Pain is one of the less understood areas of medicine. Hip pain can come from bursitis, any number of forms of arthritis, or an infectious disease. The immediate cause is inflammation, which is actually part of your body’s natural defense mechanism. The first line of defense is simple pain-killing medicine, but if you’ve ever suffered arthritis you know that just turns screaming-out-loud pain into gritted-teeth pain, and that’s on good days. The second line of defense is the prescription of more powerful, steroidal NSAIDs. These typically provide better pain relief, but over a prolonged period will damage your liver.
Faced with this unsatisfactory range of options, and with a sopping humid climate making pain that much more painful, hip pain sufferers in Austin are turning increasingly to anterior hip surgery.
Hip surgery has varying degrees, beginning with arthroscopy, which can address early arthritis as well as cartilage tears and other relatively minor problems. Hip resurfacing, another technique, attempts to smooth the bone, typically at the connection between the femoral head and the acetabulum – where the hip bone meets the thigh bone, in layman’s terms.
Then there is hip replacement surgery, which, fortunately, is not literally the replacement of the entire hip, but simply the bones that make up the ball-and-socket joint where the inflammation is occurring. The artificial femoral stem is made of metal, and is inserted into the thigh bone to replace your body’s femoral head. The ball component is set atop the femoral stem, and can be made of either ceramic, polyethylene, or metal.
Anterior hip§ replacement surgery, which seems new because of the “buzz” surrounding it in surgical discourse, has been in existence for nearly a century, but until recently, technological limitations had made it excessively difficult. It had been much more common to make the approach through the posterior of the hip rather than the anterior hip. Recent advances, especially a newer, more specialized operating table, and real-time x-ray technology, have made anterior hip replacement feasible.
One of the most advanced forms of this surgery is minimally invasive total hip arthroplasty, or MIS-THA. The incision and resultant blood loss are quite small. Patients are typically able to be discharged from the hospital in a day or two. This technique reduces all the “side effects” you might expect, from pain to the use of walking aids during rehabilitation. Recovery should be relatively swift and without prolonged physical therapy.
Anterior hip surgery is available to patients in Austin, and it is often the most permanent treatment option for relief from hip pain.
