Dr. Helen Barbara Lerner

Dr. Helen Lerner listens assiduously and provides an astonishing depth of advice and guidance that is practical and helpful in planning for surgery and recovering from surgery. She truly cares about her patients.

Dr. Lerner is a kind, caring, and compassionate doctor. I had a bad leg ulcer and fracture after a car crash. Other surgeons said I needed the leg amputated. Dr. Lerner was able to do surgery and repair my leg wound. Afterwards I was able to go back to jogging. She is a miracle worker.

Dr. Lerner was wonderful. She listened carefully, examined me thoroughly, answered all my questions about my breast plastic surgery operation, took her time with me and did not rush at all, like many surgeons do. My operation went great, and the results were amazing. I wish I could give 10-star rating to Dr. Lerner.

Dr. Lerner is one of the most extraordindary , compassionate and psychologically insightful doctor/surgeon ever.I came to her for a skin lesion that my primary care doctor had brushed off as "nothing." One of my friends suggest I get a second opinion from Dr. Lerner, a specialist. Dr. Lerner explained that no one can accurately diagnose a lesion just by looking at it . She also said the lesion had several charateristics of a skin cancer. She offered to do a excisional biopsy, which she said was the ideal approach. She also put my mind at ease by giving me the names and contact infomration for other qualified doctors, so I felt she was not just offering the procedure to make money. The procedure went well and she was right-it was a skin cancer. The unnexpected benefit of consulting her was that she drew me out about my mother's death from cancer in my childhood. She helped me grieve the loss of my mother. I had not realized the connection between the unexpressed grief of my mom's… death with my subsequent huge weight gain and hoarding problem. I not only got rid of the skin cancer, I learned to grieve my loss instead of comulsively eating and hoarding over my feelings.

Dr. Lerner is one of the best doctors and surgeons I have ever had. She has a wonderful bed-side manner -she is one of the few doctors who compassionately listened without interrupting me. She has performed several surgical procedures on me that surpassed my expectations. In the pre-op area, before the surgery, she memorably tucked me in a warmed surgical blanket and assuaged my fears by letting me know that she would be there with me when I woke up.The technical results of the surgeries were far better than comparable procedures I 've seen done on others. Also, she is the best weight loss coach I ever had. Other plastic surgeons rejected me for elective surgery and just told me I was too fat. My general practice doctors over the years just lectured me. Therapists never helped me either-they were clueless. Thanks to Dr. Lerner's coaching, I have lost more than one hundred pounds and kept it off for several years now. She is the best!!!

Brilliant, dedicated, caring medical advocate, weight loss coach and plastic surgeon Dr. Lerner has treated me as well as many members of my family. She has an unusual background in that, in addition to plastic and reconstructive surgery, she has intensively studiedpsychology, complementary medicine, addiction disorders, and rehab. It certainly shows in her approach to disease. She coached me in unique ways to successfully lose more than one hundred pounds (and keep the weight off!!) so that I could then have elective surgery, which went well. Another time previously, I had an big ulcer on my leg and doctors advised me to have it amputated. Dr. Lerner came three times a day to personally do sterile wound care with sterile q-tips. She then did surgery on the leg which healed the wound. She did breast surgery on my wife after breast cancer. Post-op, the site actually looks better than before the cancer appeared. My mother, age 94, was in the hospital ICU and given last rites and told… by several expert doctors that there was nothing more that could be done. As a medical advocate, Dr. Lerner came in and figured out how to change ventilator settings, tweak the meds , change the feeding tube regimen, improve wound care, etc. Thanks to Dr. Lerner, my mother was able to walk out of the hospital, eating on her own, wound healed and doing fine. My uncle had a non-healing ulcer on his face that two doctors said was nothing to worry about and treated it with salve even though it just got worse. Dr. Lerner diagnosed the ulcer as a malignant melanoma, did surgery, and now you cant even see the scar where she operated. Our family members all feel very fortunate to have found such a devoted doctor.

Dr. Lerner really listened to me, asked me many questions about my problem, and made a thorough exam of my medical condition. She didn't rush me or interrupt me. Her physical exam was very thorough and competent. I was impressed that she suggested that I always get a second opinion if I'm thinking of doing surgery or some other serious medical procedure, just to have peace of mind that I'm making the right decision. I know several of Dr. Lerner's other patients, and they also tell me how great they think Dr. Lerner is. I did not realize how extraordinary Dr Lerner is until long after the following surgical event: She scheduled me on a Friday right before a holiday weekend to have a cancer removed from my left ear. I admit that during the surgery , which was done under local with IV sedation, I was very impatient, verbally cranky and irritable that the surgery was lasting so long. It did not help my mood to hear the staff grouse that the surgeon next door had just taken off an ear… cancer in less than twenty minutes. Afterwards, my ear healed without incident. I might never had appreciated how conscientious Dr. Lerner was in doing my surgery except for the following event. Six months later, I was sitting in the x-ray dept. waiting for help with an unrelated problem. I noticed that the guy sitting next to me had most of the top of his right ear lopped off and he had to tape his glasses to his head with tape! I got to talking to him and found out he was the guy who had had his ear cancer removed the same day as my surgery but in less than twenty minutes! When I told him I also had surgery that same day to remove an ear cancer from the top of my ear, he didnt believe me because, as agreed with me, he couldnt even see the scar. What I learned is that the surgeon who took care of him may have been too fast in surgery just to get a quick start on a holiday weekend. I also learned that surgeons get paid the same and no more if they just guesstimate and lop off a huge hunk including normal tissue to make sure they remove a tumor and ignore what the appearance will be vs. if like Dr. Lerner, they spend more time and painstakingly and carefully take off small incremental slices and do whats called frozen sections at the pathology lab to make sure they got the cancer off without unnecessarily disfiguring the patient. When I went back to Dr. Lerner to apologize, she was good-humored , smiled and said, I could put a bowl on your head and with a very large pair of scissors, give you a haircut in five seconds but you might not like the results. Good reconstructive surgery is judged more by the calendar than the clock. How lucky I am that she has a conscientious attitude and puts the care of her patients first.

I give Dr. Lerner the highest ratings possible. She is a superb doctor and surgeon. My experience with Dr. Lerner could not have been better. The doctor went out of her way to make an in-home visit (how rare is that these days?!) to help the whole family understand and deal with wound healing issues when our loved one was in hospice care. She treated our loved one with respect and listened closely and with sympathy to his explanation of his understanding of what had occurred. She explained carefully and thoroughly how the wounds had developed . Because they were not simply exclusively pressure sores, their origin needed to be understood before they could be prevented or treated. Dr. Lerner gave explicit and careful instructions to our loved one, as well as to the family and caregivers, regarding ongoing care. She brought with her samples of products and tools that we could use to help our loved one heal. This saved us time and stress in trying to locate and wait for delivery of… specialized items that not all retail stores would routinely carry. She showed us how to use them, demonstrating a physical gentleness that is often lacking in physicians when they lay hands on a patient.She followed up with us over the course of our loved ones next several months. She made sure that we understood all the steps in maintaining the progress of the wound care.In other circumstances, I have had occasion to take my own medical issues to her, and she has answered all my questions with in-depth knowledge and insight regarding the underlying causes of many disorders and problems. She is admirably quick to acknowledge when a question takes her outside her training or experience, which is sometimes difficult for a physician to admit. She is always helpful about recommending resources for further assistance or information when she cannot offer her own expertise. Dr. Lerner anticipates the questions, concerns and inconveniences that a patient would experience. She is the sort of doctor that all of us wish we had for all our medical needs.

Dr. Lerner is one of the most compassionate physicians I have ever met. She spent a lot of time listening to me without interrupting. She also answered all my questions without demeaning me.She is very modest and soft-spoken in demeanor even though it is clear she is very bright. All my life, I had a weihgt problem despite many diets. Several primary care doctors just scolded me to lose my excess weight and left me with deep shame. Other surgeons rejected me for surgery due to my extra weight and told me to come back when I lost the weight. Dr. Lerner , as a medical coach,taught me a totally different and unique way to see my relatioship with food. She helped me lose more than one hundred pounds, and more important to keep it off several years later, after the surgery. I was very satisfied with the surgical results of two different surgical procedures she did on me. Further, she successfully treated both my mother and father when they were very ill, and she went way out of her way to… provide superb medical and surgical care for them. My father had an infection of the bone in his leg. Several other surgeons said they would have to amputate the leg. Dr. Lerner, instead, researched alternatives to treat his problem. She came three times a day to his bedside and meticulously cleaned the wound with sterile q-tips. She then did reconsrtutive flap surgery on my dad and afterwards, he was eventually able to walk again. When my elderly mother got severe burns, other doctors tried to pressure us to put her in hospice. We consulted Dr. Lerner. Dr. Lerner, instead encouraged hope of recovery for mom. Dr. Lerner changed moms dressings frequently, re-calibrated several parts of mom's care including the ventilator settings and then did successful skin grafts. She used expertise to have ultra modern pain monitoring so my mom got the right amount of pain killer instead of the usual peaks and valleys of pain relief medications given by other doctors I have gone to. I feel very fortunate to have Dr. Lerner as a medical advocate as well as superb doctor and surgeon.