Alexandre M Rosen, MD

On Jan 10th fearing a possible stroke, my wife went to the emergency room. During testing, an unrelated kidney tumor was detected. The emergency room physician referred her to dr. Rosen. He showed us the C-scan taken during emergency room testing and pointed out the tumor. He stated that the tumor was small, less than 3 cm. and easily accessible. He told us that it should be removed and he could do it by robotic surgery. He would perform a partial nephrectomy, saving most of the kidney. Taking him at his word that it was small and easily accessible, we set a date for surgery. At this meeting, the risk of a total nephrectomy was never mentioned. If he had mentioned it we would have gotten a second opinion. As it turned out, during surgery he started a partial nephrectomy the converted to a full nephrectomy. On page 4 of the post operative report, Dr. Rosen states that during our initial meeting, we discussed potential therapy options including both radical nephrectomy and partial nephrectomy..... We never discussed a radical nephrectomy at our initial meeting. All that was discussed was (and these are his words) removing the tumor, since it was small and easily accessible. Per the University of Florida, Department of Urology, web site we now find out that the procedure is complicated and should be performed by an experienced, highly skilled surgeon. Also, it states that it is rare to start a partial kidney removal and have to remove the entire kidney. The pathology report indicates that the tumor was less than 3 cm. this was the expected size.