What is surgical repair?
Surgical repair on the hips is a common treatment for hip pain. It's often a last resort after other options fail to reduce pain. Femoroacetabular (hip) impingement is a condition where extra bone growths in your hip joint cause pain. They keep you from moving it normally. This condition often requires surgical repair to fix.
Hip impingement is a condition that begins in childhood when your bones don't develop like they're supposed to. If you're an athlete, you might experience symptoms sooner than other people. Exercise and sports don't cause the condition. They do make it more noticeable.
Three types of hip impingement:
- Combined, where bone growths are present on the cam and the pincer
- Pincer, where bone growths extend past the rim of your hip socket, crushing the labrum (cartilage on your hip socket)
- Cam, where bone growths on the head of the femur bone in your leg cause the bone to grind against the hip socket
Surgical repair for this condition involves removing the bony growths from the bones. The doctor also repairs other damage in the joints.
What to expect from surgical repair of the hip
Surgical repair for hip impingement is usually arthroscopic. That means the doctor makes two or three small incisions in the skin above your hip joint. They insert small tools into the cuts to do the operation. Your doctor will put you to sleep with anesthesia.
Your doctor uses a tiny camera to see inside your hip and find the deformed bones. The doctor uses other tools to reshape the bones. They make repairs to cartilage, tendons or other tissues that are damaged.
Surgical repair for hip impingement is effective for relieving pain and improving function in 80% of patients, according to Washington University Physicians. You can expect a better outcome if you do surgery earlier. Don't wait until it has a chance to cause more damage to your hip joint.
You'll have to stop any sports and heavy exercise while your hip heals. Physical therapy can help you strengthen your muscles and improve your balance.
Common conditions requiring surgical repair
Common conditions that can cause hip impingement include:
- Bone spurs
- Labral tear
- Osteoarthritis
- Perthes disease
- Slipped capital femoral epiphysis