Dacryocystorhinostomy: external or endoscopic?!

Dacryocystorhinostomy: external or endoscopic?

I'm a 79 year old man who is going to need a dacryocystorhinostomy, recommended by an ophthalmological plastic surgeon. In doing due diligence about whether to take his recommendation for an external procedure or find someone who does it endoscopically, I find that all of the articles in the literature recommending the external procedure are by ophthalmologists, the only specialty that does them, and all recommending the endoscopic procedure are by otolaringologists, the only specialty that does THEM! I detect a bias. Can anyone help me in making a choice between external and endoscopic? [Please, state your specialty!] Thanks.

You are a really smart patient. You detected the bias. You won't be able to clear the bias within the medical profession. To investigate this on your own you can do several things:

1) You can ask for references from patients that have undergone either procedures. The doctors will say that they are tied by the oath to confidentiality and privacy. That's fine, just ask their offices to contact a couple of patients who would agree to either call you or be called by you. That circumvents the problem with any doctor who shows a minimum of goodwill in actually sharing relevant information with you. If he does not, it could be a red flag.

2) The internet has probably much info on both procedures. I am thinking in particular of both WebMed.com and Wikipedia.org that have tons of info on such specific health related topics with links etc...

3) Search Google Scholar to uncover any study done on the performance of both procedures. You may uncover medical studies where you will have to pay some bucks to become a subscriber of that specific scientific medical journal. This may be a well worthwhile investment for you to make.

4) Join relevant Google and Yahoo groups. Those can be amazing sources of information too. You may directly get the information as suggested under item 1) without having to deal with a doctor's office as a hurdle of censorship.

If you do 1) 2) 3) and 4) mentioned above, you will get far more objective and better information than if you ask directly any doctor who will just reflect the bias of his own specialty.

Hope those leads will help you in gathering the information you need.