Skip to main content
Arthroscopy Mauritius

Printable

Question Builder for Your Surgeon

Consultations are short and memories under stress are shorter. Pick where you are in the journey and which topics matter to you, and take away a printed or copied question list with room for the answers. Surgeons consistently prefer patients who ask.

Where are you in the journey?
Topics to include

Deciding about surgery

14 questions

You have been offered an arthroscopy, or are exploring whether one makes sense.

The procedure itself

  • What exactly would you do inside my joint, in plain words?
  • Is this operation mainly to diagnose, mainly to treat, or both?
  • How many of these procedures do you perform in a typical year?

Alternatives and evidence

  • What happens if I do nothing for now, or continue physiotherapy instead?
  • What are ALL my non-surgical options, and how well do they work for my problem?
  • How strong is the evidence that this operation helps for my specific diagnosis?
  • If I wait six months, do I lose anything?

Risks and safety

  • What are the realistic risks of this operation for someone like me?
  • What is the chance this operation does not help, and what would we do then?

Anaesthesia and the day itself

  • What kind of anaesthesia is usual for this procedure: general, regional, or a combination?

Recovery and rehab

  • What does a typical recovery timeline look like for this procedure?
  • How much of the result depends on the operation, and how much on the rehab afterward?

Work, driving and sport

  • How long are people like me typically off my kind of work?
  • When could I realistically return to my sport, at what level?

Print it and write the answers in the room, or copy the list into your phone notes. Nothing you choose here leaves your browser.

Sources

  1. Asking questions about your treatment NHS, 2023
  2. Preparing for joint surgery: patient decision materials AAOS OrthoInfo, 2024

Last reviewed: 2026-07-16

Keep going

The question that matters most

If you only ask one thing before agreeing to any operation, make it this: "What happens if we do nothing for now?" The honest answer to that question is the baseline every surgical promise has to beat, and good surgeons respect patients who ask it. Everything else on your list builds from there.

And after the operation, the mirror question earns its keep at every follow-up: "What earns the next step up, and what should send me back to you sooner?"

Written against NHS question-asking guidance and AAOS shared-decision materials. Last reviewed 2026-07-16.