If you can afford these two doctors, my vote is Betz
Paley:
- has alot of experience
- says he has a good record of getting people back full function
- from how many LL surgeries he's done, he has experience dealing with rare complications if that comes up
- conservative approach / limits length
- biggest problem: no good weight bearing internal nails in the USA (not his fault)-> end up using precise and in wheelchair a long time
- precise nail can reverse length (shorten) if something goes wrong
Betz
- also has alot of experience, but maybe somewhat less
- he claims that Betzbone 2.0 has easier clicking than some other clicking nails (based on his videos + my experience with gnail, I think this might be true)
- He is passing the torch to Becker, who has less experience but has some plastic surgery experience which you may or may not like
- In the cyborg4life interview, says he lets people go to work a bit earlier, he seems to let people leave the area earlier (might be good or bad, not sure, depends on how much support you can get when you go back home)
- lets people do more length (you can see this is a good or bad thing, I see it as neutral since someone can just voluntarily choose to do less length if this is a concern)
- betzbone nails can't go in reverse (shorten) if something goes wrong (but I think betz also offers precise) -> can negate this problem partially by just doing less length
- WEIGHT BEARING NAILS (betzbone 2.0) -> except for clicking pain/stress, it will be an easier experience b/c will be able to walk sooner. About clicking pain: based on the forum posts, it seems that femur clicking is more painful than tibia clicking but I've noticed that often my clicking pain for gnail is sometimes very low pain/sometimes no problem. Can manage the pain with ice packs
- I don't think you will be healing faster ----but, because of weight bearing, I think you will be walking with crutches sooner (there is a difference)
I think that if I had infinite money, I'd probably do betzbone femur and tibia with Betz but insist on paying extra for at least 5+ days of physio per week and staying in his area for doctor visits + paying to be near a pool and help getting inside. However, this may not be realistic, I believe that alot of patients don't do this and instead leave the area quickly-ish
I personally think the clicking pain/ability to walk w/ crutches earlier with Betz's weight bearing nail is worth it, but I'm not completely sure. Paley always talks about in his interviews how safe and experienced he is, so idk
Anyone wanna correct me or add something?