Dr. Wayne O. Alani M.D.

Both my family members and I have been patients of Dr. Alani’s for a long time. When I broke my elbow in 2015 in a fall, Dr. Alani was the logical choice to do the surgery and I was happy he could do it. However, what followed after the surgery turned out to be a nightmare: 1) I got an infection during surgery and it didn’t get better after 3 weeks of antibiotics. I had trouble getting past his nurse (who made his appointments) to see him about it. I finally had to have a conversation with his office manager, before I was able to get in. He treated this problem casually. He prescribed 2 weeks of antibiotics, and told me to call if I needed more. After 2 weeks, the infection had not improved so I went to my GP who took cultures (I had a light staph infection), put me on high doses of antibiotics, and sent me for scans to detect infection in the bone. Despite all the treatment, I still had the infection. I then saw a wound care specialist who wanted Alani to go in and clean out the area. He did another surgery for the infection, but afterwards, I called his nurse to get antibiotics, and she referred me back to my GP for treatment. Unbelievable! He made no effort to do cultures, blood tests, scans, or send me to an infection disease specialist if he didn’t have the time to treat it. In retrospect, the second surgery probably could have been prevented with treatment from an expert in that field. Bottom line, had I not been proactive in this situation, I could easily have lost my arm or life. 2) I also fractured the radial head and Dr. Alani chose not to replace it. It broke off. This would cause a major problem later in my final recovery, as my therapists could not bend or extend that arm beyond a certain point. This caused me to have to have an elbow replacement several months later to regain the bending functions as well as the ability to turn the arm and hand over, which is the function of the radial head. After going through months of therapy, I still cannot fully extend my arm 3) Dr. Alani’s nurse left me in a splint for almost 4 weeks and as a result, I ended up with a frozen shoulder, wrist, hand, and fingers which were 100% at the time of the fall, but took weeks of painful therapy to return to normal function. He turned my care over to her. From what I understand, a week or two in a splint would have been enough and then I should have been sent immediately to “aggressive” therapy. He prescribed “gentle” therapy and ordered a home therapy agency to come in after surgery for a month. This would be a total waste of time as they didn’t know what they were doing. Again, I felt this was a bad judgement call by Dr. Alani and prevented me from recovering fully in the end. 4) Ultimately, I decided that I should have chosen an elbow specialist (which I didn’t know existed at the time) . I do not feel that Dr. Alani had the experience to treat a broken elbow and he was not willing or had the time to treat the infection, probably due to the number of people in his waiting room. I felt like once I had a problem after the surgery, he blew me off and was not interested in treating me except for doing a second surgery. In this horrible situation, I was finally able to get to the right people and that made such a difference. I ended up with the best possible outcome thanks to my GP, therapists, and elbow and infectious disease specialists. However, I will always hold Alani responsible for me not regaining full bending and extension functions and making the process so difficult.

Both my family members and I have been patients of Dr. Alani’s for a long time. When I broke my elbow in 2015 in a fall, Dr. Alani was the logical choice to do the surgery and I was happy he could do it. However, what followed after the surgery turned out to be a nightmare: 1) I got an infection during surgery and it didn’t get better after 3 weeks of antibiotics. I had trouble getting past his nurse (who made his appointments) to see him about it. I finally had to have a conversation with his office manager, before I was able to get in. He treated this problem casually. He prescribed 2 weeks of antibiotics, and told me to call if I needed more. After 2 weeks, the infection had not improved so I went to my GP who took cultures (I had a light staph infection), put me on high doses of antibiotics, and sent me for scans to detect infection in the bone. Despite all the treatment, I still had the infection. I then saw a wound care specialist who wanted Alani to go in and clean out the area. He did another surgery for the infection, but afterwards, I called his nurse to get antibiotics, and she referred me back to my GP for treatment. Unbelievable! He made no effort to do cultures, blood tests, scans, or send me to an infection disease specialist if he didn’t have the time to treat it. In retrospect, the second surgery probably could have been prevented with treatment from an expert in that field. Bottom line, had I not been proactive in this situation, I could easily have lost my arm or life. 2) I also fractured the radial head and Dr. Alani chose not to replace it. It broke off. This would cause a major problem later in my final recovery, as my therapists could not bend or extend that arm beyond a certain point. This caused me to have to have an elbow replacement several months later to regain the bending functions as well as the ability to turn the arm and hand over, which is the function of the radial head. After going through months of therapy, I still cannot fully extend my arm 3) Dr. Alani’s nurse left me in a splint for almost 4 weeks and as a result, I ended up with a frozen shoulder, wrist, hand, and fingers which were 100% at the time of the fall, but took weeks of painful therapy to return to normal function. He turned my care over to her. From what I understand, a week or two in a splint would have been enough and then I should have been sent immediately to “aggressive” therapy. He prescribed “gentle” therapy and ordered a home therapy agency to come in after surgery for a month. This would be a total waste of time as they didn’t know what they were doing. Again, I felt this was a bad judgement call by Dr. Alani and prevented me from recovering fully in the end. 4) Ultimately, I decided that I should have chosen an elbow specialist (which I didn’t know existed at the time) . I do not feel that Dr. Alani had the experience to treat a broken elbow and he was not willing or had the time to treat the infection, probably due to the number of people in his waiting room. I felt like once I had a problem after the surgery, he blew me off and was not interested in treating me except for doing a second surgery. In this horrible situation, I was finally able to get to the right people and that made such a difference. I ended up with the best possible outcome thanks to my GP, therapists, and elbow and infectious disease specialists. However, I will always hold Alani responsible for me not regaining full bending and extension functions and making the process so difficult.

Positive ankle surgery experience.