I would like to have a balloon sinuplasty done...

I would like to have a balloon sinuplasty done. I have a 65% s-shaped deviated septum (bent out of shape because a homeless guy headbutted me as hard as he could 8 years ago and I couldn't afford to have a doctor look at my nose or make sure it would heal correctly). Because of this, my ostia are basically pinched almost completely shut, and my sinuses cannot drain at all.
It seems obvious that a balloon sinuplasty would benefit me, but every doctor I see refuses to consider it unless I have a head CT scan done beforehand to "confirm" that I would benefit. How many fucking confirmations do you need? My ostia are pinched shut due to my crooked septum. You said it yourself. How could you possibly need to know more?
I fail to understand the supposed necessity of the CT scan, and the doctor never explains. Instead they dodge the question and bolt out the door to deal with the next patient.
I'm not going to irradiate my brain with 44 mGy just to doubly confirm what is already known. I just want the balloon sinuplasty done. There is zero risk. I don't care if the worst thing that happens is I get no results and I've wasted my money.
If someone here knows or can find an ENT specialist anywhere in the United States who is open minded enough to do this without a CT scan, let them know I will pay 25k USD in cash as an incentive (the procedure is normally around 4k). I'll sign a lawsuit waiver and an NDA if that's what it takes for them to feel comfortable with this idea.
If they actually follow through and do the procedure, then I will also pay (You) a 5k USD finder's fee for finding that doctor for me.
This is not a joke. I have the money, and I've known for a long time that I want it done. If the only way I can get it is with a bribe then so be it.
I can be reached at [email protected]

What third world country are you from? Jesus Christ.

Michigan

right so just to summarize why this post may interest you, I'll pay $5,000 USD to anyone who can find me a willing doctor.
$5,000 USD.
$5,000 USD.
$5,000 USD.
thanks

>because a homeless guy headbutted me as hard as he could 8 years ago

Story time story time story time

I think the doctor wants to verify that your issue isn't entirely bone-related before he does a procedure that may not help. If the problem is bones that healed in the wrong place, then it'll take more than ballooning to open your sinuses.

>needs surgery
>doesn't want to give doctors best idea of what they'll run into when they're OPERATING ON HIS SKULL

Just go to Mexico brah.

sorry it's not that interesting but here it is

>just parked downtown
>got out of the car
>a wild homeless vet appears
>he tries to talk to me
>I usually walk away from homeless people with no acknowledgement and no eye contact regardless of what they say or do to get my attention, but this time I decided it made more sense to humor him for a few minutes because he knew which car was mine and he might mess with it if he didn't like me
>he was giving a sort of inspiring rant about no matter how bad life seems to get, there is always something good to be found, it's just hard to see sometimes
>he took a step forward and asked me if i could see the good in life
>I wasn't sure what to say
>suddenly he lunged forward and threw all his body weight into headbutting me directly in the nose, too fast to react and defend myself
>then he asked, "now do you see?"

also, 3 years before that, I was jumped by four black guys who kicked the back of my head face-first into the cement five times, and I was slowly bleeding from my nose and ears until the end of the next day. that might have been a sort of gateway trauma that enabled the future headbutt to be more damaging than it should have been.

hm, so you think his only actual concern with balloon sinuplasty is that it may be pointless and ineffective (rather than there being any actual risk to my well-being)?

it's not really an operation though, they don't even make any cuts, they just inflate a balloon in an orifice you already have

How can you not understand that a 3d mapping of your skull will tell your doctors what the structure of your septum is like, where the fractures/damage is, where to press with the balloon to best correct the problem? What should they do otherwise, shove a camera up there and root around in your boogers while sketching what they see on a napkin?

You're already going to get cancer. Accept it.
You're already bathed in radiation every minute of every day. Accept it.
Just get the goddamn ct scan you stubborn bastard, or keep whistling while you breathe.

I can see how 3d mapping would help with actual surgery, but not for non-invasive, non-traumatic insertion into a visible orifice. Do you demand a 3d mapping of a woman's vagina before having sex with her?
The doctor doesn't choose where the pressure is applied, the balloon applies pressure uniformly to the orifice walls.
Imagine a world where X-rays were never discovered, so CT scans were never invented. Yet in this world, they still developed balloon sinuplasty technology. Would they ban it because it's too dangerous? I doubt it. I think they'd use it all the time.
I see no evidence that the 3d scan helps at all in this case beyond answering a binary "Yes" or "No" question of whether to bother performing the balloon sinuplasty.
Sure, the CT scan might show that the balloon sinuplasty is unnecessary, but in that case, the CT scan itself was unnecessary. So either way, I am potentially going through an unnecessary procedure. I don't see the problem with me being the person who decides which potentially unnecessary procedure I want to try first.

to put it another way

CT scan:
>potentially useless
>potentially dangerous

balloon sinuplasty:
>potentially useless
>completely safe

>completely safe
After known facial trauma
You're best bet is going to Mexico. They'll do that shit for cash.
If you have thin or porous ethmoid bones or any abnormally defect in there can't you see why it would be important to know? Going in blind even with a dilation device is a bad idea. You can fuck around and go blind, open a communication through the floor of your skull and wind up leaking CSF, then get encephalitis. Do you understand this? And because you're afraid of rad exposure from a sinus CT? Jesus H, OP. Misalign your priorities much?

Source? I've never heard of that happening from a balloon sinuplasty. In fact, I can't find a single balloon sinuplasty horror story anywhere, which is literally a first for any medical issue I've ever researched before.
>inb4 "it's never happened because doctors wisely used CT scans on all those patients beforehand to confirm that it would be safe"

You say a head CT scan is safe, and I'm interested to hear why you think that, because here is how it looks to me:

>average background radiation exposure to the entire body per year is 1 mGy
>head is 7.3% the mass of the entire body, meaning the head only gets 0.073 mGy of that background radiation per year
>head CT scan is 44 mGy
>head CT scan is therefore equivalent to 594 years worth of background radiation (44/0.073)
>594 years worth of background radiation, concentrated into a 5 minute exposure

How is that safe? It's a death star blast of catastrophically damaging radiation.

I don't really care about the (suspiciously sloppily collected) cancer stats of head CT scans. I'm not worried about cancer. I'm more concerned about the DNA and cellular machinery being damaged in unquantifiable ways that only manifest as a general malaise and mental fogginess that takes years before kicking into high gear. I'm sure 100% of those victims never even suspect that the CT scan from years ago caused it. This is unacceptable, I need to be able to think clearly for my job.

>inb4 the sievert meme. Sievert is an orwellian anti-science weasel word used to disguise the true level of exposure by hiding behind an arbitrarily defined "dose" multiplier that varies wildly from one body part to another.

>inb4 "damage to DNA caused by radiation is strictly cumulative; 1 mGy received throughout the year causes the exact same damage as 1 mGy concentrated into a 5 minute span and then 0 mGy for the rest of the year" which is bullshit.

Also, why can't I get an MRI instead?

woo

>lives in US of A
>worries about radiation
wew lad, go calculate how many nukes were detonated on your soil

>44mGy

Health physicist here, that's nothing. Neurons are the least susceptible to radiation. Not to mention the fact that I'm calculating a dose of 0.0023mGy. There will no stochastic effects.

The dose of a head CT scan is 2 mSv, but the actual radiation exposure is 44 mGy. Concentrated on the head, that's 594 years worth of background radiation all at once. How is that nothing?

I don't know where you are getting that figure from. The closest thing that would give you that dose would be a catheterization under fluoroscope in IR. Head CT's can range from my previously quoted dose up to 2mGy. If I reviewed operating records from my rad Tech's and it stated a dose of 44mGy for a head CT I would have to prepare misadministration reports.

You can't be this paranoid and dumb

Many head CT scans produce even more than 44 mGy.
Where are you getting 0.0023?

Nice argument you have there.

...

Did you read the response to that post in your picture?

Yes, and sievert is a weasel word, they admit it themselves in the response. With sievert/mSv,
>organs and tissues have been assigned a tissue weighting factor based on their radiation risk (similar to the radiation weighting factor). When the equivalent [real] dose is multiplied by the tissue weighting factor we get effective [fake] dose.
The multiplicative weighting factors are completely made up. They also define risk based on probability of cancer only. They have total disregard for any of the other side effects of heavily damaged DNA.
Sievert = pseudoscience

My mistake, should be 2.3mSv/mGy. CTDIvol is an average phantom dose (homogenous acrylic). Due to human anatomy, effective dose is orders of magnitude less. Specifically, this depends on age, BMI, tissue density, and technical characteristics of the scanner being used. Techs and scanning software all incorporate ALARA and 'Image Gently'. I think your fear of cancer is not justified. Good luck finding an ENT that will diagnose you without diagnostic CT's.

I'm not looking for a formal diagnosis, though; I just want a harmless procedure performed.

Michael Jackson and Joan Rivers can tell you that doctors are happy to put a patient's life at risk for harmful procedures that have no health benefit. Why can't I get a COMPLETELY HARMLESS balloon sinuplasty on request, with a potential health benefit?

Background radiation is 1 mGy per year, head is 7.3% the mass of the body, head therefore gets 0.073 mGy per year. A head CT scan is 44 mGy, so I'd get 594 years worth of background radiation to the head concentrated in a 5 minute blast from a CT scan. No combination of words strung together will persuade me to do it.

No no no, that is not how radiation dose works at all. You need to address tissue weighting factors, it's not just as simple as saying TBD*0.073. You're really no better than the anti-vaxxers in terms of broad brush stroke medical physics. Exposure =/= stochastic effect.

He already addressed that in one of his previous comments.

>>organs and tissues have been assigned a tissue weighting factor based on their radiation risk (similar to the radiation weighting factor). When the equivalent [real] dose is multiplied by the tissue weighting factor we get effective [fake] dose.
>The multiplicative weighting factors are completely made up. They also define risk based on probability of cancer only. They have total disregard for any of the other side effects of heavily damaged DNA.

I thought MRI's were better, and looking online they're about 10x cheaper than what this guy wants to pay for a black market medical procedure.

Doctors seem happy to let patients make all the dangerous decisions themselves in the case of sex reassignment surgery, cosmetic surgery, leg extension surgery, etc. They don't care if the patient is making a bad choice or if they will commit suicide or die from complications. Doctors will gladly do things like that without any tests or scans first, so why the resistance to perform (100% safe) balloon sinuplasty?

It kind of seems like the things doctors are liberal about doing have one main thing in common: They are profitable.

So what's the actual problem from the doctor's perspective? It can't be patient safety. Is it that balloon sinuplasty isn't profitable enough by itself? Do they feel the need to pad the bill in order to make it worth their time to deal with the patient? (Plus they profit from four visits instead of one: 1. initial visit, 2. scan, 3. followup analysis of scan and discussion of options, 4. procedure) If money is the issue, then that's where my bribe comes in to rebalance the incentive.

>the captcha was a giant restaurant chalkboard that said "SUCK MY BALLS" but i absent-mindedly completed it before thinking to grab a screenshot

You're just going to have to do the balloonoplasty yourself. You could probably rig up a bike pump to some flexible brake line, but the balloon is going to need to be made the right size both deflated and inflated for it to work. If only there were some sort of scan you could do on your nasal passages that would tell you what size balloon to make...

I asked an ENT years ago if I could do an MRI instead of a CT and he said no. I don't think balloon sinuplasty was widely done yet, though.

maybe I should try again with this new doctor

>Do you demand a 3d mapping of a woman's vagina before having sex with her?

A gentleman doesn't demand, he thanks.

I'm sure they would take your money and do an MRI. You can have them done for no reason, if you have the money.

I just got an e-mail back from an ENT in state who said he might do it.

Cool

I'd help you but I'm already rich and I'm very busy so this wouldn't benefit me. I could try something but it would take time. No money needed though.
I also live far away (Tennessee) and don't know much outside my state. It's the only place where I get my healthcare. It might be policy that many doctors use but if it helps, I live near one of the best hospitals in the continental US.

You live in Detroit? Lol
My city has a large amount of meth addicts and I once had my radio stolen and the guy who did it never got caught. The homeless are funny.

Who is this semen demon? I need to know