Why the Surgeon You Choose Matters More Than the Hospital

When a knee replacement goes well, it usually goes well because the implant was placed in precisely the right position — within a degree or two of the planned alignment — and because the soft tissues around the joint were handled carefully. Both of those things come down to the surgeon's skill, judgment, and volume of practice. The hospital provides the environment. The surgeon provides the outcome.

Research published in peer-reviewed orthopaedic literature consistently shows that surgeon volume is one of the strongest predictors of knee replacement outcome. Patients operated on by high-volume surgeons experience fewer complications, better implant alignment, lower revision rates at five years, and better functional outcomes at one year compared to patients operated on by lower-volume surgeons at the same hospital. This is why India's concentration of high-volume joint replacement surgeons is genuinely important — not just as a marketing point but as a clinical one.

The surgeons profiled here are not chosen because they are the most famous or because they have the best website. They are chosen because GAF Healthcare has direct experience coordinating patient care with them, because their subspecialty training is verifiable, and because their personal approach to international patients — including communication, discharge documentation, and availability for post-operative video consultation — has been validated by patients who have travelled from abroad for surgery.

1. Dr I P S Oberoi

Dr Oberoi is Head and Chief of Joint Replacement and Arthroscopy at Artemis Hospital, Gurugram — a title that reflects both administrative seniority and clinical depth. He has spent his career at the intersection of two disciplines that most surgeons keep separate: joint replacement surgery and arthroscopic reconstructive surgery. While joint replacement addresses the end-stage arthritic knee, arthroscopy handles the ligaments, cartilage, and soft tissues around the joint. Combining both under one surgeon means patients whose knee problems involve not just worn-out cartilage but also damaged ligaments or unstable soft tissues can have everything assessed and addressed by the same person.

He is one of the first surgeons in India to introduce minimally invasive keyhole surgery — arthroscopy — for the shoulder, elbow, hip, and ankle joints. This history of being early in the adoption of new techniques is a meaningful signal: it indicates a surgeon who stays current with evidence and engages with the surgical literature, rather than one who learned a technique twenty years ago and has been doing it the same way since. For international patients whose cases have some complexity, his combined expertise means fewer referrals between specialists and a cleaner patient journey.

2. Dr Rohit Lamba

Ten thousand joint replacements is a number that takes a moment to absorb. At a rate of 300 to 400 procedures per year — which is a realistic figure for a high-volume Indian joint surgeon — that represents 25 to 33 years of sustained high-volume practice. Dr Lamba has reached that number in 22 years, which means his annual volume has been consistently high throughout his career. Volume matters because every unusual anatomical variant, every intraoperative complication, every case where the textbook approach does not fit the patient — these situations become familiar rather than alarming when you have seen enough of them.

His subspecialty in the salvage of failed or infected joint replacements is worth understanding in context. An infected knee replacement is one of the most difficult problems in orthopaedic surgery — the infection is inside a metal implant, which antibiotics cannot penetrate effectively, meaning surgical removal, a period of antibiotic treatment, and a second reimplantation procedure are usually required. This is technically demanding, emotionally draining for patients, and requires a surgeon who has done enough of them to move confidently through a difficult case. Dr Lamba's volume in this area makes him one of a small number of surgeons in Gurgaon who should be a first choice — not a referral — for infected joint cases.

His established patient base from Iraq, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan is a practical advantage for patients from those countries. He and his team are already familiar with the visa paperwork, communication preferences, and logistical questions these patients typically arrive with — which makes the pre-operative coordination significantly smoother.

3. Dr Jatinder Bir Singh Jaggi

Dr Jaggi's background in the UK's National Health Service is something that matters more practically than it might first appear. NHS training produces surgeons who operate within a framework of evidence-based medicine, rigorous case review, and peer accountability that is as demanding as anything in the world. A surgeon who has worked within that system for years before returning to India brings those habits back with them — the expectation of written protocols, clear outcome documentation, and the kind of detailed discharge communication that a UK or Australian GP can actually use when the patient walks through their door three weeks after surgery.

He is currently Senior Director of Orthopaedics and Joint Replacement at Max Hospital, Gurugram — a position he has held since October 2016, giving him nearly a decade of high-volume practice in India's most demanding private hospital environment. His expertise in robotic and computer-navigated knee replacement means patients who want precision-guided surgery without travelling to one of the larger Gurgaon campuses have a strong option at Max. His sports injury background also makes him well placed for the patient whose knee problems started with an old injury and progressed to arthritis — a common presentation that benefits from a surgeon who understands both the injury history and the arthritic endpoint.

4. Dr Manoj Miglani

Dr Miglani occupies a specific and relatively rare clinical position — a surgeon equally fluent in complex spine surgery and joint replacement surgery. Most orthopaedic surgeons subspecialise in one or the other. Spine surgeons and joint replacement surgeons in most hospitals work in separate departments, sometimes with limited communication between them. For patients whose medical picture involves both — someone with severe lumbar spinal stenosis and severe knee arthritis, for instance, where the symptoms of both conditions overlap and the surgical rehabilitation for one affects the other — having a single senior surgeon who can plan both treatments coherently is genuinely valuable.

His 25 years of experience at Fortis across trauma, spine, and joint replacement also means he is accustomed to cases that arrive with complications built in — previous surgeries, old fractures near the joint, abnormal anatomy, or medical comorbidities that increase surgical risk. His reputation for taking on cases that have been turned away or deprioritised elsewhere is something GAF Healthcare patients have referenced directly. For straightforward primary knee replacement, he is an excellent choice. For cases with complexity that extends beyond the knee, he may be the only choice that makes clinical sense.

5. Dr Sanjay Sarup

Dr Sarup is not the first surgeon on this list most people would think of for adult knee replacement. His primary reputation is in paediatric orthopaedics and spinal deformity correction — scoliosis, limb length discrepancy, complex congenital abnormalities. He trained at PGIMER Chandigarh and at KEM and Nair Hospitals in Mumbai before completing his FRCS and M.Ch in Orthopaedics in the United Kingdom — a qualification pathway that is among the most demanding in the specialty.

Where he becomes critically relevant in a knee replacement context is for patients whose knee problem is complicated by malalignment — significant bowing of the leg (varus deformity) or knock-knee (valgus deformity) — or for younger patients where the question is whether a corrective procedure can delay or avoid the need for joint replacement altogether. A high tibial osteotomy, for instance, realigns the leg by cutting and repositioning the tibia — it loads a healthier part of the knee cartilage, reduces pain, and in the right patient can add ten to fifteen years before a replacement becomes necessary. This is a procedure where subspecialty deformity training matters enormously, and Dr Sarup's background makes him the appropriate consultation for any patient under 55 who has been told they need knee replacement but has significant angular deformity in their leg.

6. Dr Aman Dua

Dr Aman Dua's training pathway is unusual in the Indian context, and that unusualness is the point. He completed his postgraduate orthopaedics training at AIIMS — the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, which is to Indian medicine what Oxford is to British education. That alone puts him in the top fraction of a percent of Indian-trained surgeons. What he did next is rarer still: he completed a dedicated fellowship in Revision Joint Replacement and Bone Transplantation at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, Australia — one of a handful of internationally recognised centres of excellence for revision arthroplasty.

Revision joint replacement is the most demanding area of the specialty. When a knee replacement fails — whether due to infection, mechanical loosening, wear, instability, or fracture around the implant — the revision surgeon faces problems that have no standard textbook solution. The bone around the failed implant may be deficient. The anatomy is distorted by scar tissue. Specialised implants with stems, augments, and structural bone grafts may be needed to reconstruct what normal anatomy no longer provides. The difference between a surgeon who does occasional revision cases and one who completed a dedicated fellowship specifically in this work is significant — and for patients who have had a knee replacement somewhere else that is now failing, that difference is the most important factor in their outcome.

For primary knee replacement, Dr Dua is also an excellent choice — his training at AIIMS and in Australia gives him a foundation that puts him among the most rigorously prepared orthopaedic surgeons in India. But his specific value lies in the revision cases, and that is where GAF Healthcare most often involves him.

Side-by-Side: Which Surgeon for Which Case

The table below is a practical decision aid — not a ranking. Use it alongside the full profiles above. If your case has any complexity, send your reports to GAF Healthcare rather than relying on a table alone.

All surgeons practice at JCI or NABH accredited hospitals and are available for pre-operative video consultation for international patients through GAF Healthcare. May 2026.

"I had already had one failed knee replacement in my home country. My local doctors told me revision surgery would be very difficult. GAF Healthcare matched me with Dr Dua at Fortis. He reviewed my scans before I even booked my flight, told me exactly what was involved, and performed the revision. I am walking without pain for the first time in four years."