@bjw1948

You have hit the nail on the head. A few ideas:

1) If you have doctors you trust, ask them who they and their immediate family use for knee issues. Doctors may be incentived to refer patients to particular groups of specialists but will go to the best for their families.

2) Look for a surgeon who does a significant part of his practice doing revisions. Revisions are usually more complex so not everyone does them. But...many do and many of them shouldn't.

3) Look for a surgeon with a surgical waiting list. A surgeon who doesn't have a waiting list is likely a surgeon you don't want (he might be a great surgeon just starting off but remember that one of my requirements is extensive experience doing the exacct procedure.

4) Is he at one of the centers of excellence (Mayo, Cleveland, Scripps, Hospital for Special Surgery, etc.)? These facilities tend to have excellent physicians although the very best might be out on their own.

5) If you have a doctor you really, really trust, ask her about the best knee replacement surgeons in the area.

6) Does he advertise? I would never select a professional who has to advertise to get clients.

7) Does he have a travel practice and does his website advance that practice? For example, my magician has a page on his website where he sets forth the practice guidelines for people flying in to have him do the procedure. Few surgeons would bother doing this if they didn't have patients flying in to have them operate.

8) Look for scientific papers authored by the surgeon. Read them and read the citations to these papers to see how they were received. My three immediate requirements: extensive experience, great mind, great hands. These go to the great mind category.

I am sure there are others as well. Try to create a mental Venn diagram of where they intersect.