Laurie A Karl, MD

I LOVE Dr. Karl. She is one of the smartest people I have ever met and kind and compassionate to boot. She is extremely thorough and takes the time to address all of your questions and concerns. She’s truly a gem!

Dr. Karl is not just a top OB/​GYN, she is also a fantastic surgeon. When she did my surgery for endometriosis, she found more problems and ended performing a surgery that was 3 times longer than planned. Because of her thorough work as a surgeon, I have enjoyed good health in this area for a longer period of time before I require another surgery for the same problem. I hope the good doctor never retires!

Dr. Karl is not my regular OB but happened to be on call when I delivered my daughter. She was a great support. Even though the nurse had offered take over and call her when I was closer to delivering, Dr. Karl opted to stay with me for the entire time I was actively pushing. My husband was nervous about cutting the cord but she made him totally at ease and even helped us in a cord blood donation that we arranged with MD Anderson hospital. She impressed my husband and I by going above and beyond to help in our daughter’s delivery.

Dr. Karl is wonderful! I am very grateful to have had her as my Ob/​Gyn for the past 20 years. She is smart, warm, and up to date on the latest treatments.
My twins were born 2 hours apart and she waited out the second one, while monitoring for safety, even though she had already been in the hospital through the night and had delivered several babies. She really went above and beyond to allow for the best outcome for the delivery, my babies’ safety and my recuperation.
Aruna, her assistant is also very experienced, kind and helpful!

I am extremely unhappy about how Dr Laurie Karl performed when my daughter was in labor. Dr Karl was the on-​call doctor and was asleep at home. She took an hour to get to the hospital and introduced herself like she was some kind of celebrity. This was about 23 hours after labor started and my girl was already exhausted. She had my daughter push for about 2 hours when it was obvious that it was not helping, but only causing more problems for both my daughter and the baby.
Dr Karl did not spend any time in the room with my daughter but left most of the work to the nurses, and she was just waiting for her shift to end.
Then, the next on-​call shift started and we got another doctor who realized immediately that something else had to be done. An hour later the baby was born, after 26 hour of labor. The difficulty of the labor was so hard on the baby that this infant needed to remain in Intermediate Intensive Care for nearly a week. Also, the consequences of this complicated labor required my daughter to need repairs that I don’t want to describe here.
It’s hard for us to judge if Dr Karl is not qualified to deal with a complicated birth, or if she just doesn’t have the heart to put patients interests first, but I do not want to see this kind of doctor at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.

Dr. Karl was my doctor in college, and I just returned to her – she is wonderful. The best kind of doctor – caring, warm, friendly, thorough, up on the latest information. She’s moving to the PAMF Los Altos Center later this month, which is good news for me (closer).

I have known Laurie Karl since about 1992. I was one of her first patients when she came to Portola Valley. She performed several operations on me and held my hand through extensive fertility issues. Finally 10 years ago Dr Karl delivered my healthy beautiful daughter. Laurie Karl is an outstanding Doctor. I now live more than 4 hours away and still come back to the bay area just to go to Dr. Laurie Karl. She is honest, caring, smart and has a wonderful bedside manner. I have recommended her many times over the years and will continue to do so. Her long time assistant makes you feel like family when you go there.

Dr. Laurie Karl is not my regular OB but she was the on call doctor the night I had my baby, and my experience with her was pretty awful. I had already gone to the hospital 5 cm dilated and was already having very painful contractions. The minute she walked in it was very obvious that her #1 concern was not me or the baby, but to have the birth happen as quickly as possible. From the beginning I felt extreme pressure from her to take pitocin or to have her break my water to get things moving along. (And when my husband and I would make a decision about what we wanted, she would basically send the nurse back in to «rethink our decision» unless we told her what she wanted.) Also, she made these veiled threats that she would send me home if things remained slow, because «it didn’t make sense for me to be taking up a hospital room for extended amounts of time», even though it was clear that I was at the point in labor where I SHOULD be in the hospital! And sorry if my first child isn’t just popping out of the birth canal!
Needless to say, I did give birth a few hours later, but she was really no help. Instead it was the nurse, Heidi, who gave me incredible support and coached us through most of the pushing. Dr. Karl was basically just there to catch the baby.