Castle Connolly top doctors

How important/useful is it the EP we choose be listed as a Castle Connolly top doctor? If my EP is not and others at the same academic hospital are how might I find out why tactfully? Does it matter at all?

Maybe a bit off track maybe not but….I would not place too much credence in any of the Best Doctor/Top Doctor Awards you may see or hear about without doing serious research. The link below is one of many you will find about these “awards.” I linked this one as it specifically mentions Castle Connolly.

[abcnews.go.com]


The above is from a previous post of mine some time ago. Sorry I don’t know how to link it. IMO, most “Top Doctor” awards should be viewed with some degree of skepticism. Do your due diligence.

I agree with Mark. I would place very little value on being listed on that web site, or any doctor rating web site or publication for that matter. I think those sites can be useful for finding other information like what insurance they take, where they're located, etc, but I think they're next to useless for judging actual skills and experience. They're often little more than popularity contests.

Just out of curiosity, I did a search for the top EPs in Austin, TX. The results returned about half the staff at Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia Institute, with Natale listed 10th. He's arguably the top EP in the world, and yet there was no way to distinguish him from the other 9 listed before him. Then I tried a search in my area, and not one of the EPs I would consider the best in the state were listed at all.

Carey- didn’t you get failed ablations (5?) from top tier hospitals such as Yale and a couple from other prominent hospitals before getting a successful ablation from Natale?? I too don’t put much faith in a top EPs list. I think luck, a top tier EP skills operator and genetic disposition to afib can determine success or not .

Per Susan's comment. Here is Carey's story that he posted.

Great post.

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susan.d
Carey- didn’t you get failed ablations (5?) from top tier hospitals such as Yale and a couple from other prominent hospitals before getting a successful ablation from Natale??

Yep, I've had failed ablations from some of the finest. I don't blame the Yale EP much because he told me going in that I was a very complex case, that I most likely had multiple flutter pathways, and that he was not confident of success. But I think if I'd gone to him in the first place, I'd most likely have been a one-and-done. I blame the first guy who was the director of electrophysiology at the UConn school of medicine with impressive credentials and training, and a top rating on best doctor sites. But his ablations only worked for a matter of months, with the longest I got being 9 months. When I finally went to the Yale EP, he found out why. Despite having had 3 prior ablations, he found no evidence whatsoever -- zero -- that I'd had any prior ablations. I was fully reconnected around the pulmonary veins. It seems the UConn EP didn't make durable lesions, so my heart was just healing over them. The only thing he succeeded in doing was creating multiple flutter pathways, including the one that ran at 250 bpm. Natale found them all and squashed them in 2 hours, 20 minutes -- my shortest ablation of all.