Choosing Your Orthopedic Surgeon: Trust the Surgeon, Not the Billboard

1. Start with Referrals, Not Commercials

The best starting point is usually a referral from someone who knows you: your primary care physician, a physical therapist who has watched your knee for years, or a trusted friend who has already had the same operation and would do it again.

What carries far less weight — at least in my opinion — is advertising. Implant manufacturers and surgical techniques are now marketed directly to patients on television, on billboards, and all over the internet. Some of that marketing is clever. None of it is a substitute for judgment about who should be holding the instruments.

If a particular hip implant or surgical approach is familiar simply because you have seen it advertised, that is a reason to ask your surgeon about it — not a reason to choose your surgeon because of it.

2. Questions Worth Asking

Once you have a candidate in mind, come to the appointment with questions. A good surgeon will welcome them. In my experience, these are the questions that matter most:

• Are you board-certified, and do you have special fellowship training in this particular procedure?
• How many of these operations do you perform in a typical year?
• What are all of my options, including the option of not having surgery yet?
• What are the realistic benefits and risks for someone with my health and my activity goals?
• What does recovery actually look like for a patient like me?
• Where will the surgery be performed, and who will be involved in my care?

Notice what is not on that list: the brand of the implant, the name of the surgical approach, or which commercial jingle you remember. Those things can be worth a conversation. They should never be the deciding factor.

3. Trust the Surgeon More Than the Device

Here is a truth the advertising rarely mentions: there are several excellent knee and hip implant systems made by several excellent manufacturers, and more than one well-established surgical approach for most common procedures. The differences between them are real but modest — and which one suits a particular patient is a matter of surgical judgment.

What varies far more than the hardware is the surgeon using it: their training, their experience with your specific problem, their judgment in matching the right device and the right technique to your anatomy and your goals, and their skill in the operating room and in the months of decisions that follow.

So if your golf buddy had a great result with one approach and your surgeon recommends another, ask why. A good surgeon will explain it clearly — how the approach fits your anatomy, your bone quality, your recovery goals. If the answer makes sense, trust the person who has done this thousands of times over the person who saw it in a thirty-second commercial.

You are not choosing a device. You are choosing a surgeon, and the device comes along for the ride.

4. And Yes — Get a Second Opinion

Some patients worry that seeking a second opinion will offend their surgeon. Let me put that concern to rest: it should not, and in the vast majority of cases, it does not.

This is your body and your decision. Elective surgery is exactly that — elective. Asking another experienced surgeon to review your films and your options is simply being a responsible consumer of major medical care. It is what I would want my own family to do.

A second opinion sometimes confirms the first recommendation — and that peace of mind alone is worth the extra appointment. Sometimes it offers a genuinely different option worth weighing. And in the rare case where a surgeon seems irritated by your request? That answer is informative too, and you have your decision about that surgeon made for you.

No surgeon worth their salt will be insulted. Most of us have been on the patient's side of this equation ourselves.