Complaint Review: Dr. Gerard Gianoli MD - Covington Louisiana

This could have been a review about a financial rip off, but when the person in question is a doctor, there is no amount of money in the whole entire world that could bring you back your health and your life. I lost my life in a surgery that should have never happened in an honest world. If this review can save even one life, than the effort of writing it should prevail. I went to see Dr. Gerard Gianoli in Covington LA as I suffered from dizziness. Dr. Gianoli after a series of vestibular tests told me that I had a tear in the connecting membrane between the inner and the middle ear. He called it a PLF, a perilymph fistula and recommended to avoid strenuous activity. A year later my dizziness started to clear up and when I came in 2015 for a follow up appointment, Dr. Gianoli, firmly and unequivocally told me that I needed to perform a simple surgical procedure to make sure that the dizziness would not reoccur. "Do it - it will help you - you will benefit from it". He told me, and how did I believe him? I will never know. Within a five minute consult he pressed me into a surgery that was about to ruin my life. I was afraid at the time from the procedure, and I told Dr. Gianoli that I would never perform any procedure that would impair my excellent hearing or that would leave any kind of noise in my ear. I told him clearly, that any noise in my ear would kill my life. Dr. Gianoli dismissed all my fears and concerns and reassured me multiple times that this would not happen. I paid with my life for believing this doctor. Dr. Gianoli performed this PLF surgery on me. All cash doctor US$ 6,000 for the surgery, US$ 4,000 for the all cash ambulatory facility, expenses and procedures not recognized as valid and therefore not reimbursed by my health insurance company. A surgery that destroyed my life: I have been injured, irreversibly damaged and left on permanent disability. I cannot work anymore or take care of my kids. I can barely function or stand on my feet. Dr. Gianoli turned my life into an horror of physical agony and misery, from a happy and most active person to a crushed, disabled person. Dr. Gianoli’s surgery left me with vertigo, motion sickness, dizziness and chronic nausea. My past dizziness that cleared up long time before the surgery was barely light-headedness comparing to my situation after the surgery. Dr. Gianoli impaired my hearing to the point I need a hearing aid, he left me with hyperacusis and a pressurized ear that feels at all time like it is about to burst apart. Dr. Gianoli surgery left me with a monstrous tinnitus -- a constant noise in my ear that no human was designed to endure. Dr. Gianoli killed my life. After this surgery Dr. Gianoli performed another series of his vestibular tests, all cash doctor, US$ 2,000 per round -- that was the (4th) fourth round. This time, Dr. Gianoli told me that the test were showing that the operated ear is "perfectly sealed” but the non-operated ear has a PLF -- a new PLF that opened up in the other ear after the surgery, and according to Dr. Gianoli was causing the debilitating post surgery vertigo symptoms. Horrified, after losing my life in this place, I finally gained clarity. I had to save myself from this place. After hearing this, my journey to find hope for my life began, I was carried to John Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, Harvard, Penn State and I heard time after time the same statements: (1) None of these top hospitals believe there is such a diagnosis as a PLF and therefore they do not perform such surgery in their facilities. (2) None of the vestibular tests that Dr. Gianoli performed before the surgery indicated that I had any problem with any of the ears. (3) None of these hospitals perform a lumbar puncture during ear surgery like Dr. Gianoli performed on me during the surgery (more cash money?) (4) According to doctors' opinion, I was scammed into a surgery that was performed against any conceivable medical practice and guidelines. Dr. Gianoli in his own article that he published in a medical journal in Louisiana is stating the following: "There is no objective intraoperative test to confirm the presence of a PLF – no tests with adequate sensitivity and specificity are available.” https://archive.org/stream/journaloflouisia146unse/journaloflouisia146unse_djvu.txt A surgery that destroyed not only my life but affected the lives of so many people around me with my kids suffering the most. How cynical and cruel can a doctor be? My life, the only one that I had was lost -- for nothing.