Are there any other doctors in SoCal I should be contacting?
Unless you're willing to travel to further south into Mexico or up to Northern California, no not really.
For Dr. Gonzalez: does being a Urologist help at all, or is it more important to have experience with the sculpting and injecting? For Dr. Gonzalez: does only 20 procedures of experience give you pause? For Dr. Gonzalez/PhalloFILL: is there any merit to this “hydrodissection” technique?
Injecting & sculpting are as much an art as they are a science. This would make Plastic Surgeons and Dermatologists experienced with dermal fillers at the top of the list,
Urologist third. Being a
Urologist is a plus however. Unfortunately, I don't know much about this particular physician.
His sample size is not optimal but it isn't a disqualification either. These guys have to start from somewhere; besides, I have to imagine
PhalloFILL saw something in him worth bringing him onboard as an affiliate.
I'm waiting for
PhalloFILL to provide me their marketing materials & visual aids to shed more light on the hydrodissection technique, and for now I can't add anything unfortunately.
For Dr. Tsay: does him doing glans enhancement give you any pause about his integrity?
Not at all. Almost every
PhalloBoards Sponsor offers glans enhancement or has offered glans enhancement. The issue with glans enhancement isn't so much complication risk (unless you are dealing with a bad injector), but that gains are often negligible for the price. However, since men ask for it, the service is available. Dr.
Tsay is a pretty upstanding guy from my impressions, and arguably the most personable I've dealt with among all my Sponsor physicians.
Is there any difference between the Versa and Juvaderm brands? Am I truly comparing apples to apples by listing the pricing on a dollar-per-mL basis of the filler, or am I missing something?
Not all
HA formulations are created equal. Firmness, longevity, and cost seem to vary between brands. Which is the best for penis enlargement? That's up in the air and is something this site hopes to monitor if & when patients continue to progress report. That said, I'd go with an experienced physician's choice of
HA versus an inexperienced one. The experienced physician will have the sample size to know whether or not the
HA he's using is legit.
Taking it a step back, I just want to be 100% sure I’ve done all my research: are there any material risks associated with HA fillers, assuming I’m in the hands of a good physician? I use the word “material” because we can all agree that there are risks with anything you do; but is the safety profile as high as it’s purported to be?
Your research is very solid and you seem to have put together a good list here. And yes, all procedures aren't without risk. Obviously, every procedure under the sun comes with risk of infection if treatment site isn't kept sterile and clean but that is an obvious one. This is generally a non-issue in a professional Clinic and when protocols are followed. The other risk is a granuloma complication. The good news is that these are rare, treatable, and aren't a threat to the function of the penis, but more of a nuisance in my opinion.
HA occurs naturally in your body, and all they've done is cross-linked it so that it can act as a
Dermal Filler and plump up the skin. It's arguably the safest filler outside of your own fat/tissue.
My other concern is that I might get the “pig in a blanket” effect, since one of the lingering complications from my previous ED is that my glans doesn’t engorge the way it used to. (Maybe I should be more open to glans enhancement than I previously thought?)
This is why I recommend
Girth enhancement in layers. Sure it may be costlier, but if you treat increasing
Girth like layering bricks, you can mitigate the pig-in-the-blanket look. Also express this concern to your doctor so that they don't overfill. Also, being a
Grower lends more to pig-in-the-blanket than the show-er types.
As for the remaining doctors not mentioned in your question list:
Dr. Emer - I can't speak for his
Phalloplasty skills but his Marketing team has certainly made him SoCal's "premier guy," except I'm not so sure he is. His Marketing Team also notoriously stole Dr.
Oates Before & After photos (
PhalloBoards Sponsor) in their advertising material, which they later took down upon Dr.
Oates request. I doubt Dr. Emer approved or encouraged this himself, but he holds some responsibility regardless. Even so, that was years ago and there is no ill-feeling with me and their Clinic anymore. I would also like to mention that his "Hollywood" aura is a bit of a turn-off for me personally. The high consultation fees and how it can be hard to get a hold of him as a patient (which one had reported) comes off as a bit snobby. I could be reading too much into it, and heck who knows maybe one day he'll be a
PhalloBoards Sponsor, but for now that's all I got.
Dr.
Solomon is fantastic but offers surgical options only. This means he prefers the use of dermal graft matrices (namely Surgimend) to create
Girth. There are pros & cons to this. The pros are: since the Surgimend is precision cut, you get a very even, natural end-result with no ridges or nodules. It is also permanent. The cons are: it's surgical so therefore it can be more invasive which includes longer down-time. Also (this can be a pro OR con depending on your goals), the
Girth is capped at around 0.75" or so, which is QUITE significant but means there is no "adding on" in the future. If you're of average
Girth, a 0.75" is massive and quite frankly all you need from one go around. Another good thing about Dr.
Solomon is that he's very experienced in correcting botched procedures from other physicians, so his understanding of the penis is (arguably) on par with Reconstructive Urologists.
Dr. Kane I don't know of but if you were to go with him, OPT for
HA and not silicone. I have only ONE Sponsor here that happens to have silicone as an option amongst a variety (he's a Plastic Surgeon in Northern California), but the agreement was that he would NOT advertise his use of silicone in the penis on
PhalloBoards, only his lengthening, scrotal enhancement,
HA, and dermal graft matrices. This is how much I dislike silicone-anything in and around the penis. Silikon1000 is meant to be used in micro-droplet not large volume, and can be effective in many areas of cosmetic medicine - however it seems that silicone and the penis have a bad history. And I mean all iterations of silicone coincidentally, silicone oil AND rigid silicone implants, despite not being the same thing.
Of these doctors, who would be your recommendation?
A
PhalloBoards Sponsor. You might think that's easy for me to say, but it doesn't change the fact that they have a "public face" on this site that monitors their work, holding them more accountable and ensuring the highest standard of care. Sponsorship also means a higher degree of vetting and/or positive review status.