I have no problem with your posting and hope that this would work for your Dad as it has worked for others here at OCF. In fact it was posts like Kevin's that I found out about vitastim. I have Blue Cross Blue Shield and all my VitaStim treatments (30 of them) were covered as they were billed by the Speech Therapy department at my CCC. I had explored using the local retirement homes as they are often the only ones using VitaStim but they wanted me to pay upfront and get reimbursement from my insurance since I was not a patient at their retirement home.

I had posted last year a link to a NIH clinical trial that explains the principle behind VitaStim which is simply one brand name for E-stim. Here is the link which should answer other questions you may have NIH E-stim

My surgeon pointed out that I did not qualify for this trial since they excluded people like me who had extensive surgery
I cut and pasted those restrictions as it seems they set the parameters for a good chance of VitaStim to work. Unfortunately my surgery was too extensive
#

[quote]Surgery for their cancer, if done, must meet these criteria:

* diagnostic biopsy
* less than � of oral tongue resected
* less than � of tongue base resected
* no floor of mouth muscles resected
* less than 50% of any other part of the oral cavity, pharynx or larynx resected
* no resection of hyoid
* Neck dissection, unilateral or bilateral neck dissections may have been completed prior to or after radiation therapy.[/quote]

Charm