What is an Orthopedic Surgeon
An orthopedic surgeon is a surgeon who has taken additional training in the diagnosis and treatment of bone and skeleton-related problems. An orthopedic surgeon may provide more general care or specialize in an area such as sports medicine or pediatrics. Some surgeries that an orthopedic surgeon may perform are hip replacements and bone grafting. When treating a patient an orthopedic surgeon can also help educate them on sports injuries, rheumatoid arthritis, arthroscopy and ACL injuries. Main operating room procedures If you have been scheduled for a procedure in the main operating room, then likely you will have been asked to be fasting from the night before, and to have someone drive you home and be with you for the first 24 hours after surgery
Developmental Causes of Hip Bone Pain
In younger patients, you can have what we call developmental conditions or what people refer to as congenital conditions, things that you’re born with.
We prefer the term developmental because as the bones grow and remodel as we’re growing, particularly in the adolescent years, you can have an abnormality in the development of the shape of the hip joint.
In adolescent girls, or ultimately in women, you can have a condition called developmental dysplasia, which means that you’ve got a shallow socket, as opposed to a fully formed socket. And that increases the load on the hip joint, causing early degeneration and early pain.
So dysplasia in and of itself can cause some pain before you get the osteoarthritis. On the flip side, in men on occasion, there’s a condition called femoroacetabular impingement, which comes in two different flavors or two different types.
And that’s related to the abnormal relationship between the ball and the socket of the hip joint. There’s one that’s called the cam type, so instead of the – in very, very simple terms, instead of the femoral head being a nice sphere that’s articulating against the spherical socket, it’s a little out of round.
So as it rotates within the joint, it forms what’s called a cam effect. So it starts to list off a little bit. As it lifts off, it can – the neck of the femur can rub against the socket, can injure something called the labrum, which is a piece of cartilage on the outside of the hip, and ultimately, it can lead to degeneration and osteoarthritis.
But before you get the osteoarthritis, you can develop some pain, particularly in deep flexion activities, as you’re sitting down, bending forward, riding a bike, trying to climb ladders, trying to go up two or three steps at a time.
Those sorts of activities cause some groin pain, and that’s called femoroacetabular impingement. And the treatment is very different from a hip replacement.
Find out more about hip pain symptoms and treatments.
Presenter: Dr. Bassam Masri, Orthopaedic Surgeon, Vancouver, BC
Local Practitioners: Orthopaedic Surgeon
