Richard Allen Berger

Same as the other comments. He is the best to fix other doctor failures. And he tells it like it is. He saved me. Hard to get an appointment with, yes. Enough said.

I had amazing experience with Dr. Berger. I came from the East Coast and had 3 unsuccessful surgeries in over a year in Boston with supposedly top notch hand surgeons there. No one could figure out how to fix my wrist but thought they knew how. Each surgery was worse thean the one before. I had read alot about Dr. Berger and chose him because he worked on world class athletes from around the world, so that to me meant he had to be good for athletes to put their careers in his hands. I was right. Dr. Berger is extemely busy and it is tough to see him right away but I was lucky as it I was able to get a winter appt. with him without too long of a wait. Upon our arrival, we met with Dr. Berger and he spent over an hour looking oaver all my records, extensively examining my wrist and explaining what he saw, gave his professional opinion on how to fix it and explained many Dr.s do not know about the ulna sie of the wrist - this happens to be his niche and boy was he right. He fixed… everything in my wrist and then some, and he and his team were absolutely top notch! On our 2 follow-ups trips after our first trip that included the consult and surgery, we were not able to see Dr. Berger but did see his team. He is incredibly busy but if you have a serious wrist issue, I would without hesitation tell you to go to him and not muck around with anyone else. I am so thankful I made the trip to see him as I was at my wits end - the people at Mayo, both Dr.s and patients have said they aften see patinets who come from afar to get problems fixed their local Dr.s couldn't, didn't know what they were doing, or screwed up in some way. I was one of those people. It's absolutely confounding that the 2 "hand specialists" in Boston at 2 different hospitals did not know how to fix my wrist but attempted to fix it without having any idea how to, and one had attached a ligament anatomically incorrect without even realizing it - which added to the failure of my wrist. After intensive and extensive research I did online, I was able to figure out with some accuracy, what was wrong and how it had to be fixed which is how I came upon Dr. Berger's medical journals about the wrist and advanced surgical techniques. I am very glad I found him. He also is a wonderful Dr. who is very caring and humble - I am incredibly thankful that he was able to fix me.

Took 2 hours for him to enter the room after my appointment time....can you say, unbelievably rude? So he basically says the MRI's show the issues, but its not something he can do anything about. He then said the bone scan showed diffused areas "lighting up" throughout ALL of the joints of my hand/wrist - which could be from something like Rheumatoid Arthritis, Lupus, Lyme's Disease etc etc (which are things he doesn't deal with and I am pretty darn sure I don't have as I don't have the other symptoms from those things) but he wanted me to get a bunch of blood tests to rule those things out and he would mail me the results - WTH? so I said "No, I will get the blood work done at home." I mean what is the point of that? Its not like I am going to commute another 16 hrs - yes! that is how long it took us round trip to drive there, so to go back and see someone else at that facility for whatever the blood results show (or don't) is nutz -what a crock! I think that telling someone "there is… nothing we can do" should be reserved for people with terminal illnesses - saying it in any other case is just messed up.....you should always have something or someone to refer people who are in pain to even if there is nothing "you" can do to help them! Certainly not expect them to "cope" and find a way to deal with the pain on their own.He said the bone cysts are NOT in locations that "should" be causing the pain I have - and the other cysts within the wrist joint (outside the bone) are in "bad" locations surgically where the possibility for nerve damage during the surgery doesn't outweigh the probability for it resolving my pain - so its too much of a long shot to be worth doing. He said if I had tendinitis like 2 of the 3 other surgeons have said then the MRI should have shown fluid in the tendon sheath - and it doesn't. If I had a split tear/T.I.L.T. then I should have instability, which I don't.....so basically he is saying the other 3 surgeons I've seen were ALL wrong...yet he has no answers either......omg, I would laugh - but it would only lead to more crying....this royally sucks....I just wanted 2 of these "specialists" to agree!Then he ended up giving me a speech about how, "Sometimes there are situations where we cannot conclusively say what the cause or origin of a person's pain is. Sometimes the pathways of the nerve receptors can get rewired to send pain signals to the brain when there is no obvious cause for the pain. In those cases there is nothing we can do, as surgeons we can only treat "known" causes. We can only wait and see if a definitive cause presents itself in the coming months or years so we can re-look at the case and see if something can be done with the new information." He went on and on with other non-helpful comments that seemed to only be about "him" and how frustrating it was for "him" to not be able to help people in these cases - but I didn't process most of it because I was too busy going "into shock" that he was actually going to send me away and NOT offer me any recourse other than "go home and be in pain and see if it gets worse- then let us know"...I mean where were the referrals to someone who "could" help me? It took me a year to get in to see him, and that is all I get?