Expert Sports Injury
Care in San Diego

Hip pain can cause a deep, pinching ache in your groin that shows up every time you tie your shoes, climb a flight of stairs, or push through the last mile of a run. If months of rest, physical therapy, and even a cortisone injection haven't calmed it down, and it's now cutting into work, sleep, and the activities that used to come easy, it may be time to consider hip surgery.

Hip arthroscopy is a minimally invasive surgical option that is considered an outpatient procedure and can fix most hip conditions. It uses a tiny camera called an arthroscope along with pencil-thin instruments to look inside the hip joint and repair what's damaged. Hip arthroscopy cases rose 97% between 2015 and 2023, making it one of the most widely used techniques for a variety of hip problems. 

Read on to learn how the procedure works, the conditions it treats, and where to find the best orthopedic surgeon in San Diego for hip arthroscopy.

What is Hip Arthroscopy? Understanding the Minimally Invasive Hip Procedure

Hip arthroscopy is a minimally invasive approach to hip surgery that gives surgeons a way to fix problems inside the hip joint without making large surgical incisions. This approach involves two or three small openings near the hip, each about the size of a buttonhole, rather than one large surgical incision. Through one opening, the best sports medicine doctor in San Diego can use an arthroscope, a thin tube with a tiny camera that sends a magnified picture of the joint to a video monitor. Through the other openings, they pass pencil-thin tools to trim, repair, or reshape the tissue causing pain. 

Because the openings are so small, the procedure puts far less stress on the muscles and tendons around the hip than open surgery does. In fact, most patients go home the same day. One of the biggest advantages of this approach is that the best hip preservation surgeon in San Diego can handle several tasks in a single session, including: confirming exactly what's wrong, removing loose pieces of cartilage or bone, reshaping areas where bone rubs against bone, and stitching up torn soft tissue, all through those same small openings.

What Conditions Does Hip Arthroscopy Treat?

Hip arthroscopy is best known for treating two related problems, femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) and labral tear repairs. 

• FAI, often called hip impingement, happens when extra bone grows on the femoral head, the rim of the socket, or both. That extra bone pinches the soft tissue inside the joint every time you bend, squat, or rotate your leg, and over time it can wear down the cartilage. 
• A labral tear is damage to the labrum, a ring of cartilage that lines the socket and helps hold the ball of the joint in place. Tears often cause groin pain, a catching or clicking feeling, and a sense that the hip might give out. 

Hip arthroscopy can also clear out loose pieces of cartilage or bone floating in the joint, calm down an inflamed joint lining, release a tight tendon causing snapping hip syndrome, remove a hip bursa, and smooth small areas of cartilage damage before they turn into advanced arthritis.

Who is a Good Candidate for Hip Arthroscopy?

The strongest candidates tend to be active people from their teens through their 40s and 50s who have healthy cartilage, mechanical hip symptoms like catching or pinching, and imaging that points to a clear structural problem such as FAI or a labral tear. While most people are great candidates, hip arthroscopy is usually not the right call for people with advanced osteoarthritis, badly narrowed joint space, or severe hip dysplasia. Operating on a hip with widespread cartilage loss tends to produce poor results, and those cases often point toward hip replacement or a different hip preservation surgery.

Is Hip Arthroscopy the Only Way to Get Relief from Chronic Hip Pain?

While hip arthroscopy is minimally invasive and can treat a multitude of injuries and conditions affecting the hip, surgery is almost never the first option. The best orthopedic surgeon in San Diego will guide you through non-surgical treatments that usually include: 

• Physical therapy
• Anti-inflammatory medication
• Activity changes
• Orthobiologic injections like platelet-rich plasma (PRP) 

What to Expect When Recovering From Hip Arthroscopy

A great recovery relies on early movement. In fact, most patients are surprised by how active they have to be early on. 

• For the first two to four weeks, you'll likely use crutches and bear only partial weight on the operated leg while physical therapy focuses on gentle range-of-motion exercises and protecting the repair. 
• Pain medication needs usually drop off within the first week or two. 
• From week six to week 12, the rehabilitation shifts to strengthening, balance work, and low-impact cardio such as stationary cycling and pool exercises. Walking without crutches and returning to a desk job both typically happen during this stretch. 
• Higher-impact activity usually is safe after about three months. Running usually restarts around the three to four month mark, and most athletes are cleared for full sport between four and six months after surgery. 

The exact timeline depends on what was repaired, how the hip responds to therapy, and how closely you follow the rehab plan.

Hip Arthroscopy vs. Hip Replacement: Which is Right for You?

These two surgeries get compared a lot, but they treat very different patients and very different problems: 

• Hip arthroscopy preserves your own joint and works best for younger or middle-aged patients who have structural issues like FAI or a torn labrum, with most of the cartilage still intact. 
• Hip replacement removes the worn-out hip joint surfaces and replaces them with metal and plastic parts. It's the standard solution for people with advanced arthritis whose cartilage is largely gone. 

While arthroscopy aims to repair damage now and possibly delay or prevent arthritis later, a hip replacement aims to take a painful, arthritic joint and turn it back into one you can walk, work, and live on. The best orthopedic surgeon in San Diego will weigh your age, activity level, imaging results, and how much cartilage you have left before pointing you toward one path or the other.

Finding the Best Hip Surgeon in San Diego for Hip Arthroscopy

Hip pain that drags on for months can cause an upheaval in your life, from workouts that you have to cut short to not being able to sit comfortably or get a good night’s rest. At San Diego Performance Orthopedics & Regenerative Therapy, our team is led by Dr. Sanjum Samagh, a fellowship-trained sports medicine surgeon who is known as the best hip preservation surgeon in San Diego because of his minimally invasive approach and wide variety of non-surgical treatments before surgery is ever considered.

As a leader in orthopedic surgery, Dr. Samagh proudly serves patients across Encinitas, Leucadia, Del Mar, Solana Beach, Cardiff, Carlsbad, Oceanside, Torrey Pines, and North San Diego County. 

Ready to get fast and effective treatment for hip pain from the best hip surgeon in San Diego?