Procedure/Injury of the Week

After nearly going into cardiac arrest, I've decided to grab the AED and revive the Injury of the Week segment, with a twist of course. In addition to the injury, I'm gonna outline how the doctors plan to fix our favorite athletes. This week's focus is on torn acetabular labrums, which seems to be quite the rage these days among baseball and football stars. It was barely over a week ago that ARod went under the knife to correct his tear, while Kurt Warner just had the procedure done today. The acetabular labrum (which is Latin for 'lip' for those) is a ring of cartilage that surrounds the acetabulum (hip socket) and stabilizes the joint by effectively deepening the hip socket. A torn labrum can appear as a result of twisting on a weight bearing hip (like when you swing a bat or throw a football). Patients usually seek medical attention when they find pain during hip flexion (specifically in the front part of the hip). An MRI or CT scan can confirm a diagnosis. Doctors fix this problem by means of arthroscopic surgery, which is minimally invasive surgery (2-3 small incisions) that used an arthroscope (or tube with a camera on the end of it). In this case, the doctors go into the hip joint arthroscopically and cut away the loose/torn cartilage. That's it. The whole procedure takes under an hour. There is obviously rehab and such that follows, but that's to be expected with any surgery. So the next time someone talks about a torn labrum and thinks you don't know what you are talking about, you just tell them that you have the inside track to The Cure.