How to select a good surgeon

Posted by grandpun @grandpun, Jan 6 8:06am

Occasionally I've seen folks here asking how to select and/or find a good surgeon. And that can be tough.
Luckily, I just got some good guidance on selecting a surgeon in another Mayo Connect Support Group (from "@steveinarizona").
I added other sources I've found and attached the whole collection in that file. It rambles but you can use it or elements of it for your search(es).
All the best for your journey and recovery.

Interested in more discussions like this? Go to the Prostate Cancer Support Group.

grandpun | @grandpun | Jan 6 8:12am

Sorry. Seems I couldn't attach the file. Here it is in full:
Ratings:
Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB)
For a $9 fee, the FSMB will provide the disciplinary history of specific doctors in any state (click Credentialing, then Physician Data Services on its website).

Plug in your zip code at the ProPublica website, and you’ll find a directory of local hospitals that perform eight common procedures, along with surgeons on staff who perform them, the number of procedures they’ve done and their complication rates.

SurgeonRatings.org, from the nonprofit group Consumers’ Checkbook, provides a more comprehensive analysis that encompasses more than 5 million operations performed by 50,000 surgeons. It compares surgeons’ results for 12 types of surgery.

Questions:
Can this be done with minimally invasive surgery?
or is there a simpler procedure/approach?
What percentage of these operations involve open surgery, versus those that are minimally invasive?
What are the differences in complication rates and the length of hospital stays for each?
How often have you performed this surgery, and do you specialize in it?
What complications have you encountered?
What are my risks?
Do you enjoy your job?

More Criteria:
Using research papers, etc. to decide on features you would like in a surgeon.
Build a list and look for videos, reviews, etc.
Narrow down the list and ask potential surgeons (or their offices) what they do about these features. Question doctor or office staff: 1) minimally invasive surgery (For knee replacement subvastus or midvsatus); 2) No routine use of a tourniquet; 3) able and will to do a “bicruciate retaining implant” ("BCR") [search web to explain BCR]; 4) Does a Functional alignment to repair my severe misalignment or at least a kinematic or inverse kinematic alignment (NOT a mechanical alignment); 5) Does a substantial revision business; 6) HAS EXTENSIVE EXPERIENCE DOING ALL OF THE ABOVE; 7) Has great hands; 8) Has a great mind.  You probably can't get answer to all of them but try for as many as you can.

survivor5280 | @survivor5280 | Jan 6 4:55pm

What I found super helpful was two sites. The first is a list of every Da Vinci robotic surgeon in the country and the number of surgeries they have completed. I luckily ended up with a guy who was there and young on this device from the beginning and had more surgeries than most doctors in the world with it. https://www.intuitive.com/en-us/physician-locator

The other was a doctor ranking service where they actually evaluate how many of a particular surgery they perform and their outcomes. You can either shop around or you can plug in the name of the doctor(s) you are considering. https://health.usnews.com/doctors

I'd had Da Vinci with my doctor before so I was pretty sure he'd be the one for this, but there was another guy at a different hospital I really liked until I looked him up on that second site and found that, while an understudy of my preferred doctor, he had a fraction of the surgeries and a lot less success stories - plus his personality was horrible. These helped me to be certain of my choices.