How many have kept their original surgeon for followups?

you get only one shot at surgery so it's important to get it right. The experience and skill of a surgeon is one of the most important considerations to take. This advice was given to me over and over by oncologists and experts in the field. I figured i would go with the person I thought was the best and then deal with the future after that. Turns out my guy sticks with his patients after surgery and follows them along the recovery process too so it turned out to be a win win for me. Another very important thing to consider is the team the surgeon has. These are the people that help you along before and after surgery. The nurse that took care of me post op was an angel. Just askig her questions and listening to her answers had a soothing effect on me in a time of great doubt.

There are some high volume surgeons who apparently don't perform the entire operation themselves. This would be a problem in my opinion.

I'm at the 3-year post-op point in time and I continue to see my Urologist/Surgeon - one in the same.  The consultations are twice yearly and since I work just a 15-minute walk from his office at Northwestern Hospital in Chicago it's not a burden for me.    Had the surgeon been different from the Urologist I probably wouldn't return to see the surgeon, but I don't think patients typically visit their surgeons afterwards, not for a long perod of time at least.  I believe it's important to have some consistency in exams and discussions with the Urologist.  However, I also have an excellent primary care physician who's very pro-active and he's also affiliated with Northwestern Hospital and he and the Urologist utilize the same laboratory for test analysis.  So my situation isn't the norm and may not be of much use to you.

Interestingly our surgeon has "dumped" us. He told us at the 1 year visit that Paul was cured as far as he was concerned and from now on we would only see his nurse yearly. In some ways this is nice, in other ways not. Our 1 year consultation took about 5 minutes and his answers to what I thought were valid questions were curt. There were many people in his waiting room so that probably made him rushed. So from now on its our GP and the urologists nurse.

An