot fill his schedule in Guadalajara. The reason he cannot fill his schedule in Guadalajara is because the locals already know who the more qualified doctors are.

[Xena]

Some of the fish shot in the barrel are put in place by their doctors who send them to the special specialists who then recommend the procedure or surgery which may or may not be necessary but will certainly be expensive. Be careful out there, folks. Not everyone wearing a white coat is a good guy.

[lakeside7]

Kiko that is an interesting observation and begins to take us in an other direction.

Perhaps because Guadalajara/Mexico graduates more medical people per population than say he USA, there is a over abundance of doctors/dentist etc, and they must go further afield to seek a living.

I continue to smile when I hear or read that this or that person "Had the Best Doctor" in Guadalajara or Mexico to do their procedures.

Compared to doctors NOB, it is a fact that they do spend more time with us and at time act as taxi drivers.

[HarryB]

Many good things about Dr Briseno

[Fred Habacht]

RV Gringo and my wife would not be "running" if it were not for Dr Briseno.

[bmh]

Same with my husband, we do recommend Dr. Briseño highly. By the way it is not a blind recommendation when we went to him we double checked his recommendations with 2 other doctors.

Some doctors are big time into the recommendation game and getting things done that are not necessary especially if you have private insurrance. One doctor wanted to fix my husbands´hernia, when checked in France it turned out nothing was wrong with him, he had no hernia. The bumped that had been noticed was from birth and there was nothing wrong.

Get second recommendations from doctors not affiliated with your doctor if you do not know the doctor well or are new, you will save yourself money and headaches.

[Dr.Santiago]

There is a sayin' in the US south, 'shooting fish in a barrel',.

If some of these local 'specialists' are so good, then you would think that they would have plenty of rich patients in Guadalajara and would rather spend their free time at the Guadalajara Country Club instead of driving to lakeside for a 600 peso appt, right??

A lesser skilled surgeon is more apt to office at lakeside because he cannot fill his schedule in Guadalajara. The reason he cannot fill his schedule in Guadalajara is because the locals already know who the more qualified doctors are.

Seeking the "BEST" doctors in their respective fields (according to professional standards, CV etc) to come to Lakeside from Guad is difficult, especially on a weekly basis. Driving 2 hours each way just to see one patient Lakeside is taxing on one of those specialists who has his schedule full of surgeries and seeing patients.

Some doctors are big time into the recommendation game and getting things done that are not necessary especially if you have private insurrance. One doctor wanted to fix my husbands´hernia, when checked in France it turned out nothing was wrong with him, he had no hernia. The bumped that had been noticed was from birth and there was nothing wrong.

Get second recommendations from doctors not affiliated with your doctor if you do not know the doctor well or are new, you will save yourself money and headaches.

If you are told you need an invasive procedure (even a hernia repair), then seeking a second opinion tends to be a wise decision IMO. Even Dr. Gawande's father (himself a physician)who had a cancerous tumor in his spine sought the opinion of two of the "BEST" surgeons in the U.S. who had very different recommendations on how to treat him. He opted for the conservative approach and he enjoyed a fair amount of time with excellent quality of life, even becoming president of his local rotary club.

Xenia, Please watch or read the VIDEO I've posted. This except is from the Q & A part of it:

SUE LAWLEY: I mean this is the depressing message that’s coming across here really. We’ve

been taught not to trust our politicians and our bankers, and now you’re saying we can’t trust our

doctors.

ATUL GAWANDE: Here’s the reality. You are far better off putting yourselves in the hands of

a medical profession than not. You know we’ve had a century of incredible progress; we’ve

added many years to people’s lives and even more quality and productivity to people’s lives.

And yet there is a wide variation in the results that people get. It’s not that that kid in Maine

couldn’t trust their doctor; it’s they didn’t have a system that could assure that that child in

Maine had the same chances that my son had.

I believe that almost every doctor I know became one to cure others' pain and suffering. It's too long and arduous road to become a doctor not to try to do good in this world.

Be careful out there, folks. Not everyone wearing a white coat is a good guy.

[Xena]

Chapalamed, I completely agree that everyone should get a second opinion. That can be difficult when a vulnerable patient is shown an EKG he is incapable of reading and understanding and told it shows that he could die at any time if he leaves the hospital without having this procedure. If the two doctors telling you this are your trusted primary doctor and his trusted specialist it would take an extraordinary person to say, "No, that's okay. I am going to go get a second opinion even if I might drop dead on the way." Some doctors are unscrupulous and present a danger to their patients. People need to know that and protect themselves.

[ned small]

Doctor Salas was the Cardiologist that you recommended and worked with for quite sometime and now his European methods are inferior to a Cardiologist who studied briefly in Canada,Dr. Santiago?

One of the things that i like about choosing a specialist here,is that unlike Canada and the US, one does not need a GP for referral.

Dr. Briseno is excellent by the way.

[RVGRINGO]

Dr. Santiago runs Chapala Med and needs to advertise, I think.

[Xena]

Dr. Santiago runs Chapala Med and needs to advertise, I think.

I believe that is what he is doing.