Hi Kevin - I don't know much about Aooyla or Simper but they seem to have good reputations on the board..... Of course nobody has the reputation of Ara Keshshian. That man is just unbelievable in terms of experience (over 2,000 DS procedures), skill (he fixes other people's screw ups), energy, before side manner and incredible care and follow up of his patients. He operated on my son to fix very serious non batiatric issues with his GI tract and he fixed my messed up DS.
Just a short story about his incredible care and compassion for patients that aren't even his. My so who is 21 and has had major issues since being diagnosed with cancer in 2010 has gastroparesis on top of other things and it was making his life hell. a normal stomach is pretty much empty after a few hours. Testing showed his to only be 20% empty after 4 hours. This caused severe nausea, bloating and pain on top of his GERD related nightmare symptoms. I didn't know Dr K but knew of his reputation from here as a world class gut surgeon so I got his contact information and sent him an email at about 7 am central on a Saturday morning hoping to hear something back that week sometime. I Shit you not he called me within 15 minutes and we spent an hour on the phone discussing potential options. Note he told me that he didn't need to do the surgery because any good general surgeon could do it but we traded probably 50 emails over the next month with him giving advice and answers questions. I tried to give him my insurance information so he could bill us and he would have nothing to do with it. The guy gave away hours of his valuable time to a person he had never met. Things did not work out with a local surgeon (freaking guy wanted to completely remove Cameron stomach which was insanely radical an unwarranted) so we went to Dr K in June. He fixed numerous things on Cameron including a congenital small intestine defect.
At the same I had been having severe malnutrition and required huge amounts of a pancreatic enzyme to get any nutrition from my food. Long story short and the main point of this long post, my alimentary limb was made too short for my small bowel length and was the cause of my malnutrition. Why? My original DS surgeon didn't do the hess method where the AL and CC lengths are customized to the patient. Dr k does the Hess method and at the end of August I had revision surgery to lengthen my AL substantially and CC minimally.
Had the Hess method been used by my original surgeon I would not have battled severe malnutrition for the last 18 months.
So...... Whomever you choose make sure they do the Hess method. I don't know if the other two do or not, but although the non Hess method works for many it can leave some like me in dire straits. It takes an extra 20 minutes and is not contacted. I firmly believe it should be the only DS standard of care because it customizes the DS to the individual and eluminates the chance of too much or not enough wait loss (the non hess method can lead to not enough malabsorption in some people because their channels are too long for their small intestine length).
Bottom line is I would choose Dr K and it isn't close.. He is the best in the world, but if for whatever reason you don't, make sure your surgeon follows the Hess method.
Off the soap box now