[annapurna]

On one hand, our information is probably 15 years out of date. On the other hand, back then, we cut the liaison out, signed up for Skype (best deal back then), and called ProSpine directly to arrange for all of Laura's work and to do all of our follow-ups. The German-speaking friend you mention will help but, if ProSpine continued down the path they started back 15 years ago, there will be someone among the office staff who speaks English. You may need to call back at different times to catch that person, though. Having a German speaker would eliminate that problem.

If you do work around the liaison, understand that you'll need to take on a whole lot more yourself, though. Hotel reservations, bank transfers, where you'd buy food, etc. were all straightforward for us to handle but it did mean that we needed to do a lot more trip planning than if we'd simply called someone to ask them to make it happen.

As for other surgeons, can't really help. In 2021, we contacted a German surgeon we worked with 15 years ago to get that person to look at Laura's films and decide if here SI joints or L5S1 ADR was causing problems. That person asked us to keep them anonymous as they worked with us as a favor for our past relationship. That person decided Laura didn't need surgery but had said that Bertagnoli would have been their recommendation if Laura needed it.

There have been a few other multi-level European surgeons mentioned on this board but my impression was that those others had performed a limited number of multi-level replacements.