Hip arthroscopy

Alternative Names: Arthroscopy - hip; Hip impingement syndrome - arthroscopy; Femero-acetabular impingement - arthroscopy; FAI - arthroscopy; Labrum - arthroscopy

Hip arthroscopy is surgery that is done by making small cuts around your hip and looking inside using a tiny camera. Other medical instruments may also be placed inside to fix your hip.

Description of Procedure

During arthroscopy of the hip, the surgeon uses a tiny camera to see inside your hip.

• An arthroscope is made up of a tiny tube, a lens, and a light source. The surgeon will look inside your hip joint for damage or disease. Only a small surgical cut is made.
• Other medical instruments may also be inserted through one or two other small surgical cuts. This allows the surgeon to treat or fix certain problems, if needed.
• Using these tools, your surgeon will remove extra pieces of bone that are loose in your hip joint, or fix cartilage or other tissues that may be damaged.

Spinal or epidural or general anesthesia will most likely be used. You may also receive medicine to help you relax.

Why the Procedure is Performed

The most common reasons for hip arthroscopy are to:

• Remove small pieces of bone or cartilage that may be floating around inside your hip joint and causing pain
• Repair a torn labrum (a tear in the cartilage that is attached to the rim of your hip socket bone)

Less common reasons for hip arthroscopy are:

• Hip impingement syndrome (also called femero-acetabular impingement, or FAI), when no other treatment has helped.
• Hip pain that does not go away and your doctor suspects a problem that hip arthroscopy can fix. Most of the time, your doctor will first inject numbing medicine into the hip to see if the pain goes away.

If you do not have one of these problems, hip arthroscopy will probably not be useful for treating your hip arthritis.

Recovery

After surgery, you will be asked to use crutches for 2 - 6 weeks.

• During the first week, you should not place any weight on the side that had surgery.
• After that, you will slowly be allowed to place more and more weight on the hip that had surgery.

You should be able to return to work within 1 to 2 weeks if you can sit most of the time.

You will be referred to physical therapy to begin an exercise program.

Outlook (Prognosis)

Whether you fully recover after hip arthroscopy depends on what type of problem was treated.

If you also have arthritis in your knee, you will still have arthritis symptoms after hip surgery.

Risks of Hip arthroscopy

The risks for any anesthesia are:

• Allergic reactions to medicines
• Breathing problems

The risks for any surgery are:

• Bleeding
• Infection

Other risks from this surgery include:

• Bleeding into the hip joint
• Damage to the cartilage or ligaments in the hip
• Blood clot in the leg
• Injury to a blood vessel or nerve
• Infection in the hip joint
• Hip stiffness

Review Date: 8/12/2011
Reviewed By: C. Benjamin Ma, MD, Assistant Professor, Chief, Sports Medicine and Shoulder Service, UCSF Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, and Linda J. Vorvick, MD, Medical Director, MEDEX Northwest Division of Physician Assistant Studies, University of Washington, School of Medicine. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M., Inc.

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