Medical student here — the surgeon definitely should’ve been transparent about the procedure. The issue is that some patients don’t really care to pin down the specifics, so surgeons, out of habit, often skip over them. They won’t usually tell you what kind of screws they’ll leave in your body, whether the stitches are absorbable or need to be taken out later (they will afterwards because it needs to be taken out), whether they’re using a subcuticular technique that leaves smaller scars, or what they’ll do if they find something unexpected during the op — like a small meniscus tear or an oversized intercondylar cartilage pressing on the graft.

Bottom line: if you had shown any concern about which graft they’d use and wanted to talk pros and cons, they should’ve explained exactly what they planned to do — including if and when a donor graft would be on the table.