[I AM DEVASTATED BY DR TABAN'S ORBITAL DECOMPRESSION + ALMOND EYE SURGERY RESULTS]

I am writing this additional piece of my review because my story is extremely long and today i want to go deeper in a new aspect of my experience with Dr Taban.

SO THIS PART OF MY REVIEW INTEGRATES THE PREVIOUS ONES AND MY ASNWERS TO THE COMMENTS OF THE OTHER MEMBERS

Please start reading my main review named “I AM DEVASTATED BY DR TABAN'S ORBITAL DECOMPRESSION + ALMOND EYE SURGERY RESULTS “ to fully understand the content of this part

So... was I a "candidate" for the surgery that Dr Taban performed on me?

Please keep in mind that here i'm NOT disputing if i was a candidate from an aesthetic point of view.

What i want to assess here is if i was a candidate from a "psychological" point of view and If i was the right fit for this kind of surgery.

So, before, going further, let me write a small disclaimer

DISCLAIMER: i'm NOT saying that Dr Taban did anything illegal or that he had any obligation to turn me down as a patient. I take accountability for the fact that i signed up for surgery.

However I am here to show what happened and to give you more context.

Who knows... maybe with my review Dr Taban himself, in the future, might decide to reconsider some of the actions he made in the past (I'm not saying that they were wrong) with the goal of having happier patients in the future and so my review will result in being seen by him as a constructive feedback.

In fact he wrote to me a couple of times that is goal is to have happy patients and that he tries to make his patients happy.

So, given that I am clearly a very unhappy patient, i hope that this review helps Dr Taban in the future (if he sees it as a constructive feedback)

With that being said , I signed up for surgery and, therefore, what happened is my responsability and not Dr Taban's resposnability...

I'm adding this piece to my review so that you can jump to your own conclusions.

So. was i right "fit" for this surgery (taking into account my risk profile)?

Keep reading and decide for yourself... personally i don't know

Below you can read yourself some of the things i wrote to Dr Taban

25 June 2019

"sorry if i changed my mind about the decompression and i'm asking to change the plan, but i really don't think that i would be able to cope with the risks if they happen"

16 July 2019

"To be honest, let alone for a moment the issue with eye asymmetry, getting strabismus
would be devastating. It would mean starting a journey to fix the issue and, in november,
i’m 37. I want to enjoy the outcomes of the surgeries, not to start a long battle against
the consequences and, if something goes wrong, the decompression seems to lead to this
scenario."

18 July 219

"i cannot avoid to think that, if i turn out like
- with one eye more decompressed then the other one [PLEASE NOTE: this is not 100% what i wrote but is an accurate way of expressing it without violating Realself's policies]
-with strabismus
- or a combination of both

And the issue/s can't be fixed i would be very likely to get suicidal knowing myself and being realistic."

So the question that I am raising is: should YOU PREFER (FOR YOURSELF) a surgeon that accepts a patient when he specifically verbalises things like his inability of coping with the risks and even the possibility of becoming suicidal in the event of these risks becoming reality?

I don't know, and to be honest it doesn't matter. You can make you own mind.

So, while this is just me writing what happened, i take full accountability for allowing Dr Taban to perform surgery on me. However:

1) with the knowledge i acquired (the hard way) today i would personally prefer a surgeon who turned down a patient who expressed such concerns

2) you decide for yourself if you want a surgeon that would have turned you down in a similar situation

PLEASE NOTE: While Dr Taban HAD NO OBLIGATION (at least as far as i know) to turn me down, refer me to a psychologist or to accept me as a patient only after psychological evaluation and clearance (and it is important to highlight that NO accusations of this kind are being made towards Dr Taban)

There are in my experience surgeons who:
- turn you down if they think you could not cope with the effects of surgery
- refer you to a psychologist
- or at least want you to be assisted by a psychologist before starting a surgical journey

For Example Mr Heliotis and Miss Lee (that to be honest i didn't choose as my revision surgeons) strongly advised for psychological support before having surgery.

And while it is true that, at that point in time (when i spoke with these 2 surgeons) i was much more in a downward spiral (for obvious reasons), they are the living proof that there are surgeons that do these kind of things.

Even though, to be completely transparent, i suspect that, when a surgeon refers you to a psychologist (or try to do so), is not 100% confident of being able to deliver.

To end this chapter of my review... you might ask again, and rightfully so

"So why did you sign up for surgery?"

Again, my fault and i have been paying for this choice in all the possible ways i can imagine.

However as i said:
- It seemed like Dr Taban was super confident about his skills
- I felt like i believed to be the best
- i really wanted the surgery and therefore i had an "emotional incentive" in believing in Dr Taban (right or wrong i really wanted to believe that he was "the GOAT")

You can see below some of the answers i received (in writing via email) by him

Me:

"sorry if i changed my mind about the decompression and i'm asking to change the plan, but i really don't think that i would be able to cope with the risks if they happen"

Dr Taban

"I will be happy to talk on the phone to alleviate your concerns. The risks of any of those things happening is less than 1% whereas the benefit of conservative orbital decompression is great as it not only makes the eyes less bulging, it also allows the lower eyelids to come up higher when performing lower eyelid retraction surgery"

Apart from the above mentioned comment of Dr Taban in writing, as you can imagine by it, he alleviated my concerns orally.

A lot of time has passed so i can only remember that during our skype call he told me things like
- reiterating things like that "less then 1%" risk
- the fact that he didn't want to sound "cocky" but he basically thought of himself as the best
- that very few surgeons in the world can do what he does
(he reiterated this last point in writing lately writing to me "You have a complex set of procedures that very few surgeons know how to do")
- etc

(Again, do what you want with this: is my personal recollection of a call that happened years ago)

So i thought or i wanted to think that Dr Taban "knew better" the other surgeons and for sure then me.

Yes, it was my fault for signing up for surgery (here I am just explaining part of the process).

Furthermore my 2 biggest concerns at the time where:
1) strabismus and diplopia
2) and one eye more sunken then the other one

To tackle the first concern i consulted with a strabismus surgeon and he told me that, if i did developed strabismus after surgery, he was confident he could have helped.

This + that "less then 1% of risk" of this happening that Dr Taban suggested, made me think that the risk was acceptable.

And while i didn't develop strabismus after this surgery shame on me for being so superficial in my thought process.

(Btw, i will write a piece of this review just to make a beginner (like i was i once) realise the hell of a journey he/she would put himself/herself through if strabismus occurred after Orbital Decompression)

Instead, to tackle the risk of an eye more sunken then the other one i tried to make Dr Taban promise me that he would have helped in case of this problem occurred.

I wrote to him

"...can you basically promise me that if I turn out with one eye more decompressed then the other one you will operate on me again?"

(I didn't write exactly "with one eye more decompressed then the other one" but i had to adjust my original message to comply to this platform policies)

And he answered to me:

"I can promise I will do my best for you. I can promise that I will do revision if deemed necessary and not too risky. If there is small asymmetry, it is best left alone. If there is gross asymmetry (very unlikely), then additional surgery can be considered. That could be additional orbit surgery, eyelid surgery, both, or perhaps something nonsurgical such as filler or botox to make things better. I don't expect any of these will be needed though."

As you can imagine i was a bit concerned by that " I will do revision if deemed necessary and not too risky"

Keep in mind that, in my mind, at the time, Dr Taban was the "only in the world" able to deliver what i wanted so i had to dig deeper asking again...

"...it seems like at this stage you cannot know if a second operation would be safe. For some reason it seems, reading between the lines, that you cannot guarantee that operating the orbit a second time would be safe. Am i correct in this assumption?"

And Dr Taban answered to me:

"Operating on the orbit second time has variable risks, depending on exactly what needs to be done. For instance, if we have done one wall decompression, then safe to add another wall. Another scenario could be to add volume back in with implant (which I never had to do)."

So as you can see it seemed to me that everything was "fixable" as:
1) IF i developed strabismus another surgeon could have fix it (silly me !)
2) and IF i didn't like a potential asymmetry between the eyeballs Dr Taban could have "fixed" it most likely

So at that point that "less then 1% of risk" was acceptable to me (again. silly me!)

Reading Dr Taban's answer to me today, with the experience i acquired, i can only think at how superficial i have been at the time.

Firstly, IMHO, i think that saying that is safe to decompress a second wall during an orbital revision surgery is a statement that should at least be softened. And given that in the dictionary, the word "safe" doesn't come with a specific statistical risk, i guess that me and Dr Taban we'll have to be in disagreement on this.

Secondly, Dr Taban wrote to me "Another scenario could be to add volume back in with implant (which I never had to do)."

I can only guess that he wanted to say that he never did a revision using an implant (but he had experience with orbital implants).

Independently from my guess i think that it's at least cleat that he never performed a revision with an implant in such scenario.

Now, with the experience i have today (that sums my experience with the experiences of many other unfortunate friends in the surgical journeys)...

Having a revision with a surgeon that never performed a revision with such technique is a terrible idea (IMHO).

Unfortunately, as you can probably imagine if you read up to this point, today my ability to understand and process these kind of information is much more advanced then it was at that time.

With all that being said...

Was i a "candidate" for these procedures? I don't know. I will leave you come to your own conclusions

I am writing this additional piece of my review because my story is extremely long and I wanted to go deeper in what I didn’t like about the communications I had in writing with Dr Taban

SO THIS PART OF MY REVIEW INTEGRATES THE PREVIOUS ONES AND MY ASNWERS TO THE COMMENTS OF THE OTHER MEMBERS

Please start reading my main review named “I AM DEVASTATED BY DR TABAN'S ORBITAL DECOMPRESSION + ALMOND EYE SURGERY RESULTS “ to fully understand the content of this part

Here below you can find the list of all the 7 things that I didn’t like about the communication I had in writing, via email, with Dr Taban

1) I wish that the risks were explained to me in writing (via email) more extensively, before I signed up for surgery

When I talked for the first time with Dr Taban I wasn’t aware that I needed orbital decompression to reach my goal.

Immediately after our fist consultation I started to do some research and I reached out saying

“…. i asked to Dr Taban, is if it is possible to have a link where i can find the explanation of all the possible risks and complications linked to these procedures.

I would even like to know by how many years these procedures have been performed to figure out if there are possible long-term complications that today still remain unknown or uncertain.

I don't know if you have a link on your website where you explain these things or you can send me a copy of the informed consent.

To be honest before speaking with Dr Taban yesterday i wasn't aware that i should have pushed my eyeball back to reach my "goal".

Making a quick research online i figured out that i'm putting myself through a major surgery so i'd like to be sure that i'm understanding everything thoroughly before doing something dictated by the excitement.”

I wasn’t sent a comprehensive list of risks via email and I wasn’t sent the informed consent.

Instead I received an emails saying that Dr Taban “had been performing these procedures for 10 years with great success and safety”

And sent to me the links on his website leading to the pages of
- Almond eye surgery
- Eyelid retraction
- Orbital decompression for bulgy eye
- And ptosis for droopy upper eyelids

Plus he sent me the links to two of his publications.

Given that Dr Taban didn’t reply with a list of risks (as I was personally expecting and as I directly asked for) I had to study myself and I wrote to him

“I think that i found the risks of the orbital decompression.

So far, speaking about all the procedures we discussed, the potential risks i'm aware of are:

? Potential unsatisfactory results
? Double Vision
? Blindness
? diplopia
? optic nerve damage
? CSF
? ocular misalignment
? hypoglobus
? risks associated with anesthesia
? bleeding
? infection
? sunken eyes (enophtalmos)

I understand that these risks are rare but are there any otner risks, even minor ones, i should be aware of, involving the procedures we discussed?”

Dr Taban replied to me
“Other risks include asymmetry, numbness, scarring, etc.”

As you can see from my pictures (or at least you can see many of the issues I am complaining about) I had these further issues:
- evident upper scleral show (when I was examined by Dr Bernardini he estimated it to be 4/5 millimiters)
- Asian looking eyes
- pretarsal bump (when smiling) and unnatural wrinkles for my age when smiling - Slightly blunted corners
- eyes horizontally shortened
- blue veins in the tear through area (assuming that the dermatologist who told me that, in her opinion, these veins, were related to Dr Taban’s surgery was right)

While of course things like “potential unsatisfactory results” and “etc” cover pretty much everything I have at least the right to be unhappy with this explanation that I got in writing.

Side note: please keep in mind that I tried REALLY hard to figure out the risks of the surgery (indeed I asked again – after more thorough research on a report that I sent to Dr Taban) however I didn’t receive a written answer to my questions regarding the risks that I felt was comprehensive enough.

You might ask why I signed up for surgery instead of pushing to get a satisfactory answer in writing:

it’s simple, at some point I felt like I was making Dr Taban feel challenged by my questions and, at that point in time, unfortunately, I believed he was the only that could have delivered the results I wanted.

In fact at some point I had literally to write to him that I didn’t want to make him feel challenged in his expertise.

However, from a practical standpoint, nothing of this matter. Can I be unhappy of the fact that I tried very hard to ask for the risks and I feel like I received an answers that wasn’t fully comprehensive? Sure.

But practically nothing of this matters, Indeed in my case these were the steps

Step n 1. I paid a deposit of 500 dollars to block the surgery

Step n2: I was sent the consent form:

In the consent form I had to sign was written that were fully explained to me
a. risks, benefits, alternatives
b. the risks were not limited to: vision, eyelid, health, nerve damage, scarring and anesthesia complications (so as you can see something very generic that leaves a lot of room for “everything to happen”)
c. chances of success or failure or worsening
d. that revision surgery was on a fee-for-service, case-to-case basis e. that no guarantee or assurance of results were made to me
f. that the proposed procedures were satisfactory explained to me and I had all my questions answered

(so as you can see after signing this consent form you pretty much put all the risks on your shoulders, unless you can’t prove malpractice)

Note: what would have happened if I wanted to opt out after reading the consent form? I guess that I would have lost 500 $ unless Dr Taban was very generous.

I’m not saying that this is Dr Taban’s fault. The loophole is in the law. It deosn’t make sense to pay before seeing that consent form and is the law that is allowing that,

Step 3. Full payment

Step 4: Contract prior to surgery

Indeed prior to surgery (and after paying deposit, all surgery related costs, travelling costs, Airbnb, etc) I had to sign in LA a paper saying (among many other things that):
- I had the chances of asking all the questions that I wanted and I was satisfied with the explanation
- And that I accepted the risk to end up worse then before surgery

OR at least this is what I remember. Unfortunately I saved this paper in my phone that I lost. So take my words on this for what they are worth as many years passed. However I can tell that from what i can remember the “pre-surgery contract” was “stronger” then the consent form,

So this paper:
- Probably superseded all the previous communications
- And puts basically all the risk on the shoulders of the patient

And again, what would have happened if I was not happy with the content? I guess that I would have lost at least part of the money (if not all of them).

So to be extremely clear: am I saying that Dr Taban did anything illegal? Of course I am not.

I’m saying the opposite. I am sure that he completely stayed within the realm of legality. I am just explaining that I didn’t like the way he explained the risks in writing (via email) to me and how all this process went.

To give you a comparative example when I consulted with Mr Heliotis in London and I asked (in person) the risks of the surgery I was seeking for he answered me something like

“ [a very comprehensive list of risks] …. And please remember that these are the risks that I can think of right now. But when you undergo surgery you might have complications that I am not aware of or that I cannot think at right now. Please consider that elective surgery should never be taken lightly by the patient”

So this is an approach that I would appreciate much more.

However, to close this point N1, I want you to understand that, if you decide to go under the knife, the risk between patient and surgeon is, IMHO, very unbalanced and you take much bigger risks then the surgeon does.

The issues here is not Dr Taban, but the law itself that, IMHO, doesn’t protect the patient enough and doesn’t force surgeons to make sign a informed consent:
- With a super comprehensive list of risks decided by a commission super partes (or at least i would guess that such commission does not exist and does not impose standards informed consents and pre surgery contracts)
- Before paying for deposit, surgery and surgical fees, accommodation, travelling, etc

And while practically if you want to get surgery, you have no choice apart from signing these papers, in the real world what you just signed is simply unrealistic,

Indeed you are basically saying that you understand risks benefits and alternatives of the procedures and that everything you wanted to ask has been satisfactory answered.

And while these documents are great to protect surgeons IMHO they ask you to sign things that are simply not realistic.

Indeed in roughly one year I had 3 consultations with Dr Taban that lasted roughly one hour and 10 minutes + an exchange of emails.

Is it possible in this amount of time (and keep in mind that a lot of time is spent trying to convey your wishes of course) to fully comprehend all these things? I will let the reader come up with the answer.

2) According to the statistics that Dr Taban gave me I have been very unlucky with my results

At some point I wrote to Dr Taban

Hello Doctor Taban during these days […] i made even more research about orbital decompression and thinking deeply i realised that i'm not ready to risk things like:
-diplopia
- strabismus
- sunken eye with an eye more decompressed then the other one - ecc”

He answered to me saying

“I will be happy to talk on the phone to alleviate your concerns. The risks of any of those things happening is less than 1%”

As you can see in picture N3 I have one eye more sunken then the other one so it seems that I was one of those unlucky patients in that “less then 1%” category.

Later on I wrote to Dr Taban asking an explanation about that “less then 1%”. In fact I found a paper published by him.

The paper is named “Expanding Role of Orbital Decompression in Aesthetic Surgery” Published online in January 19, 2017 (so not much earlier than my surgery).

In the paper the analysis included 26 patients. The summary of the clinical findings show how

Out of 26 one patient complained about “Asymmetry (one eye sunken more than other)/Unhappy about eye asymmetry”

Out of 26 patients another one complained about “Relative Enophthalmos (sunken eyes)/Unhappy about smaller eyes”
And while it is true that both patients had decompressed lateral wall + medial wall + intraconal fat
And I accepted just one wall and fat decompressed

IMHO the datas of that study contradicts what Dr Taban wrote to me. Or, at the very least that study makes the statement that Dr Taban wrote to me (“The risks of any of those things happening is less than 1%”) too strong to be made.

Of course I am not a Doctor so this is only my opinion. However recently I wrote to Dr Taban about this topic asking for an explanation.

Keep in mind that I’m not an expert or a Doctor so, when I wrote to Dr Taban, complaining with him about the fact that “the less then 1%” he claimed was contradicting his own literature from my point of view…

He was in a very advantageous positon to reply to me something on the line of

“Dear patient you are wrong, in fact the less the 1% I claimed is completely accurate and this is why….”

Instead he decided to reply to me with a one-liner saying “I have another publication coming out soon that describes my revised technique for scarless orbital decompression with faster healing and lower risks.”

This with:
- Providing absolutely no proof of this other publication coming out
- Not mentioning at all if “his revised technique” was antecedent to the date of my surgery or if he came up with this new technique later
- Or if he used this less risky technique on me

And if these things are not the case I personally found his answer inappropriate.

With all that said given that Dr Taban didn’t reply to me that I was misreading his paper I can only guess that he agrees with me on the fact that when he claimed that “less then 1%” he could have at least used a softer and more generic claim like “in my hands the risk of those complications happening is very low”.

I wish to finish this chapter with one final note. As you can read some other strong concerns of mine were strabismus and diplopia.

To further investigate the incidence of the risks for the surgery I was thinking to have, I sent emails to different Doctors.

I was trying to figure out if that “less then 1%” of risk suggested by Dr Taban was realistic and therefore I started to write to other Doctors asking if the incidence of problems like diplopia, strabismus and asymmetry between the two eyeballs (sunken eye) was really lower then 1%.

So I wrote to different Doctors who do orbital decompression. Asking if, with a conservative decompression (with the goal of “pushing the eyeball back” of 3 or 4 millimetres – which is what I was discussing with Dr Tabanm -) was possible to keep the risks that low.

Here a few answers I received in writing via email (translated in English).

Dr Bernardini (through his secretary): “… The stats are completely personal and they may even vary based on the degree of correction needed and the surgical technique. Generally speaking the biggest risk is diplopia that can happen with an incidence between 10% and 40% of the cases”

Dr Savino “I’m not the best person to provide information on cosmetic orbital decompression. We do it when it is functionally needed. In expert hands the chances of complications are relatively low but there are many variables: one, two o three walls are being decompressed? Is the intervention made on fat as well? Complications are surely even related to the experience and technique of the surgeon. With all that being said orbital decompression is still quite a big surgery”

Dr Resti: “i believe that 1% of risk is very optimistic. I believe the risk is at least 10%. Exactly for this reason I do not perform orbital decompression for cosmetic reasons".

I still have the emails of these surgeons that can testify what i am saying.

Furthermore I had an online consultation with Dr Prasad.

The communication we had was just oral so you decide what to do with my words but, when I asked to him the risks of the procedures I wanted to get with Dr Taban and if he was willing to perform them on me his reply was something on the line of:

“I don’t even want to get into a long conversation about the risks. I’m just not willing to perform these procedures on you as I don’t believe that I would act keeping in mind your
best interest. And believe me, these procedures are very expensive so I could make quickly a lot of money doing them for you”

Of course I am not saying that these surgeons are right and Dr Taban is wrong. However, as I said, Dr Taban didn’t bother to give me a comprehensive answer to my complaints in writing.

At this point you might ask why, if other surgeons seemed to disagree with Dr Taban I did accept his plan. The reality is that
a. I was very bothered by my bulgy eyes
b. I really wanted to believe that Dr Taban was an “oculoplastic surgery’s god” (unfortunately – as my results show- AT LEAST IN MY CASE, nothing could have been further from the truth)

And Doctor Taban really seemed super confident about his plan indeed he even wrote to me “The risks of any of those things happening is less than 1% whereas the benefit of conservative orbital decompression is great as it not only makes the eyes less bulging, it also allows the lower eyelids to come up higher when performing lower eyelid retraction surgery”

So at the time he really seemed to me the only surgeon in the world able to deliver what I felt I needed.
Unfortunately I was wrong.

3) Dr Taban didn’t answer to my concerns in writing

Before writing my review named “I’m devastated by Dr Taban orbital decompression + almond eye surgery results” (which I encourage you to read if you didn’t do yet) I sent an email to Dr Taban asking for a full refund + a compensation.

I attached to the email a detailed 12 pages report with plenty of pictures to make him able to judge if what I was saying was correct and if he should have considered my requests.

And of course in the report to him I explained all my complaints that you can read in my review.

One thing that he wrote to me to answer me was “ […] For instance, It is possible you may benefit from upper eyelid retraction surgery (although your second photo doesn't show retraction so it is confusing so I need to evaluate your eyes in follow up visit to determine) […]”

Honestly this sentence left me speechless as to me suggested (and that’s only my opinion) that he didn’t even remember my case. And this to me was quite concerning considering the results that here everyone can see.

Apart from this he didn’t even bother to answer to my concerns in writing. Indeed he got rid of my concerns with this one-liner

“I need to evaluate your eyes during a follow up visit to better understand your concerns and results and answer your questions more accurately”

Now that I think twice this does make absolutely no sense to me.

Indeed the report I sent him was divided in only 4 chapters. And these chapters have been outlined (like the index of a book) at the very beginning of my presentation.

The third chapter was named “the surgeries that I needed to improve the outcome you gave me”

Is it possible that Dr Taban didn’t see this major part of the report at all?

I don’t know. But if he saw it I think it is quite clear that there was nothing to evaluate in a follow up visit.

Because, of course, the issues I was complaining about were altered compared to the pictures he saw in my report.

And btw, several of those pics were sent to him already before my final report.

In this hypothetical scenario, in which Dr Taban saw that I already had many revisions, it seems quite convenient that he didn’t want to answer to my complaints in writing.

What could have he evaluated after several revisions that he couldn’t evaluate in pictures?

And how can you be more accurate then in writing?

So I think that we are left with only 2 possible logical conclusions here that I can possibly imagine

a) IF Dr Taban was aware (because he red my report carefully) of my revision surgeries someone could argue that his answer was a clever attempt not to admit any mistake in writing

b) I instead Dr Taban genuinely
- Forgot to read of my several revision surgeries
- And forgot about me (indeed in his response he seems confused about why in some pictures I seem to have upper scleral show and in other ones I don’t – and btw he could have known the answer by simply checking our previous emails)

Well… I think that he could have red with more attention a report that starts (at page n1) with the upper scleral show everybody can appreciate in picture n1 of my review.

I will let the reader decide which one of these two scenarios is the worse one because honestly I cannot imagine any other scenario.

But I would be happy to start a constructive conversation with Dr Taban in the “comment’s section” here if there is any other scenario that I am not being able to imagine.

4) Cheek implants

I asked to Dr Taban in writing if I could have cheek implants after his surgeries. He wrote to me that, as long as they were placed through the mouth, it was going to be ok.

But, after his surgery, he completely backtracked writing to me that he didn’t recommend cheek implants

Even forgetting about having cheek implants for “beauty enhancement” at some point I got worried.
And the reason was simple. Why couldn’t I get cheek implants after Dr Taban’s surgery?

The only reason I could think at was the fact the drilling around the eye/ or surgery in general would have caused a trauma.

So asked to Dr Taban in writing an explanation. As, to me, it seemed that if, after orbital decompression, a cheek implant could have been dangerous so it could have been a punch in the face or an accident.

I directly asked in writing what could have happened in one of these cases but Dr Taban didn’t answer to that question.

So… why initially cheek implants were not a problem but they became afterwards Dr Taban’s surgery?

Maybe Dr Taban was worried that, if I had the implants first but I got botched, I wouldn’t have got surgery with him? I don’t know

Did he want to try to sell me the cheek implants himself in person? Even if I already told him that I wanted them to be custom made and inserted by a maxillofacial surgeon in writing? I don’t know but Dr Taban did try to sell me his cheek implants at my pre op appointment in LA

Did something happen during my surgery (that I’m not aware of) that made Dr Taban change his mind? I don’t know.

These are only potential guesses and speculation but I would love Dr Taban to comment to this point.

5) I think that I was given optimistic (at least) expectations about how long would have taken to be fully healed

I wrote to Dr Taban asking: “what's the real downtime to see the final result? You told me about 5 days but i guess that this is the necessary time to see the major swelling subsiding. I would like to figure out, on average, how long does it take to be at 100% of the result”

I checked my email correspondence with Dr Taban. I cannot find trace of him writing to me about a downtime of 5 days. I can only assume that this was part of our online consultation.

As you can imagine is very difficult to remember every tiny detail of a conversation you had years ago.

However his answer was:

“Visible bruising/swelling for 2 weeks. Most healing done by 1 month so have a good idea of outcome then but it does take 3 months for full results”

None of these statements happened to be true in my case and my experience.

Firstly Dr Taban didn’t correct me in writing about the downtime of 5 days so I can only guess that he didn’t think it was necessary.

And you can see me in picture number 7 at my one week post op appointment. In picture n8 I was at 4 months and in picture number 1 I was at full healing.

So I hope that the reader can appreciate as, in my case, those estimates were wrong.

And while I am not saying that Dr Taban was in bed faith when predicting those timelines in my experience (and in the experiences of many friends I met in my unfortunate journey) the estimated timeline suggested by dr Taban not only doesn’t match the healing process (in my experience) in oculoplastic surgeries, but would be inaccurate for any facial procedure I could think of like facial implants, a nose job, fat grafting, etc

6) Scarring was a risk or not?

As I mentioned in the previous point when I directly asked for the risks of the procedures Dr Taban wrote to me that scarring was one of those. He wrote me that one of the risks was scarring on the 28th of June 2018.

And as you might have noticed “scarring” was a risk mentioned even in the informed consent. However on the 5th of June 2018 I wrote to him asking this question:

“is there any chance of scarring? as long as i can understand (but i might be completely wrong) the only operation that might create scarring is the operation for the ptosis of the droopy upper eyelid”

He replied to me the same day saying “no scarring” this time.

I want to give to Dr Taban the benefit of the doubt and think that he didn’t understand my questions but going back through the emails I found this inconsistency that at the time I wasn’t able to spot as I was a beginner who was convinced to be buying the services of the best oculoplastic surgeon on earth with my money.

With that said I think that definitions like “no scarring” is just a superficial way of describing things IMHO. If you think about that to have surgery you need to cut and cutting will create scars. So if anything I think that it would be appropriate of talking about “no visible scarring”.

7) My issues with blepharitis

Before surgery I had an episode of blepharitis that was diagnosed. I sent the diagnosis to Dr Taban and I asked if this problem could have made me not a candidate for the surgeries we discussed

He answered to me that blepharitis is very common and that wasn’t going to prevent me to have eyelid surgery.

While I think that these statements are true Dr Taban in his answer to me didn’t manage to predict that blepharitis (that before surgery was a “one-off” thing) after surgery was going to become a much more ongoing issue for me.

Indeed as my email communications with Dr Taban could show I devloped blepharitis in the early stages after his surgery and I carried it with me till our 4 months online post operative appointment.

To be fair there is not a consensus between Taban (who thought that after his surgery I developed a stye) and another famous local ophthalmologist who diagnosed me with blepharitis. But given that I
was diagnosed blepharitis in person I guess we can agree that the opinion of the local expert was “stronger”.

Either way after my surgery with Dr Taban nowadays for me blepharitis is a much more common issue and while it is not a threatening condition everyone who suffers from it knows how unpleasant it's both socially and aesthetically.

I would love to tell you that I was the first patient of Dr Taban who developed ongoing blepharitis after surgery with him and, therefore, his answer was 100% precise.

However if you red up to this point I guess you can appreciate how it can be hard for me to take everything Dr Taban wrote to me “at face value”

As a very final note please keep in mind that i'm not saying that there is a direct correlation between Dr Taban's surgery and the more frequent incidence of blepharitis for me. I'm not even saying, of course, that this issue of mine has been caused by inappropriate surgical technique. I'm NOT saying any of those things. However it feels like quite a coincidence that my bleparitis got significantly more frequent just after surgery

DISCLAIMER: In this review i only state my own personal experience with Dr Taban and the results that I got with him but I don’t intend to slander or defame Dr Taban.

I believe that facts and images will speak louder then words.

With that said Dr Taban has my email so if he’s able to find any part of this review that it’s not truthful he can write to me and I’m willing to modify my review.

1) The surgeries Dr Taban performed on me

Dr Taban advised me to have
- Orbital decompression
- what Dr Taban calls “almond eye surgery” (which in my case meant a spacer graft plus canthoplasty)
- ptosis surgery
- lower blepharoplasty for dark circles

Total price (without hidden fees) 25k.

Unfortunately I accepted Dr Taban’s advice and the consequences have been devastating.

2) Why I think that I should have turned Dr Taban’s plan and Dr Taban down

With the knowledge I have today after many many surgeries I think that I should have turned down Doctor Taban for many reasons. And these reasons are the following

2.1 the consultations felt very rushed and I didn’t feel like Dr Taban really cared about me. He felt very unapproachable in his demeanour. Unfortunately at the time I thought that Dr Taban was “the best”

I am aware that in my first review i stated different things compared to this update but, to be honest, at the time, i just thought that writing a good review and mentioning that i wanted to show my journey here was enough to guarantee me the best possible result. As everyone can see i was wrong.

2.2. Dr Taban suggested a definite plan for such a delicate procedure after a brief consultation online.

It is ok to suggest a preliminary plan during the consultation to give some idea to the patient

But I think that such a delicate surgery should be advised and decided in person.

2.3. I was asked to pay the full 25k before being seen in person. I suggest you to find a surgeon who asks you to pay only after seeing you in person, if necessary many times

2.4. At some point I felt like Dr Taban’s plan was too risky. I was offered another consultation to “alleviate my concerns”. I personally prefer surgeons who try to respect your risk profile and that only propose a plan but that don’t try to “sell” their plan to you

2.5: in my experience the best surgeons are the ones who spend more time in the surgical theater and doing thorough consultations with patients.

I wish I picked A surgeon that instead was less focused on his online reputation then Dr Taban

2.6. I wasn’t asked to provide blood tests proving that I didn’t have thyroid eye disease prior to surgery.

During my journey I consulted with many Doctors. Some of them were surprised/disappointed by the fact that I wasn’t asked to provide these tests. Especially given that my auntie had thyroid eye disease

I think that, even if a healthy patient decides to have orbital decompression, all the possible measures should be taken to see if this surgery is avoidable. And many Doctors seem to agree with me

2.7. too many procedures all at once. In my personal experience the “slow way” is the best way

2.8. Many surgeons will perform orbital decompression in 2 stages. One surgery per eye. With this approach if you go blind in one eye you will still have one healthy eye. This precaution in my case wasn’t neither advised nor part of the discussion. Please note that I suggested that for me time wasn’t a decisive factor.

2.9: Doctor Taban performs Orbital Decompression for cosmetic reasons.

You will find a very small amount of surgeons in the world who do that as most aesthetic surgeons think that this surgery is very risky and that it should be reserved to people with thyroid eye disease in the attempt to save their sight. With the knowledge I have today I agree with them

2.10. Dr Taban’s performed on me both orbital decompression and eyelid surgery at the same time.

According to many surgeons I consulted with this approach exposes the patient to many avoidable risks. In particular more swelling makes the results less predictable. And eyelid surgery seems to be more effective with local anaesthesia so that the surgeon (with the patient awake) can see where the eyelids sit during surgery.

My results show that I would have very likely benefitted from this approach. Please note that I suggested that for me time wasn’t a decisive factor

2.11 even if I already had a CT scan Dr Taban told me that with “his technique” it wasn’t necessary.

In orbital decompression CT scans are used as a roadmap for knowing how much and where to decompress the eye. While Dr Taban advised against studying my CT Scan my results are here to show that, arguably, more attention to my case wouldn’t have harmed.

2.12: I had to be quite pushy to be explained the risks in writing. Nontheless in his response in writing Dr Taban downplayed the risks of this surgery (as my case undeniably shows)

TO EXTREMELY SUMMARIZE ALL THESE POINTS: I wish that Dr Taban was more
- Conservative
- Risk adverse
- Caring
- And detailed oriented
In my case. And I think that all these features should be present when looking for a surgeon.

3) Why I’m extremely dissatisfied by my results

I will let pictures speak for themselves.

FOR THE AVOIDANCE OF DOUBT: IN SOME PICTURES YOU SEE ME WITH AN EVIDENT UPPER SCLERAL SHOW. IN SOME OTHER ONES IT SEEMS LIKE THE UPPER SCLERAL SHOW IS NOT THERE. THE REASON BEING IS THAT, IN THE IMAGES WHERE YOU DON’T SEE THE UPPER SCLERAL SHOW, PICTURES ARE TAKEN WITH MY CHIN KEPT UNNATURALLY UP.

It took me roughly 2 years (and many more revision surgeries) before being able to look straight into someone eyes again.

Issue n1: upper scleral show when looking straight (picture n1)

Issue n2: Asian looking eyes (picture number 2) I’m a western man and my ethnicity was stripped away

Issue n3: as a friend told me I got “one almond and one peanut” (picture number 2)
From the picture you can clearly see that one canthal tilt is positive and one is negative.

Issue n4> Clear asymmetry between the 2 eyeballs – one is more protruding then the other (picture number 3)

Issue N5> pretarsal bump (when smiling) and unnatural wrinkles for my age when smiling (picture number 4)

Issue n6: Slightly blunted corners

Issue n7: eyes horizontally shortened.

Issue n8: nowadays I have blue veins in the tear through area (one dermatologist who saw me told me that she thinks that this is related to Dr Taban’s surgery). This issue unfortunately cannot be fixed with laser as later I had retinal detachment so I’m not a candidate for the treatment.

4) Why I am extremely dissatisfied by the orbital decompression that was performed on me

I will share with you my Ct Scan - after Dr Taban’s surgery- (picture 5 and 6).

The maxillofacial surgeon who made me do the Ct scan literally said:
“This is not an orbital decompression. This is a joke”

As you can see in the pictures provided the maxillofacial surgeon highlighted (in yellow) the areas that he thought Dr Taban decompressed. I will let you make your own comparisons between my Ct scans and the way Dr Taban advertises this surgery on his website.

PLEASE NOTE THAT WHILE WITH DR TABAN WE SPOKE ABOUT CONSERVATIVE ORBITAL DECOMPRESSION I CAN FIND NO TRACE IN OUR CORRESPONDENCE OF THE FACT THAT HE WANTED TO DRILL MY LATERAL WALLS IN SUCH A MINUSCLE FASHION.

I did mention this to him in writing in my final report waiting for an explanation but he didn’t even bother to reply to this concern of mine.

It seems like I’m not the only one who was disappointed by Dr Taban’s approach to Orbital Decompression. If you google Brendan Tully Vs Mehryar Taban it seems like someone else complained about an arguably similar problem with this surgeon.

5) Why I would have preferred to see a different marketing approach on Dr Taban’s website

Unfortunately for now I’m not in the position to say everything I would like to…

However I can say this: if you go on Dr Taban’s website you will see that many “before & afters” are at 1, 2, 3 and 4 months mark. While of course there is nothing illegal with that, in my experience (which seems to be consistent with the experience of many patients I met) this short time frame doesn’t show the all picture.

My advice for you if you are evaluating a surgeon is to find real patients who passed the one year mark (at least) as what you see at the 3 or 4 months mark might be very different from the final result (as it was in my case).

In fact in my experience during the first months of oculoplastic surgeries you have a peek in the aesthetic outcome (that looks really good in “before and afters”) but the final outcome might be very well different and much less flattering

6) Why I’m dissatisfied by the communication that Dr Taban had with me in writing

Reason n1: Before having orbital decompression surgery I was planning to have facial implants. I asked in writing if cheek implants were an issue after orbital decompression surgery.
I was replied that there was no issue with that as long as they were placed through the mouth.

After surgery Dr Taban completely backtracked and told me that he didn’t recommend cheek implants after his surgery.

Reason n2: As mentioned I had to be quite pushy asking for the potential risks of these surgeries in writing. Given that I wasn’t receiving a response I felt satisfied with, I made my own research and came up with a list of potential risks. I sent the list to Dr Taban asking directly if there were any more risks I should have been aware of.

He answered to me “other risks include asymmetry, numbness, scarring, etc”.

When I made him notice in writing that many of the issues I experienced were not even mentioned by him in writing Dr Taban didn’t even bother to reply to this concern of mine.

But I guess you can argue that “etc” can count for pretty much everything.

Reason n3: I asked how long would have taken in order to be presentable and for full healing.

Dr Taban replied to me in writing “visible buising/swelling for 2 weeks. Most healing done by 1 month but it does take 3 months for full results”

None of these statements ended up to represent my experience.

And if you are considering the same procedure and you are wondering when you will be able to go to work you can appreciate my picture one week after surgery (picture n7)

Personally I would have not even feel comfortable to go to work after one month if I worked in a office.

Reason n 4: at some point I decided that the surgery was too risky for me and I wrote to Dr Taban “… I realised that I’m not ready to take risks like diplopia, strabismus, sunken eye with one eye more decompressed then the other one, etc”

But instead of leaving me alone and concentrate on more risk prone patients Dr Taban reassured me in writing that “the risk of any of those things happening is less then 1%”

As shown in pictures one of my eyes is more decompressed then the other one so I apparently turned out to be in that “less then 1%”

But it’s not only that: recently I wrote to Dr Taban to ask for a refund. In my very detailed report I showed him that the “less then 1%” that he promised me contradicts is own literature that I found online, dated 1st April 2017.

He replied to me that now he has another publication coming out soon that describes his revised technique for scarless orbital decompression with faster healing and lower risks.

He didn’t show any evidence of that via email and, even if this is true, doesn’t change the fact that he gave me datas contradicting his own literature at that point in time.

7) Why I am dissatisfied by Dr Taban post operative advice
After surgery Dr Taban saw me on Skype at one month and 4 months post op.

In picture n8 you can appreciate how the upper scleral show was already starting to be noticeable.

Unfortunately at the time I was still in the denial phase but Dr Taban didn’t advise me to correct the upper scleral show at its first stages.

Unfortunately this led me to the final results you can see in picture number 1.

8) How Dr Taban’s responsiveness changed when I became an issue

In my experience Dr Taban is the faster surgeon you will find at replying at your emails (at least when you still are in his sales funnel). But when I became an issue things took a U-turn and Dr Taban’s responses and ability to meet me online became suddenly much slower.

9) The “domino’s effect” after Dr Taban’s surgery

The aesthetical part: to reach a level that is somewhat acceptable I needed 4 surgeries with 3 different surgeons. Every surgery tends to leave some issues so, today, to look “as normal as possible”, I need fillers and botox on the top of the surgeries I already had.

My sight issues: During my journey I had two retinal detachhments, one retinal tear and a cataract. Fixing these problems required 5 surgeries and 2 interventions with laser.

At the moment I’m followed by a Glaucoma department. I am at high risk of developing Glaucoma in the future and it’s likely that I will need glaucoma surgery at some point within the next 5 years.

Today my intraocular pressure is too high and it’s kept under control with pressure eye drops. The drops are making me impotent so I need injections to have a sexual life. And it’s likely that in the future I will need a penile implant to have some sort of sex life.

DISCLAIMER: I’m not implying that Dr Taban’s surgery caused these issues with my sight. However I showed proof to Dr Taban of
- One surgeon hypotesising a correlation between Dr Taban’s surgery and some of my sight issues
- And how one consultant of Moorfields Eye Hospital in London hypotesised a link between the orbital decompression I had and some of the issues I am experiencing

Dr Taban didn’t even bother to assess these specific concerns in writing.

10) Dr Taban’s refusal to refund me

Roughly one year after surgery I wrote to Dr Taban to show him his final results. His office booked me an appointment with him on Skype that lasted less the 13 minutes. I felt zero empathy for the results he delivered and, even if I asked, I wasn’t given any refund.

Recently I wrote to him again making him aware of all my journey and of many other things that I cannot write on this platform. I asked for a full refund + a compensation for all I had to go through. Once again I was denied it . This is the response I received

"We have a no refund policy […]. However, I do try to make my patients happy and offer free or discounted touch up surgery. Occasionally instead of doing the touch up surgery, I refund the patient my cost of touch up surgery. For instance, It is possible you may benefit from upper eyelid retraction surgery (although your second photo doesn't show retraction so it is confusing so I need to evaluate your eyes in follow up visit to determine) and I will do the upper eyelid retraction surgery at no charge to you; but I may decide to refund you $2500 instead if it is impossible for you to return.

Please let me or my office know if you want to schedule a follow up visit, either in person or virtual”

This response to me felt utterly offensive as it showed that
- Dr Taban barely cared to read my report (otherwise he would have known that I already had many revision surgeries)
- Didn’t even remember my case (otherwise he would have known why some pictures showed retraction and some didn’t without any need to “be confused”)
- And he thought that 2500$ was an acceptable refund for the results that everyone here can see